Your team needs something to strive toward.
And most importantly, recognition when they get there.
I get it, you have a ton of work to do!
So making time for parties can seem like a silly waste of time and resources.
But few tools are more effective at motivating and bonding a team!
You have to remember that as a founder and executive, you have more at stake so your intrinsic motivation is set to 11.
But while your company culture and compensation packages are nice, your team needs regular opportunities to celebrate as a group.
I’m not just talking about the casual happy hour, hitting sales numbers, or the most recent release. Though, these small team gatherings and victories are important too.
Beyond motivating your individual business functions or what can often feel like internal networking events, you need to bond your cross functional teams together as an organization striving toward a shared vision.
You need something your entire organization can rally behind.
Something momentous!
When we were producing Microsoft’s 3D and Streetside maps, we set aggressive monthly targets for city production.
This required engineering, collection, production, and a host of supporting roles working together to accomplish every month.
We tracked each city as it moved from functional group to functional group until it went live. We did this with a big display in the center of our office so everyone knew exactly where we were in relation to our goal and what it would take to get there.
Here’s an early version of our goal tracker, memorialized after the successful publication of Bing Maps’ first 40 Streetside and 70 3D cities to the Windows Map App. After this, we went to a digital display with much more granularity and highlights of our cities.
Because our team kicked ass, we always hit our targets and celebrated with a monthly all hands gathering complete with appetizers and all kinds of beverages.
We’d recognize exceptional contributions, showcase particularly stunning work, and provide the team an opportunity to recognize each other.
Everyone would attend, from the site leadership all the way down to entry level imagery analysts.
The best part was seeing these two personas, who typically wouldn’t interact as part of their day to day functions, laughing and bonding over a particularly tough city or cool new product feature.
Some of our best ideas were spawned from these gatherings, as an Analyst asked a Sr. Developer about a specific design decision, or a PM casually observed an odd part of our process.
Our celebrations rallied our entire team and made us stronger.
So set some big audacious goals, reward your team when they hit them, celebrate as an organization, and bask in the glory of your strong and motivated company.
