Cultures that recognize their crews. (Or becoming wolverine)
Today I was pretty shocked at our all hands meeting. As a company, we vote for our peers to be honored as the “Avenger of the Month” and then we both slightly embarrass (more on this shortly) and praise our counter parts who take home the honor. Today that honor was passed on to me, to my complete surprise!
I’ve always thought that it was a cool touch and I’m always stoked to vote for someone each month… but being that I am pretty much still one of the new guys here and I’ve been sort of head down and in the trenches building our new smart home platform with my team, I really didn’t imagine that I would be on anyones radar for such a moment.
At Inspire, we have four core principals:
- Own It
- Coach It
- Study It
- Live It
I always say “Knowledge is power… only if it’s applied” and I guess that I’ve been able to apply what I know, share, and coach my peers enough to be recognized for “Coach It”! (Even though I feel like my peers are the ones teaching and coaching me all the time!) “Coach It” is the one I would have been most excited to be recognized for and it’s pretty damn humbling and awesome that it happened. It sure feels good too!
Which brings me to a much larger point (hint: it’s in the title) and it’s cultures that recognize their crews. I’ve had the chance to be a part of intentional culture design, be brought into someone else’s culture, and watch some legendary companies like Zappos from the outside in… and cultures that make recognition a point of focus really does help create an environment that people enjoy being in.
Of course, this element is one of many that make for a culture people are drawn to, and every culture is different… but this particular element also happens to fall in line with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a “psychological need”.
Feeling accomplished is always awesome, and I think it’s pretty amazing that my team and leadership here makes it a point to drive that feeling across the organization and intentionally highlight someone every single month.
Let’s face it, work isn’t always fun. Shit gets hard! Emotions range from feeling completely excited and love for the task at hand to feeling completely crushed and overwhelmed at times. Work isn’t even something many of us would choose to do if we weren’t beholden to the need to generate an income to participate in the circus. So the fact that we are intentionally making sure that we’re building a place where people can thrive, grow as both individuals and professionals, and feel like their hierarchy of needs is being met makes those hard times way more worthwhile.
We’ve got it pretty damn good at Inspire and I guess I want to take my moment in the sun to point that out. It’s not often that a company comes to life, starts growing at an incredible pace, gathers a team of highly talented and motivated individuals, gets said talent to align and get along (or as I like to say; play as a team and pass the ball), and starts producing a lot value AND cares so much about building it’s culture along the way. It’s way too easy to care about the bottom line, fall into the pressures of our investors desire for returns, and not invest in the “little” things that will really make our company truly remarkable. But we haven’t forgotten about those “little” things like recognition, team building, and office spaces that feel great to be in.
Cheers to our SLT and the rest of the Avengers that make this such an awesome experience. Even when it sucks, it’s good here and that takes hard work and focus to make sure thats the case. Thank you all! I can’t wait to pass the trophy on to the next AOTM!
