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Saturday, June 25, 2011

Celebrate!! Celebrate!! Dance to the Music!


When planning a project, do you include time to celebrate?

The completion?
Overcoming that thorny problem to get things moving again?
Figuring a way to still stay in budget?

At the Leadership Breakfast - Reston today, we discussed leadership and teams, and of course communications came up as a problem and solution to several performance issues...not an unusual finding.

A significant dissatisfying factor for team members is the feeling that they are not appreciated -
'busting butt and no one notices'. Team leaders are confident that they are communicating and offering positive input – speaking about meeting goals, project progress, and staying in budget for routine operations; acknowledging the 'hero' who pulls it out of the fire on the others.

What is often missing is a celebration at completion and at major junctures during the project. A strategic pizza goes a long way to say I appreciate you! Or skipping the 'first thing Monday' meeting as a reward for the contributions from the team is pretty hard to forget. The point is celebrating the successes is a strong way to communicate several things, including appreciation and closure.

Simple concept – add celebrations to your planning.

Best thing I got from this meeting: Checking the project off a completion list is not a celebration.

[title is from a Three Dog Night tune]

2 comments:

Thoughthebrowser said...

Many times the only way our guys on know they are winning is when they are told. The first purpose of any brochure is to tell our guys what we are doing.
Excellent post!

Unknown said...

Thanks, Dick. Good point about informing the team - for the leader performance & results quickly become universal in the mind due to volume and frequency of receipt. Easy to lose track of the what had been shared with the Doers.