5 reasons to celebrate!
Does anything really matter? Rather than an extensional philosophical treatise that no one gives a damn about, let’s get real and talk about teams and progress.
Why not talk about technology in a hybrid cloud blog? Because the technology is evanescent; progress acts like tides on the ocean of business, ebbing and flowing as times change. IT organizations, while they evolve over time, persist through the ages. The team itself is where we turn our attention today.
Seldom in the course of human events have IT organizations been asked to take on new challenges (anyone heard of digital transformation?), help their companies transition to a hybrid work model, and have team members experience heightened stressors in their personal lives — all at the same time.
Our protagonist, Sam, has just led her team across the steep mountain range of progress on their hybrid cloud journey and into the plateau. Knowing that she now has the attention of the chief executive officer, she wants to waste no time in moving forward. What does she do next?
a). Updates her resume and starts looking for a new job. Her recent success will help her land a new gig that pays her what she is worth!
b). Pulls out her plan for next steps and schedules the kick-off meeting with her team and key stakeholders. She’s not one to waste any time and has had the plan ready for a few weeks now, waiting to show the team.
c). Looks across the pallid faces of her overworked team, concerned for their health and well being, and realizes that they sorely need a respite.
Despite the fact that a start performer such as herself always keeps her CV updated (option a.), Sam recognizes that even with moving full-steam ahead (option b.), her team needs to take a breather (option c.). In a pre-pandemic world, she might take her local team to a restaurant to celebrate and ask her non-local leads to do the same for team members in other geographies. In today’s world, myriad differences between “back-to-normal” and restrictions force leaders like Sam to think differently on how to help her team celebrate.
We faced a similar dilemma when crossing the milestone of 900 application workloads on our hybrid cloud platform in ten months. We knew that the work had only started, but we also recognized that we needed to take a breath and look back on how much progress we’d made in a very short amount of time.
These are the top five ways that we celebrated success with our teams:
- T-shirts. Put your company and team name on them, hand them out, and wear them to a team event or take photos to post in a newsletter.
- Corporate reward points. Many companies have a recognition program that has the global reach to give team members something extra to say thank you.
- All hands meeting shout-outs. Take time at your next all hands meeting to mention, by name, the contributors.
- Big-boss all hands meeting shout-out. Better yet, get your boss or big boss to recognize the progress of the team at their next event.
- A simple thank you note. If nothing else, with or without a budget, sending a thank you note to the team via email can go a long way to boosting team morale.
Do you have a way to celebrate success in your team that we haven’t mentioned? We’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments!
Matt Lyteson is Vice President of CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms at IBM based in RTP, North Carolina. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
