Celebrate Awesome

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about company culture as our once small team has grown to over 50 employees. Maintaining a strong, positive culture becomes increasingly challenging and important as a company grows.

Great culture is often hard to define and unique but a common theme of successful companies is a culture that expresses appreciation.


People Need Appreciation

“People need to feel that their contribution is valued and unique.” - Paul Graham, Co-Founder of Y Combinator

Startups are especially hard. Every day individuals work their ass off, do good work, and sometimes achieve greatness yet these daily contributions often go unrecognized. It doesn’t take much to say, “thanks for working late to finish the website design.” or “I really appreciate you taking the time to help debug the new build.”


Appreciate In Public

We casually express appreciation but it’s often in private or one-on-one. Let your appreciation be known to the rest of the team to help build a culture of recognition.

Being in Product, I work very closely with engineering and see the fires they often have to deal with. As with any startup, sh*t happens in production and it’s up to the engineering team to fix the issue, day or night, workday or weekend. As I’m writing this, a few of our engineers are preparing a hotfix this Saturday afternoon over the Thanksgiving holiday. Many others on the team have no knowledge of the hard work put in by these weekend warriors.


Employee of the Month Moment

While Employee of the Month programs facilitate public appreciation, they’re far too seldom and selective.

“Employees crave feedback but it’s often to infrequent, too distant. It needs to be regular.” - Daniel Pink, Author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Don’t wait a month. Don’t be recognition-greedy. Express appreciation in the moment.


Celebrate Awesome

Next time one of your coworkers does something awesome, big or small, celebrate it. Let them know you appreciate them and share it with the team.

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I’m working on a project in this area and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or in 140 characters.