Adrian Gostick

Have you ever told your kids, nephews or nieces, or grandkids that honesty is the best policy? An interesting article in The Journal of Moral Education suggests we as adults may not always follow that policy when communicating with our children.

While just about all of us encourage our kids to never lie, children’s behavior is largely influenced by our own say authors Heyman and Luu of the University of California San Diego and Lee of the University of Toronto.

The researchers found 88 percent of students say their parents have used a lie to get them to do something or make their lives easier, such as: if you cry in the grocery store the police will come, that rainbow appeared just for you, if you’re not good Santa won’t bring you any presents, if you cross your eyes long enough they’ll stay that way, etc. Here’s the one that haunts me: When my son was four-years-old and a picky eater, I told him that the sandwich in front of him had been prepared by his mother, since he was convinced I couldn’t make acceptable lunches. After he ate the food and said it was fine, I said, “Ha, I made the PB & J!” He was not only royally ticked off by my manipulation, but still remembers my lie to this date—and he’s 14 now.

The morale of the story is this: we need to be careful as parents when telling white lies. We may think they are for the greater good, but if we are caught it can undermine our credibility for a long, long time. Not only that, psychologists say that children are actually quite adept at reading faces and emotional cues. Even if you think you are good with your little white lies, chances are they will pick up on your fibs.

This is a good business lesson too. Most of think we are scrupulously honest. And yet we are rarely as lily white as we believe. The gray areas we play around in business can undermine our credibility with colleagues, bosses and customers.

I had a chance last week to visit the headquarters of online retailer Zappos.com, one of the world’s fastest growing companies. Over the last 8 years since inception, Zappos has grown to more than $1 billion in revenue (from a zero start). If you’ve shopped Zappos you know they have a great product strategy—allowing you to shop for shoes and other stuff with free shipping both ways. So, in effect, you can try on a pair of Hush Puppies and never leave home.

While their business model is fantastic, most impressive were the employees I met. I get to visit a dozen or more companies each year, and I’ve never seen a culture like this. As you tour the Las Vegas headquarters (wearing your mandatory crown) you quickly note that Zappos’ lives its core value of “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness.” Where do I begin to explain? There’s the fashion department that takes pictures of visitors (pretending they are paparazzi), or how about the finance department (yes those fun and crazy accountants) who were cleaning up from their soap box car race, or the customer service reps who were cracking jokes with customers on the phone (they are encouraged to), or the parking lot that had been the site of a petting zoo the day before (so employees could cuddle a goat) … I could go on and on.

We’ll get more into Zappos amazing culture and financial success in our new book next fall. But here’s something fun right now. I met with two extremely atypical call center managers, Maura Sullivan and Rob Siefker.

Rob told me about SNAP recognition that happens in their Customer Loyalty Teams. SNAP stands for Super Nifty and Positive Stuff. “We do SNAPs in our Zuddles, or Zappos huddles, and we just had one earlier,” he said.

“We like to put Zs in front of things,” Maura quipped.

Rob explained, “The lead supervisors and managers have ours Zuddles at 9:15 and 3:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s quick, what’s going on in the call center, are there any big ticket items we need to discuss, big news that we need to pass down, and then at the end we do SNAPs. There’s a little box in the call center and people write things that someone else did that was really cool. These are read during the Zuddles and then the person is publicly recognized on the spot. It’s peer-to-peer. Then we all snap our fingers. (Maura and Rob both demonstrate for me, as if I’ve never seen snapping, and are laughing like they just thought up this idea. They are so darn upbeat I can’t help laughing with them.)

Adds Maura, “It’s been a fun way to make sure we’re recognizing each other, even for the little things, the things that make a difference culturally for our environment. We have a lot of fun with it.”
Like every business Zappos faces challenges. But it’s one business that has learned how to have fun while growing and succeeding.

The October issue of the Carrot Culture newsletter is focused on how organizations can achieve measurable results through The Carrot Principle. Last month we hosted the 5th annual Carrot Culture Summit in Boston, MA, where business leaders from across the country met to share best practices. This two-day event was packed with stories of wildly successful organizations who get what recognition is all about. Click below to read more of what the Summit was all about.

Oh, we remember the cooing. The cute little burps and hiccups. It seems like just yesterday we started with a baby carrot. But today our little baby is now in the real world, creating real results.

It was five years ago when we held our first Carrot Culture Summit in New York. Quite honestly, we weren’t sure if anyone would show up for that first event. Of course, we were thrilled to have more than 100 executives attend, even though it was little more than positive affirmation that the ideas in The Carrot Principle could work.

Did they work? Fast forward five full years to a few weeks ago—business leaders from around the world met in Boston for the fifth annual Summit. And this year, it was all about results—dramatic business results that organizations are seeing from living The Carrot Principle.

Ned Lidvall, CEO of Friendly Ice Cream Corp., and Cheryl Hutchinson, Friendly’s senior director of human resources, kicked off the event with details on how the 500-restaurant, 13,000-employee chain differentiates in their very crowded market.

Said Ned, “Every restaurant has a chicken Caesar salad. The way to win in a sea of sameness is to capture the hearts and heads of your people. You can’t pay people to be creative and passionate. You must create a culture that inspires behaviors through recognition.”

Cheryl added to that comment, saying that her organization turned to Carrots after an eye-opening employee survey in 2004, which showed a majority of workers did not understand the big picture, did not feel thanked for their efforts, and did not feel their manager cared about them.

It’s stories like this that have cultivated growth—both of The Carrot Principle and the organizations who have become our close friends.

Back then, the executive team at Friendly Ice Cream Corp. agreed that a change was in order, but most thought cash rewards would work best. Cheryl put her foot down. “They thought cash was king. They said, ‘Just give them cash or a $10 gift certificate.’ I asked them if they still had a box of trophies in the attic from high school? Yep, everyone did. The items in those boxes tell a story. That’s what recognition is. We want to have something that helps us remember our achievements.”

Cheryl then developed a recognition solution that connected to real business results—such as guest recovery and teamwork. And the results have been outstanding, including a 40-point upswing in trust levels on their employee surveys, not to mention stronger sales, higher guest counts, less guest complaints and lower employee turnover.

“The cost savings from reduced turnover alone funds recognition at Friendly’s,” said Cheryl. “How can you afford not to have a recognition program? It accelerates business results.”

Is that the full scoop? No way. The stories at the Summit continued to pile up…

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