Celebrate at Work?
How often do you celebrate at work? I don’t mean the annual service awards shindig, or the once in awhile pizza party. I mean the spontaneous, no-holds-barred heralding and honouring of good deeds and special occasions, no matter how large or small. For example, do you celebrate:
- Your new sales rep just closing his/her first sale
- The compliment from a customer for a member of your team
- The cashier’s son graduating from university
- A proposal accepted
- A new client signed on
- Birthdays
- Anniversaries
- New babies
- Laugh At Work Week (April 1 – 7) – yes, there is such a thing!
Celebration is important and very powerful for a number of reasons:
- It shows appreciation and affirms the right things, so that your team becomes clearer on what is expected
- It demonstrates your caring and thoughtfulness
- It lifts the energy of the entire team, not just the person or situation being celebrated
For celebration to “work” it must be genuine, heartfelt, in the moment (or as close to the moment as possible) and in keeping with the sensibilities and preferences of those whom you are celebrating.
In my opinion, you can’t have too much celebration! Just like you can’t say “Thank you” too much.
THE BALANCED SCORECARD – Are your people ready?
For many organizations, the most challenging part of the Balanced Scorecard is the Learning & Growth or People Perspective. It is difficult because of the prevailing notion that people issues are “soft” issues, difficult to quantify and hard to track and report on. Yet, as we all come to realize sooner or later, it’s the PEOPLE who deliver the PROCESSES that satisfy the CUSTOMERS who provide us with REVENUE and FINANCIAL RESULTS. It follows therefore that to change our financial results, we MUST take the People Perspective very, very seriously. This can be a very daunting task
I have recently been working with clients on their People Readiness, or, in the BSC lexicon “Human Capital Readiness”. This is a fascinating journey of:
- Identifying the truly strategic jobs. Whilst all jobs are, or should be important, we spend time analyzing, discussing and coming to agreement on the 10 to 20% of jobs that make a big difference to the strategy
- Then we look at each strategic job to figure out the competency profile – what are the skills, attitudes and knowledge required for successful execution.
- Next we assess the readiness – what percentage of the incumbents meets the strategic competency requirements? And do we have adequate numbers? This can be sobering, as the team begins to understand the extent of the gap to be closed.
- And finally, we develop the People Development Program, focused primarily on closing the readiness gaps in the strategic jobs, but without neglecting all the other jobs.
If you are having difficulty in meeting your BSC targets, then perhaps it’s time to take a serious look at the readiness of your people.
TAKE ONE ACTION
Celebrate a recent achievement of your team or one person in your team today. Stop work for a few minutes, gather everyone together, acknowledge the person(s), give hearty rounds of applause and – always great in my view – share a lovely rich chocolate cake). And if you would like to add some joy, play this Kool and the Gang classic: CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES
Can’t find anything to celebrate? Ask your team for suggestions!
INTERESTING LINKS
How to Build the World’s Greatest Workplace – this video is a little long (38 minutes), but well worth viewing. It presents 5 principles to build a great workplace, the first being HAPPINESS. Interestingly, it is presented by an entrepreneur based in the developing world (Malaysia). Now you know why I highly recommend it. – click to view
Play at work leads to innovation – discover how important play is to innovation, and that play can actually generate serious outcomes. While the article focuses on IT, I suspect that play will encourage creativity and innovation in all aspects of organizational life. – click to view
