I’ve written before about our efforts to
integrate our Core Values into everything we do. It’s an ongoing exercise and we’re always
trying to think of ways to make it fun.
The idea for our latest initiative was triggered by Chris, rather innocently, a few months ago.
We were having our weekly Monday morning Huddle with the whole team and were celebrating the successful completion of a big project. Chris suggested we give the project team a “hamburger” for their great work. The team—confused
looks on their faces—agreed, somewhat reluctantly, that it was a good idea.
“Are you ready?” Chris said. “Sure…?” the team replied. What transpired next falls into to the category of “what happens in the Huddle stays in the Huddle.”
Suffice it to say, he led us through a thoroughly cheesy cheer having to do with a hamburger being “well done.” Get it? Completed project. Well done. I told you it was cheesy.
Ok, before I lose you completely, let me get to the real point. Integrating a desired culture into your organization isn’t as easy as it sounds. It takes work. We’ve long felt that a great way to reinforce our culture is to recognize
when people are actively living our Core Values—and we’ve done that, somewhat informally, all along. We thought it would be worth our while, though, to kick it up a notch and formalize it in a fun way.
Enter the Shout-Out. Starting this week, we’re going to publicly recognize each other when someone exemplifies living the Core Values. It could be something as simple as taking a few minutes to help a teammate get “unstuck”
or as big as organizing a team effort to
make a difference. The point is to reward actions and behaviors that reinforce our culture.
Here’s where the hamburgers come in. We created stickers with a hamburger theme and everyone designed their own laminated poster upon which said stickers can be placed, along with a note about why they deserve a hamburger. We’ll
talk about them in our weekly Huddles and, at the end of each month, we’ll count them up and the person with the most stickers will get to choose from some fabulous prizes!
At the end of the year, the person with the most hamburgers will be the proud recipient of the “Hamburglar of the Year” trophy and even more valuable prizes.
It’s goofy, but it’s fun and memorable and, to us at least, it’s meaningful. We’ll see how it goes, but I have the feeling we’re going to be enjoying a lot of hamburgers around here this year.
