CHAPTER 9


The Rewards and Recognition and Renewal Systems

The rewards system is the pay and benefits structure but also includes incentives, celebrations, and informal rewards and recognitions. Given the fact that the government’s pay and benefits structures are usually set by law, I am going to focus almost exclusively on the incentives, celebrations, and informal rewards and recognition components. First and foremost, you need to think about rewards and recognition as a system that reinforces excellent performance and behavior. It should not be used to reward people for merely doing their job and meeting the minimum standards of performance. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this happen far too often in government, when virtually every employee both receives and continues to expect to receive an award. Once that happens, the rewards program becomes watered down to the point where bonuses become meaningless, since employees expect to be rewarded automatically every year, regardless of what they have contributed to the organization. In essence, the bonuses simply become an extension of the employees’ salaries, and they do not motivate employees to do better because they expect to be rewarded for simply doing their jobs.

Once this happens, the rewards program actually becomes a de-motivator, because the better employees see that they are receiving virtually the same amount of bonus money as the slackers and the malcontents. They begin to wonder why they should be killing themselves for the organization if they are going to be treated the same way as people who are just going through the motions or, even worse, pulling the organization down. Eventually, some of the top performers will look elsewhere for a job as they conclude that the organization is not serious about performance and they want to be associated with a winner. By the same token, other employees will begin to slow down, deciding that it is not worth striving to exceed their goals if they are going to receive the same bonus for simply performing at the acceptable level.

Under the very real scenario that I just described, the biggest loser is the organization, because its rewards program has driven out some of its best people and caused some of its better performers to slow down and underperform. Meanwhile, the middle 60 percent, 70 percent, or even 80 percent of the employees (i.e., the ones who don’t rock the boat, perform acceptably, and watch what happens) begin to recognize that the rewards program is relatively meaningless and act accordingly. Conversely, the winners are the weakest employees, because they are left alone through benign neglect; yet they still receive bonuses and are allowed to continue to be the nattering nabobs of negativity they have always been.

Obviously, under this scenario, the rewards program is not working and for all intents and purposes has become a disincentive awards program. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with most government rewards and recognition programs. They simply don’t do what they set out to do. As a result, what should be a positive program ultimately becomes a negative one and fosters frustration, cynicism, and sometimes downright anger and often results in a series of grievances and EEO complaints. I’m sure that many government managers would be happier if the program simply went away.

So why aren’t most government rewards and recognition systems effective? First of all, the government usually does not set aside a lot of money in its awards pool, and a few hundred dollars in bonus money is not likely to get many people’s attention. If the government were to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to its employees in bonuses (although it often does that for its senior executives), that might provide greater incentive to the employees, but it would also bring even more scrutiny and second-guessing from both the media and the public, so I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon, especially with the deficit climbing at an alarming pace.

Putting aside the amount of the awards pool, the government’s rewards and recognition systems usually don’t work well for two basic reasons: (1) they are not properly designed and aligned; and (2) they are not fairly and consistently implemented. Let’s look at both issues more closely.

Design and Alignment

As I have emphasized throughout this book, an organization’s management systems must be properly aligned in order to focus the organization’s energy on its goals and objectives. Given the fact that the rewards and recognition system can have a powerful positive or negative impact on the organization’s performance, it is essential that the rewards system be properly aligned with the organization’s goals and objectives and its other management systems.

Let me give you a few examples that I hope will reinforce this key point. Let’s assume that your organization is committed to top-notch performance, including high quality. If you then reward people and/or teams that have high output but low quality, you will be sending a mixed message. After all, on one hand you will be preaching that quality is job one, while on the other hand you will be sending a message that output is what really matters and quality isn’t that important. Such an approach will breed both cynicism and confusion, as people will conclude that the organization doesn’t mean what it says and doesn’t care about quality.

That exact scenario occurred in an organization I worked for. Our headquarters started hammering its field offices to improve productivity, but every now and then it would also murmur that quality was equally important. Everyone was skeptical about the importance of quality given the constant push to improve productivity and the infrequent after-the-fact references to quality. The general sense was that if the organization put its money where its mouth was and rewarded high quality in the same way it rewarded increased productivity, it would demonstrate that the organization was at least somewhat serious about producing a quality product. Lo and behold, at the end of the year, the field office that received the highest group award for performance (more than $400,000) had the second lowest quality in the nation! People were flabbergasted by this and quickly concluded that the organization’s leadership was not serious about quality.

Once the leadership team became aware of the national reaction to its payout, it vowed to learn from its mistake and to realign its rewards decisions, which to its credit it did. However, the damage to its credibility was already done, and it never fully regained the trust of the field.

On another occasion, I recall working for an organization that claimed it was dedicated to working as a team. It brought in consultants to teach employees how to work together and placed a premium on group performance. However, the rewards system wound up being at odds with this objective, and this hampered performance.

The organization gave out only individual bonuses. As a result, the employees concluded that management was not really serious about teamwork, so most of them focused on performing their individual jobs and did not make much of an effort to assist their fellow employees; after all, for every minute they helped someone else, they were weakening their chances of getting an individual award.

In essence, the way that the rewards system was implemented wound up reducing teamwork, not supporting it; that is exactly why each and every design choice is so crucial.

The Elements of a Well-Designed System

By now, I hope you understand that your system must have a clear line of sight from the organization’s goals to the program or field office level, on to the team level, and finally down to the individual. Such clarity ensures that everyone is focusing on accomplishing the same thing. This is the first element of a well-designed system.

Second, as stated earlier, your rewards system should work together with your other systems and send the same message(s) to the employees.

The third component is that, for the most part, your awards criteria should be announced in advance so that everyone knows what she must do to receive a performance award (e.g., to achieve a bonus of $500, you must have a highly successful rating; to receive $1,000 you must have an outstanding rating; to achieve a far-exceeds rating in output, you must average ten widgets a day; to receive a far-exceeds rating in quality, your error rate must be no higher than 5 percent). In this way, everyone will know what the rules are and will be much more likely to strive for the level of performance that the organization is seeking.

Along these lines, you might consider breaking your rewards criteria into chunks, such as quarterly intervals. I have found that annual rewards goals are often meaningless to employees at the beginning of the rating period and that they don’t begin to focus on them until the fourth quarter. To address this effect and to get them into the game from the get-go, I believe in establishing and announcing quarterly goals. In this way, for every goal they hit each quarter, they earn certificates, shares, or money that is paid out at the end of the quarter or fiscal year as appropriate. It simply makes the goals more immediate to everyone and keeps them focused.

The other approach is to make all of the decisions at the end of the appraisal period on the basis of a look back. I think you know how I feel about that.

I mentioned that most, but not all, of the award criteria should be announced in advance because you need to leave some flexibility to reward employees for special acts, such as one-time contributions over and above the call of duty that are worthy of recognition. These types of contributions are less predictable but are still important to the organization, so you need to set the right tone and reward unique contributions.

The fourth part of the plan should be to reward both group and individual contributions. As stated earlier, if you reward only individual contributions, people will be less likely to work together as they will want to focus on their individual performance. Conversely, if you reward only group achievement, employees may be less likely to strive to do their utmost as their focus will be on the group.

Remember, the group’s performance is a function of both people working together and the sum of its individual parts. Also, you need to recognize that if you are going to have group rewards, you should announce in advance what the group has to do to receive awards, in the exact same way that you do for individual awards.

The fifth area of the plan is to establish a minimum level of conduct and performance that is expected of employees in order to qualify for most awards. After all, I would not want to give an award to someone who has been absent from work for most of the year, nor would I want to reward someone whose behavior has been unacceptable. On the other hand, while I believe that poor attendance should generally disqualify someone from receiving an annual group or individual award, it should not prevent people from receiving a one-time award for a special act if it is worthy of recognition.

Note that this last recommendation is unlikely to be supported by some unions, since in my experience many of them believe that performance and conduct are two separate issues. However, when it comes to awards, I think they are inextricably linked. After all, if someone’s average performance is excellent, but the person is rarely at work or behaves inappropriately in other ways, I see no reason why that person should be rewarded. Furthermore, if the group achieves its goals but one of its members is on a performance improvement plan, it seems clear to me that this individual did not make a large enough contribution to the group to justify receiving an award.

The sixth part of the plan should be to include both non-monetary and monetary awards. While money is clearly important, employees also crave recognition from their supervisors in the form of a “well done” note or a simple thank-you. Throughout my career, I constantly heard very good people complain that their supervisors didn’t appreciate what they did for their organizations and that they didn’t even acknowledge their contributions. Such treatment of employees rarely goes unnoticed, and it goes a long way toward fostering the perception that management does not care about them.

Now let me be clear about this; I am not advocating that supervisors thank employees for the sake of saying “thank you.” That would water down the organization’s drive for excellent performance and would send a mixed message to the employees. What I am saying is that supervisors should thank employees for their good work whenever that is appropriate. It lets employees know that we appreciate their efforts; it reinforces the right performance and behavior and doesn’t cost anything. You might even say that thanking employees for the right reasons is one of the best investments that a supervisor can make.

Other forms of nonmonetary awards may include time off from work, recognition cards that acknowledge when an employee’s actions embody one of the organization’s core values, a parking space set aside for the employee of the month or quarter, an employee wall of fame showing the pictures of the top performers and telling their stories, a lottery card acknowledging a specific accomplishment,¹ or a bulletin board post with a picture of an employee and the customer she served and a description of how she helped that individual.

Celebrate Victories

I used to hold an annual employee breakfast for my employees. During this event, we showcased a variety of success stories and made sure that everyone was aware of the accomplishments of both the organization and its employees. I wanted the employees to know what we valued and why and to encourage as many people as possible to try to exceed our expectations. One year, I even showed a video that featured some of our employees highlighting what we had accomplished and letting people know where we were going. Years later, after we had achieved many of our objectives, I showed this video again so that our employees could see how much we had achieved and they could place their progress in its proper perspective.

Another form of celebration I learned to embrace was visits from other organizations. Once our office started receiving the attention of the outside world,² I started to use these visits as an opportunity to both celebrate and reinforce the outstanding performance, innovation, and creativity I was seeking to foster in our organization. Accordingly, whenever I gave visitors a tour of our office, I always took them to the desks of the employees who had made outstanding and/or unusual contributions and gave them the opportunity to speak and, ultimately, shine. After a while, other employees wanted to know what they had to do to be included on the tour. They were told that all they had to do was make an outstanding contribution like the other employees who were already featured on the tour. In this way, we were both celebrating success and encouraging other employees to also stand out.

Implementation

If you give me the choice between good systems and bad supervisors or bad systems and good supervisors, I will always choose the latter. This is because bad supervisors will eventually screw up good systems, while good supervisors will quickly recognize they have bad systems and will improve them; it’s as simple as that.

Of course, the best-case scenario is to have good systems that are administered by good supervisors. When that happens, the rewards system takes on a degree of credibility that truly drives the organization’s performance. Where appropriate and practicable, the supervisors work with the employees to establish the expectations early on in the appraisal year and notify them of the final goals and objectives; they provide the employees with periodic feedback on how they are doing relative to both the fully successful level and the level they need to achieve to receive awards; and they listen to employees when problems develop and try and make adjustments accordingly. In a sense, they work hand in hand to ensure a “win-win” situation for everybody. After all, if both the group and the individual employee achieve their goals, then the group and the employee should be rewarded, and the supervisor will obviously profit as well. It seems so simple, yet far too often things don’t seem to work that way. Let’s look at some of the reasons why that may happen and discuss strategies to address them.

Perhaps the surest way to frustrate everyone is to start the year with unrealistic goals that everyone knows are unattainable. When that happens, people tend to ignore the goals because they feel they are out of reach and not worth worrying about. The first reaction is that management is out of touch with reality and doesn’t understand what the employees are dealing with. While that may indeed be the case, in my experience unrealistic goals are often driven by forces well above the local level, such as pressure from outside groups such as OMB, Congress, or stakeholders.

When that happens, you are unlikely to be able to change the goals. The one thing you can do is be honest and up front with your employees. Let them know where the goals came from and why and emphasize that you understand and share their frustration. Try to focus on improving a little each day, rather than worrying about how you will ever reach such unrealistic goals by the end of the performance cycle. Although you may not be able to achieve all of them, by letting the employees know that you are in this together, that you share their pain, and that you want to strive for incremental progress, you will keep them focused and may be able to mitigate some of their frustration over the unrealistic goals.

Another situation that often develops and frustrates employees to no end is the case in which a problem is discovered that prevents the employees from achieving their goals and management chooses to ignore it. When this happens, the employees take several messages: (1) management doesn’t really care whether they achieve their goals or not; (2) management is not interested in listening to the employees and hearing their concerns; and (3) management is not willing to take the extra step to help the employees succeed. As you can imagine, if employees feel that way, it does not bode well for the organization.

For example, I recall a situation where an organization imposed a very tough productivity standard on its employees. The fully successful level was so challenging that most people gave up striving for the far-exceeds level. In fact, they became so worried about keeping their jobs that very few even thought about receiving awards.

The employees constantly complained about this to management and correctly pointed out that it was having an adverse impact on the organization’s overall quality, but management held firm. Quality continued to plummet, and management finally relented and reduced its output expectations, but the damage had already been done, as the employees felt management cared only about themselves and not about the employees.

Perhaps the classic case of a poorly implemented government rewards and recognition system is the one in which there is no rhyme or reason why certain employees receive an award while others do not. In other words, there are no reliable consequences for outstanding performance. In my experience, this is what happens throughout most government organizations, and it drives both the employees and the union crazy, and sometimes the supervisors as well.

This occurs because the supervisors, generally out of good intentions, try to reward the people they think are most deserving. However, if there are no published criteria notifying people what they need to do to receive an award, little measurable data as to how people are doing relative to the organization’s expectations, and little feedback to people about how they are doing, all you wind up with are highly subjective rewards determinations, and everyone knows that.

To complicate matters even further, supervisors are human and tend to have their favorites. They may spend a disproportionate amount of their time with some employees and even go to lunch with subordinates they feel comfortable with. As you might expect, a large percentage of the awards often goes to these folks. All this does, of course, is foster the perception that rewards are based more on personal relationships than on actual contributions to the organization, and before you know it you have a system that no one is happy with.

To throw one more monkey wrench into the mix, as we all know, supervisors always seem to face unusual situations, and special projects frequently come up for one reason or another. These may involve a sudden workload crisis, an issue that has caught the attention of the media, training a group of new employees, or something else. In most cases, the supervisors turn to the top 10 percent of their employees to handle these concerns and then look to recognize these employees for their accomplishments.

On one hand, this makes perfect sense, as most people would go to their strengths when the chips are down and then look to recognize those individuals for a job well done. On the other hand, by constantly giving these assignments to the top 10 percent, supervisors tend to create an “us versus them” mentality, giving the remaining employees the impression that only the cream of the crop will get the opportunity to earn rewards for special acts. It’s a tricky situation for management because it wants to get the job done yet shouldn’t want to create a caste system, either.

My advice is to assign only the most difficult and pressing situations to the top 10 percent and to give the other challenges and projects to the next one or two levels of your employees. In this way, the highest priorities will still be accomplished, but you will also begin to pull other people up into the elite group of employees and create a stronger base that you can turn to. Moreover, you will start to dilute the “us versus them” perception and provide more people with the opportunity to compete for awards. This, in turn, will help promote the sense that anyone who performs well may get the chance to work outside her normal position description and potentially receive an award.

Renewal

The renewal system is the way that organizations encourage and formalize continuous learning. For example, what structures or processes are in place for gathering together to learn or for sharing best practices? In my experience, government organizations tend to do pretty well in this arena, since they try to share best practices in a variety of different ways. For example, many, if not most, organizations hold both periodic team meetings and frequent conference calls with their area offices and/or headquarters during which they try and keep everyone in the loop, highlight successes, and promote new ways of doing business. Some even conduct monthly video conferences and/or webinars that allow for a greater degree of visibility and enable presenters to show slides or even videos. A large number of organizations also hold yearly conferences that allow people from all over the county, state, or country to meet face-to-face both as a group and/or one-on-one. All of these relatively formal approaches to learning are important and usually happen in government.

Another important way to promote learning is to look outside the organization for new ideas and new approaches. In my experience, sometimes the government does this well; other times it does not. This technique requires bringing in outside people who have new ideas, new approaches, and new perspectives and who are willing to challenge the mindset and “group-think” that may have evolved within a particular organization.

For example, I was recently asked to work with a government organization that had a change of leadership. The career civil servants there were highly skeptical of me because they figured I would be the type of consultant who would swoop in, throw out a large number of radical ideas that were not grounded in reality, and then leave them to figure out how to implement my recommendations. Fortunately, they were willing to cut me a little more slack than most consultants because I at least had worked in the government for more than 30 years and knew their world.

Once I got there, I quickly provided them with a series of down-to-earth solutions for some of their most pressing HRM problems. This instantly gave me credibility with the senior leadership team, which in turn made employees even more open to my other ideas on such diverse areas as visual management, performance metrics, organizational structure, and the way leadership teams communicate with their employees, customers, and stakeholders. The point here is that once they became open to outside input and saw its potential benefits, they began to clamor for even more from me and other experts in their fields (e.g., experts in customer service, executive coaching, and employee surveys).

I’m always skeptical of organizations that never want to bring in outsiders. Invariably, the mindset is, “Why would we want to bring in someone who doesn’t understand our organization, its history and its culture? After all, we have all the resources we need to solve our own problems.” To me, this type of thinking is an indication that the organization has become too inbred and is becoming less and less open to new ideas. When this happens, it means that the organization is starting to develop blinders and is likely to miss out on vital opportunities to renew itself.

I remember early in my career when our headquarters wanted to detail me to another office so that I could learn from the experiences of people at that location. Our local management saw no reason to do this, so I didn’t get to visit that office for months. When I finally got there, I quickly realized that it had much to offer, and I soaked up every bit of wisdom I could. For the rest of my career, I remained attached to that organization, recognizing that it was always there to both teach and support me.

The same type of mindset can also develop if the organization always promotes from within. Although promoting from within is very important, as it enables the organization to bring along its future stars and reward people who have devoted their time and energy to the organization, organizations also need to periodically bring in new blood, not just at the entry level but at higher levels. They need to do this for the same reason they should periodically bring in consultants or outside observers: to ensure that they are getting fresh ideas and new perspectives and to have at least some people question why things are being done the way they have always been done. Without a periodic stream of newcomers, organizations tend to stagnate.

An alternative to bringing outsiders into the organization is to go out and visit other organizations. I have found this to be an excellent way to learn what is going on in the world, meet new people, and watch different organizations in action. It’s amazing what you can pick up by visiting a new organization. You will see another physical plant, a different workforce, and perhaps a unique way of doing things, and you will be able to converse with people who are probably coping with many of the same problems you are. I suspect you will find such a visit to be invigorating because you will probably pick up a few new things and will also take comfort in knowing that other people are trying to deal with the same challenges you are facing.

Another superb way to promote learning is to have a series of key employees attend one or more of the wide range of conferences that the government, its stakeholders, and the private sector offer each year. By this I mean conferences beyond those offered by the organization’s headquarters or its area offices that relate either directly or indirectly to the mission of the organization. Such conferences include but are certainly not limited to the Excellence in Government Conference sponsored by Government Executive magazine, the American Society for Training and Development Conference; the Society for Human Resources Management Conference; the Federal Manager’s Association Conference; the Federally Employed Women’s Conference; the Blacks in Government Conference; the Open Government and Innovations Conference; the Annual Government Financial Management Conference; and similar meetings.

Organizations that send their people to these types of conferences will find that employees often bring back new ideas and different approaches, get a sense of what is coming down the road so they can get ahead of the curve, and get to mingle with and meet employees from other organizations. Building new relationships is crucial because it strengthens the attendees’ networks and provides them with additional resources they can turn to when looking for new approaches or just someone they can bounce ideas off of.

For example, one of my former employees attended a conference and met a number of people he had previously heard of but had never met. For the first time, he was able to associate a face with the name. He built relationships with many of these individuals, which enabled him to call them whenever he needed help or needed to know where to turn for information.

Unfortunately, some organizations do not like to send their employees to conferences because of the cost factor and/or because they do not like having them away from the job site for too long. These are always considerations, but I encourage every organization to invest in its employees by at least occasionally sending them to outside conferences. If they don’t, in the long run they will find they are being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

An easy and low-cost way of promoting learning is to have your employees read books and articles. While this requires an investment of both time and energy on the part of the employees and some bulk purchases by management, it ensures that the employees periodically take a step back and think and challenges them to consider some of their deeply held beliefs, perhaps growing in the process. A good way to reinforce this approach is to have brown-bag lunches where people who have read the books get together and discuss the contents. This provides the employees with an excellent forum for debating new ideas and finding ways to implement those that pass muster.

I recommend that the books and articles your employees read cover a wide range of topics and not be limited to just business books and books about the government. There is enormous value in learning about many topics, including the arts, the sciences, spirituality, and self-help.

Another great source of information is biographies. I have learned an enormous amount by studying the lives of successful people. Reading about John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Rembrandt, Steven Spielberg, and many, many others has taught me the value of believing in yourself and the importance of hard work, the need for continuous learning, and, most of all, the importance of persistence in the face of adversity. All of these lessons can and should be applied to government (and private sector) organizations and will help them continue to grow and evolve successfully.

A good way to track your organization’s development and determine when you have a particular need for renewal is to conduct one or more internal surveys of your organization. These may include an annual employee satisfaction survey, an employee engagement survey, or a climate survey. If you do one or more of these surveys on an annual basis, they will provide you with a baseline estimate of how the employees and the organization are doing and where there are opportunities for improvement.

For example, I recall one year when our survey showed our employees were not as well connected to our customers as we would have liked, so we spent a lot of time trying to sensitize them to our clients’ needs. We brought in customers to talk about their personal experiences and their interactions with our organization, and it made a big impact on our folks and ultimately made our organization better. The point here is that these surveys provide you with critical data that should be part of your renewal process.

Innovation and Creativity

Another way to ensure that your organization renews itself is to promote innovation and creativity. That sounds simple enough, but it is a lot more complicated than you might think. For example, large government bureaucracies are full of people who tend to be very protective of their turf. That is because there is only so far you can go in government and only so much money you can make, so turf becomes very precious to people. Therefore, when innovative changes are proposed that affect people’s turf or the existing power structure, many employees push back either actively or passively in order to maintain the status quo. As multiple pushbacks occur and people give all sorts of reasons why change should not happen, many promising innovations die of benign neglect.

Another reason that innovation and creativity in government are often stifled is that governments usually have multiple field offices. In this situation, you want to preserve a reasonable degree of uniformity and consistency, because you want each office to deliver the same product and/or service with roughly the same degree of quality, timeliness, output, and customer satisfaction. Accordingly, you cannot allow each office to do its own thing; if you do, you are likely to have wide variances in performance. That is why larger organizations have all sorts of internal guides and manuals—to ensure that everyone takes the same basic approach, which, one hopes, has been time-tested and determined to be the most effective and efficient way of performing the work. When there is a lot of disparity between offices, the saying goes something like this: “When you have seen one office, you have seen one office.”

On the other hand, if everyone is doing things the exact same way, over time, the mindset becomes “that is the way we have always done things,” and people stop looking for new ways to get the job done. When that happens, the organization tends to become stagnant and does not take advantage of new ideas, technologies, methods, and approaches. Before you know it, the innovative people become frustrated, stop making suggestions, and ultimately leave. Eventually, the organization starts to slowly but surely lose ground to other more innovative organizations, and it develops a reputation of one that is living in the past.

To me, the best way to manage the contradictory goals of innovation and creativity and uniformity and consistency is to strike a balance between the two. On the creativity side, make sure that the organization has people in power who are open to new ideas. Periodically rotate people through committees that review projects, proposals, new ideas, and concepts in order to gain fresh perspectives. Establish an innovation fund and/or an innovation laboratory that allows people to try new things in a protective and supportive environment.

Walk around and talk to your employees every day, and hear them out. This will encourage them to share their ideas with you in an informal manner. Have a real open-door policy that allows your folks to speak with you in private and to share their ideas, concerns, and proposed solutions. Extensively celebrate creative ideas that have worked, and publically encourage others to submit innovative approaches. Creativity has a momentum of its own; when encouraged, it will flow. When discouraged, it will quickly choke and, ultimately, suffocate.

Promote uniformity and consistency by using the systems we have discussed throughout this book. Develop a mission, a vision, and guiding principles statement that let everyone know what the organization is all about and where it is going. Establish goals and objectives, and share them with everyone so that people know where the organization is going and what it is trying to accomplish. Develop internal manuals and standard operating procedures that explain the organization’s policies and procedures. Write organizationwide position descriptions and performance standards that advise everyone what he is supposed to do and how he is supposed to do it.

Each field organization then operates within this framework to ensure there is a common approach toward both doing the work and achieving the goals. Meanwhile, your headquarters/area offices act as checks and balances to ensure that everyone understands that all offices have the same marching orders, are doing business in the same way, and are accomplishing the same things.

By the same token, they should look to find out who has new and exciting ideas, seed these ideas when they have potential, and then share these best practices once they are successful. The key again is to strike a balance between both approaches: to encourage innovation and creativity while also striving for a reasonable degree of uniformity and consistency.