'The Carrot Principle' illustrates how ordinary organisations have moved to extraordinary through the use of strategic employee recognition; and statistically illustrates that great managers must use praise and recognition if they want to engage their workforces. In short, the authors show how great organisations and great manages succeed through living the Carrot Principle.
First, the book features case studies of effective recognition in some of the world's most successful organisations, such as DHL, Avis, Pepsi, etc. And demonstrates how recognition has lead to improved employee commitment and bottom line results in these companies.
Second, and perhaps most compelling for a mass management audience, the book shows how a Carrot Culture is not created by the CEO, senior leadership team or HR department, but manager by manager. This is reinforced through the public unveiling of a global 200,000-person study conducted by a partner marketing research firm. The research, conducted over a 10-year period, demonstrated that managers rated as 'very effective' at recognition by their employees were also rated much more: Trustworthy, fair-minded and respectful, and better: communicators, team-builders, and goal-setters.
In fact, the PhD statisticians evaluating these returns have concluded it is statistically impossible to be considered a trusted, fair, communicating, team-building, goal-setting manager unless you are effectively using praise and recognition.
Now, authors such as Tom Rath, Marcus Buckingham and even Jack Welch have written on the importance of praise and recognition in building strong workplaces. But none have specifically shown how to lead in the same manner. While using recognition in a sincere, timely, and frequent manner may be the most important leadership characteristic, it is one of the most difficult leadership tools to master. To that end, the authors show examples of leaders -- from around the globe -- who lead through the Carrot Principle: building high performance teams that outperform their peers. And they provide plentiful how-tos for managers wishing to get started or hoping to enhance their recognition abilities.
Overall, there has never been a book in the recognition or motivation space that has had this type of quantitative or case study support.
