Customer Reviews

Managing with Carrots : Using Recognition to Attract and Retain the Best People

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Anyone with any business sense knows that recognition is important. Company owners and human resource professionals know that an entire industry has been built around this technique. There is an abundant supply of consultants, authors, and professional speakers touting the value of recognition, as well as companies that design recognition programs and sell the products that are used in recognition.

This book is unabashedly written by two senior executives from O. C. Tanner Recognition Company. The copyright is held by the company, rather than the authors. I approached this book with the expectation that it was designed to be a thinly-disguised promotion of O. C. Tanner's products and services. I wasn't disappointed. This perspective is not a bad thing, and a lot of valuable information is conveyed in the 111 pages.

I was a bit overpowered by the theme of the book: Managing with Carrots. The illustration on the front cover is a carrot trophy. Every page number is accompanied by a carrot-in orange print. All the call-out boxes and chapter subheads are printed in orange. Even the flyleaf of the book is orange. I'd have to label this overwhelming use of carrot orange as overkill. Even the start-of-chapter quote from Bugs Bunny was a bit too cute.

Part One is a chapter entitled "Carrot Seeds." Part Two gives us Carrot Planting, Carrot Cultivation; Presenting Carrots, Symbolic Carrots, Communicating about Carrots, and Creating a Carrot Culture. Part Three is Carrot Harvest and Part Four is Starting Your Own Carrot Crop. The flow is to present the recognition concept, explain how to build a recognition program, then how to reap the benefits. A number of case studies sprinkled through the book provide an illustrative enhancement.

If you accept the infomercial nature of this book, you can gain some helpful guidance.

"What is the most effective tool to creat employee satisfaction? If you say money, your wrong! They want to know what is expected of them, be well equiped and trained, have the opportunity to do what they do best, and receive praise regularly for good work. Carrots! This book is a quick read and sets the stage for creating a culture of recognition."

My son in law read the book and passed the title on to me. It's a great quick read with information applicable in all areas of ones life.

Though this book may at first seem narrowly tailored for the business management market, I found it helpful as a middle school teacher in generating new ideas on how to extend and develop my own student recognition program. Using frequent examples, sidebars and graphic information, Gostick and Elton help identify what so many employees and students are hungry for in today's sometimes anonymous society, appreciation for one's efforts. Recommended for leaders of any organization.

"Managing with Carrots" is a supurb tool for every CEO, manager, or HR department. It's filled with practical ideas that will build a loyal, dedicated workforce. I'm recommending this book to everyone in business... everyone that is, EXCEPT our competition!

This book has been most insightful. I find that it re-inforced some of the tools I have already put in place as well gave me many more ideas. Managing Staff does not have to be ridget and cold, including them in dession making does not make you weak but strengthens your own work ethics.
Managaing with Carrots teaces you that your Staff are functionable by their own talents, and how to reconize them as well as acknowledge what they are concretly, to them, your staff, the pillers of your company.
I would like to also add that this book was very readable and short enough to keep you reading, long enough to inform you throughly.