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Celebrate The Work, Not Just The Wins
The headline of this article from Kellogg School of Management might make you groan — “Creative Cultures Fuel Growth!” — because that’s a whole lotta buzzwords and really, does anyone care about culture anyway? Isn’t it kind of an amorphous blob of a word? The overall article is very much in the mold of most business journalism these days, which is to say: “Number In Headline + An Assertion That You Will Solve This Business/Leadership Problem + Headers and Bold Copy in the Body,” but there is one interesting part. Namely:
Once a staff feels supported and safe, Williams recommends the company celebrate the work, not just the wins. Rewarding your people when they do good work, even if that work does not land the next big project or contract, “sends a powerful message to your people that you’re on their side no matter the outcome.”
This is admittedly pretty fraught in some respects, because with a lot of companies (i.e. public ones), their fiduciary responsibility is to make money for shareholders. You really need to celebrate big projects or contracts or clients in that context, right?
