Shane Parrish

Do something extraordinary and it went unnoticed.

Make a mistake and everyone heard about it.

So her solution to this was to build the most elaborate recognition system in business history.

And we're going to talk more about this in a bit.

But Mary Kay understood a fundamental principle here.

Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from his or her neck saying, make me feel important.

Never forget this message when you're working with people.

I love this.

This is so true.

Imagine everyone you see today has a sign around their neck saying, make me feel important.

What do you think would happen if you approached life like that and you made everyone you interacted with just for a day and then you turn that into a week or a month and you made them feel important?

So Mary Kay knew what it was like to work yourself to exhaustion and have nobody notice.

She knew what it felt like to be unrecognized.

She knew what it felt like to be counted out.

So she knew that recognition could fuel performance in ways that money alone never could.

What do we need for recognition?

It needs to be public.

It needs to be specific and it needs to be frequent.

So she created an entire awards infrastructure.

There were pins for achievement levels, ribbons, trophies.