Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #245969 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-02
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .85 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Gostick and Elton, consultants with the O.C. Tanner Recognition Company, have made a career out of promoting the idea of employee recognition as a corporate cure-all. (Their previous books include Managing with Carrots, The 24-Carrot Manager and A Carrot a Day). Here, they cover familiar ground, showing how many managers fail to acknowledge the special achievements of their employees and risk alienating their best workers or losing them to competing firms. They advocate creating a "carrot culture" in which successes are continually celebrated and reinforced. Dozens of recognition techniques include the obvious ("When a top performer is going on a particularly long business trip, upgrade her ticket to business class") to the offbeat ("Hire a celebrity impersonator to leave a congratulatory voice-mail message on an employee's phone"). But the authors pad the pages with unsurprising survey results, the umpteenth recapitulation of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and long anecdotes of questionable relevance (e.g., three pages about Charles Goodyear's rubber-vulcanizing technique in order to introduce the notion that a transforming force—like employee recognition!—can produce surprising results). Gostick and Elton's philosophy is appealing, but could have been explained in a long magazine article. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Many managers still don't "get" that recognition and praise increase employee performance more than financial rewards or other tangible benefits. Citing numerous data and historical examples, the authors say that recognition works wonders when added to a basic managerial menu of clear goal-setting, good communication, trust, and accountability. This excellent presentation contains a complete package of rationales, methods, and benchmarks, including 125 specific reward types, and is delivered with comfortable clarity by the two authors. Their spontaneity and enthusiasm for their ideas will keep listeners fascinated, even though this is material that most of us have heard before in various forms. One CD includes printable appendices. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Adrian Gostick is the leader of O.C. Tanner Company's recognition training and publishing practice. His books The 24-Carrot Manager and A Carrot a Day are sold in more than fifty countries around the world.

Chester Elton is coauthor of the bestselling Carrot books, a popular lecturer on motivation, and an influential voice in global workplace trends. He is O.C. Tanner's lead recognition consultant and researcher and works with numerous Fortune 100 clients.