Posted on behalf of Neil Sherman, Founder and Chief Bitnologist of Advanced Bitnology (a software and electronics design house) and one-time undervalued employee of Druck upon his reading the chapter on rewards, recognition and appreciation in my “Scrappy Project Management” book. Catch the Attitude of Gratitude! Kimberly
Reading “Scrappy Project Management: The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces” was a lot of fun! Well done!! Lots and lots of zany and interesting project scrapinalia in there to think on. I did disagree with you on rewards, I have to say I much prefer the T-shirt or mug to the strapless sun dress or thong so if I ever get given any of those I’ll be glad to donate them to you. I actually fondly treasure the old mugs and T-shirts as reminders of times past. I was really upset when my ex used my pink Lectus T-shirt (which bore the names and signatures of everyone in the company and which I never ever would wear) as her hair-dying shirt and got blotches all over it.
But every rule has its exception. I hung in at Druck (where I was their original software engineer and the products our 5 man development team produced help make my boss became one of the richest 300 in the UK when he sold the company to GE) for my 10 year carriage clock, which was given to me by the lady who was managing the typing pool at the time I joined but by then had somehow finagled her way into becoming Managing Director. In the same week as I received my clock I was also given a very similar clock by the local newspaper as a reward for having subscribed to the paper for 6-weeks! It taught me something about how much Druck valued me versus the local paper. I still have the clock from the newspaper, but my company clock has gone the same way of the free calendar I got when I stayed a night at some motel…
I loved this post! I love the underlying read between the lines parts too. I laughed (instead of crying) at the regular problem of the upstairs vs. downstairs mentality on rewards. Somehow lotsa money and a new lifestyle is just fine to award to upper management and some small chotsky stuff you might get at a bank is just great to give to the underlying team and project manager who delivered the thing that got upper management rich. Sorta like our concept that you can’t pay for great teaching, they should do it strictly for the love of it, however great upper executives better be paid nosebleed salaries or else they leave. Hmm… I say, keep your small chotskys, I don’t care what they are, and if you have to give them how about something personal which took more than a moment of time to think of. My advice to upper management if they have a project they really think will get themselves rich is to offer some incentives that might actually hurt a little bit, yes real money just like they get on delivery (yes it can be less than what they get but how about something like a double of salary that year for a bonus or a good chunk of stock on a critical delivery) or something that personally took a little thought for a gift. The days when people could even make a mortgage on a single income engineering salary are over, much less make college or health care payments.