The Two Turkey Rule

As a child I watched my grandmother unfold a square of margarine wrapped in tin foil, scrape the foil with a butter knife, and save the foil in a stack. She would also take the rubber bands off the newspapers and save them in a little box. These were the period effects of the Great Depression. Reality tutored her to value things based on an inconsistent and effort-filled pattern of obtaining things. As a consequence, perhaps, she would infrequently take me for an ice cream cone after we got the chores done. But that was the exception, which is why I treasured it.

Early in my career, I worked for a company that gave every employee a turkey at Thanksgiving time. It was a cherished, long-standing tradition. One year the economy turned down and the company cut the turkey benefit. Judging by the sputtering rage that some of the employees fell into, you would have thought they had been fired without cause. They protested what they saw as an unfair and unilateral decision by management, depriving them of something they were rightly entitled to.

This experience taught me an important leadership principle. It’s called the Two Turkey Rule. One turkey is a gift. Two turkeys are an entitlement. The rule acknowledges an unfortunate reality: That which is given consistently is expected consistently.

The Declaration of Independence states that we have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Please notice the language: Life and liberty are rights. Happiness is not. It’s the pursuit of happiness that is the right. Happiness is an opportunity, not a guaranteed outcome. The distinction is critical to understand if you’re a leader. As Rabbi Aryeh Spero recently wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, a person’s “well-being is not an entitlement.”

We tend to take things for granted if there’s a consistent or effortless pattern in obtaining them. The opposite is also true: When there’s an inconsistent or effort-filled pattern to obtaining something, we tend to value and be grateful for what we have more than we would.

The application of the Two Turkey Rule in leadership is to think through the long-term consequences of granting rewards, benefits or perquisites to employees. If you decide to provide a reward, assume that it will quickly move from the status of a privilege to the status of an entitlement. In fact, when you give a reward just two times, you will likely find that what you have given has assumed the status of an entitlement.