Message of the Day - Celebrate!!!

Good Morning,

 

My current read is ‘Nuts!: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success’ by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg (http://www.amazon.com/Southwest-Airlines-Business-Personal-Success/dp/0767901843).

 

One area of this great book covers celebrations. Southwest loves to celebrate. What they celebrate and how is another matter. They do not just throw parties every year or have monthly events for the profit and loss statements. Southwest uses celebration to reinforce their company culture and values as well as to celebrate the behavior they want in their employees and maintaining a family-like atmosphere even with 10’s of thousands of employees.

 

Think about that for a moment. What do many people do to reinforce the behavior they want to see in others? Usually instruction, warnings and maybe some sort of bonus. Southwest uses celebrations to do the same thing, in addition to using training and other tools. And when they celebrate they publish the event with many photos and share it with the entire company. There are walls of fame and honor, like at Yum! Corporate Headquarters with thousands of photos and memorabilia from the celebrations.

 

The result has been a company with employees who do amazing and outrageous activities daily to help ensure the company succeeds. While other airlines have been truly struggling, Southwest remained profitable and even in today’s bad economy, Southwest is still doing better than most other airlines.

 

Celebration of your values, your culture and the behaviors you want your teams to have is a great way to help get everyone on board and in the right seat. And when you celebrate, be sure to capture the moment in photos and words and share it with everyone. This does not have to be annual or quarterly awards, but they help, but any opportunity can be celebrated. This also does not mean have a party for every kudos letter your company gets either. We do not want to make it so common that it becomes unimportant either.

 

Celebrate!

 

Enjoy!!

 

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net

http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/

502-533-9336

 

PS: If you know others who may enjoy this message of the day, please pass this message on or invite them to receive them themselves by sending a request to me. If you wish to stop receiving these, please also let me know. Thank you!!!