Novak is the author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling book, TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU: the Only Way to Make BIG Things Happen. He offered his thoughts on leadership at the SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition, held recently in Orlando.
No Recognition for 47 Years
Novak tells the story of a visit to talk to route salespeople about merchandising and display visibility. One by one, the people in the group were raving about Bob and what a great job he did. Bob was crying. Why? In his 47 years with the company, he never knew that people felt that way.
That experience helped Novak decide that he was going to make recognition a priority, and do it in a fun way. For his KFC people, it involved a rubber chicken. With Pizza Hut, it was the cheese head. People love it, and, silly as the rewards may seem, employees are moved emotionally, Novak says. People told Novak that the rubber chicken approach was fine in the United States, but that it wouldn’t work in the UK or Asia. “Not true,” Novak says. “Soft stuff gets hard results.”
Leadership Training
Novak started teaching a 3-day leadership program in 1998 with a handful of European managers. He scaled the program to where he has now trained 4,000 managers. How can he afford to spend so much time on that?
“People first, results will follow. It has the biggest payout of anything I do,” Novak says.
When he realized he had only reached 4,000 of his 1.4 million employees, he felt the need to write a book.
Leadership tip: If you found a hotshot replacement for yourself—what would that person do that you are not doing? “Do it yourself before someone else takes your job,” says Novak.
He notes that in line with Yum!’s corporate responsibility target—world hunger—all the proceeds from the book and from his speaking engagements go toward eliminating world hunger.
Incentive plan Essentials. Get your incentive plans on target on September 9, 2014 with a new interactive webinar Incentive Pay Plan Essentials: How to Select & Design Plans that Work. Learn More.
Listening Would Have Paid Off
Celebrate other people’s ideas—so they want to bring more to you. And then, listen to them, Novak says.
When he was at Pepsi, sales were down, but all clear products were doing well. So, he said, what about a clear Pepsi? Customers said, Great idea.
He now felt like a genius, and he went to the bottlers, because he had to sell them on the idea. They didn’t like the idea, because the product didn’t taste like Pepsi. Novak replied, “We don’t want it to,” and introduced it at a premium price. It was profitable and was named one of the 10 top new products of the year.
Unfortunately, no one ever bought it a second time—because it didn’t taste like Pepsi. One year after being named a top 10 best product, it was listed in the top eight failures.
If he had listened, he could have avoided all that, but he was “hell-bent” on doing what he wanted to do.
Magic Johnson, Passer
When Magic Johnson revealed that he was HIV positive, he was worried about public perception. Pepsi, said, “We’re 100 percent behind you.” When Johnson was asked what it was like during his high school years, he said he was scoring 70 points per game—and no one was happy. So he became the best passer in the league.
“It’s the power of me to we,” says Novak.
Tiptoe or Cannonball?
Novak tells of sitting by a pool. One person entered the cold water daintily, but a little kid cannonballed in, causing ripples all over the pool. That’s your choice, says Novak. You can stick your toe in, or you can buy 1,000 copies of my book, jump in, and cause ripples.
Whether you tiptoe or cannonball, you can’t avoid incentive compensation. And now, as the economy continues to improve, it’s time to consider incentive compensation plans to boost productivity and performance that may have declined in the past 5 years.
Technology has also changed how we work, and that’s changed the kinds of jobs and skill sets that employers need to fill. To attract top performers with these new skills, variable pay plans allow you to offer new kinds of incentives to this evolving group.
But how to set up a reasonable—and effective—incentive program? Fortunately, there’s timely help in the form of BLR’s new webinar— Incentive Pay Plan Essentials: How to Select & Design Plans that Work. In just 90 minutes on September 9, you’ll learn how to design, manage, and evaluate the success of incentive-based pay plans.
Register today for this interactive webinar (or find out more here).
Incentive plans not on target? Join us September 9 for a new interactive webinar, Incentive Pay Plan Essentials: How to Select & Design Plans that Work. Earn 1.5 hours in HRCI Recertification Credit. Register Now.
By participating in this interactive webinar, you’ll learn:
- When it’s right to use incentives, and a realistic list of incentive plans to consider
- Alternatives to using incentive compensation
- Why incentive plans can fail—and their success rate
- How technology is playing a role in variable pay plans
- Why companies seem to avoid using skill-based pay
- What makes gain-sharing plans work
- Whether goals and measures are possible to identify for every group incentive plan
- Mistakes to avoid in team-based plan designs
- And much more!
Register now for this event risk-free.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Eastern)
12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Central)
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Mountain)
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1.5 credit hours toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Join us on September 9—you’ll get the in-depth Incentive Pay Plan Essentials: How to Select & Design Plans that Work webinar AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR/HR Hero® webinars:
- Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
- Get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow each segment of the presentation.