by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Most people give up when they’re just about to achieve success. They quit on the 1-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.” Ross Perot (1930-2019) – self-made billionaire. Obituary in New York Times, July 2019.

      Suppose that team’s quarterback reminded his players of the great celebration they were about to have, if they made their 1-yard touchdown. Do you think his team would have succeeded?  Surprisingly enough, this writer is often met with a muted client response when he brings up the idea of celebrating a project or team’s success. Sometimes you can almost imagine those engaged in the conversation thinking: “We pay them to do all these things.” At least that’s likely to be the conventional manager’s (CM’s) response. That’s the point: CMs too often ignore the realities of human nature, much to their desired performance cost.

Many of those CMs are spectators at sports events, are observers at their kids’ school activities, or are participants in local community celebrations: all situations where it’s commonplace to enjoy success. Even so, when it comes to their own organization and – hopefully – its many accomplishments, it’s more likely to be: “We pay them to do all these things.” As if ‘pay’ is the only thing in the world that matters. They ignore the reality of every objective survey after survey that, providing their people are being awarded a decent wage, ‘money’ is well down the list of key motivators.

As part of a well led organization, where they’re exposed to a compelling purpose, treated with dignity, imbued with accomplishment, surrounded by positive relationships, exposed to high degrees of empowerment, and fed with lots of domain know-how: workplace people invariably place money well down their list of desirables. Again, that’s with the assumption they’re rewarded appropriately in the first place, relative to their own perceived value.

On the presumption that those intrinsic motivational factors are all present, which is often the case with highly successful organizations; they also expect to honor their successes on a fairly regular basis – just in the same way that your local winning professional sports team keeps lauding its successes. In just the way that sports teams are rallied by cheers, when they’re on the winning side: so regular workplace people have the same desire and reaction. In fact, this writer’s aware of a software company in the mid-west were its teams celebrate their progress at least once per day. Its CEO wrote a book: Joy, Inc: How We Built a Workplace People Love.

Again, this writer can almost envisage many executives rolling their eyes or quietly groaning at the thought of celebrating every day. Nudged on the topic, they’ll raise the usual plethora of questions: What about the effort involved? What about the distraction? What about the time lost? What about interfering with business or organization flow?  What about the cost involved?  But that’s what you expect when CEO’s believe that they have to be at the center of everything. Let’s take each question in turn:

»What about the effort involved? – We can certainly make allowances for not celebrating daily: maybe every other week or once a month? Such events don’t have to be organized by you. They can be readily crafted by ‘pairs’ within your enterprise, with input from you. Given a prudent budget, they will love to do it.

»What about the distraction? – If it’s done in a fairly contained area, such as a lunch room, back yard, staff canteen,

   or similar place; then it doesn’t have to distract that much.

» What about the time lost? – If it’s done as a breakfast, lunch or end of day event, it doesn’t have to last much more than an hour. It’s the occasion that counts more than oodles of time. Refreshed and motivated from their moment of

    hoopla, they are likely to make up any lost time and more anyway.

» What about interfering with business or organization flow? – As indicated with the prior responses, there’s likely to be minimal impact on either. In fact, such moments will increase ‘flow.’

» What about the cost? – By calling upon your people’s prudent ingenuity, the cost is probably going to be minimal.

So, when you think about it, there are minimal excuses for not celebrating as often as is realistic. Those organizations that do have a lot of fun are usually enormously successful. ‘Success breeds success’ as the saying goes. Celebrations go a long way to acknowledge this fact rather than ignore it. Maybe you’re not a fun-loving person anyway. If that’s the case, then maybe you need to reconsider your role as a leader of people. There’s no doubt that regular celebrations build great teams!

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