You've probably thought about the benefits of celebrating your wins at work. It could be as small as a high five when you land a new project or a gift to a client on kickoff. Sometimes it's more monumental — like celebratory drinks and dinner at the end of a successful project.
Each celebration (whether big or small) acknowledges a job well done and brings the team together to boost workplace satisfaction and productivity.
But it's far too common for the intricacies of a busy work schedule to distract from celebrating the wins. And there are actually some significant risks with not celebrating.
The question we're asking today is how does this affect people within the context of creative agency work and client relationships?
We ponder the bad stuff
We are our own harshest critic. Most creative managers are Type A personalities. It's what makes us excellent account and project managers. But creative managers are a generally anxious bunch and we dwell on our downfalls. It leads to self-criticism and self-reflection when things don't go quite right.
In general, negative emotions weigh more heavily than positive ones. It's in-built into our biology. Bad thoughts are processed slower and in a different hemisphere of the brain. So it's natural to mull in them for longer and have stronger emotions when we think of them.
With that in mind, it makes celebrating a win 100,000 x more important (to outweigh the bad times) and something that all members of your team should be doing on the regular.
It's not built into the creative workplace
Celebrations are more commonly associated with our personal lives. Not all creative companies are built to think about celebrating the wins and not all people think about small professional successes as 'wins'.
But the pros of integrating a winning culture into your project team is tenfold. It stimulates innovation and helps individuals to feel a sense of inclusion when working towards a common goal. Collaborating in this way also fuels team morale and is a mechanism for deeper discussion and problem-solving.
Collectively, this is just a big bundle of goodness that gets those creative juices flowing and taps into the right parts of the brain to do so.
Risky business
What are the risks of not celebrating on a regular basis?
It changes your physiology: Celebrating or acknowledging success triggers endorphins in the brain and releases them throughout your body. AKA you feel happy as Larry! Failing to celebrate deprives yourself of these good times.
It warps your psychology: We're creatures of habit. Positive reinforcement encourages behaviour — and in the context of work, this means you're encouraged to repeat actions. Comparatively, if you don't celebrate your wins, your psyche is trained to accept that your actions aren't important, exciting or good. It then inhibits the likelihood of you facing up to new creative challenges or opportunities in the future.
It leads to a 'meh' approach: So if the everyday begins to feel vanilla and dull (despite the fact you're totally nailing it!) your work output will slowly reflect this underlying tone. Those mundane feelings perpetuate poor performance and decreased focus. You don't want to be 'that' employee who's down mood starts infecting other people.
How other agencies celebrate a win
Okay so here's some good news. It's not all doom and gloom. The more we celebrate our small or big wins, the better we'll become at it.
We asked a few agencies within our network how they celebrate their project wins. Of course you have the classic Friday drinks and team WIPs to share in your weekly or monthly successes. Many host client-agency dinners and the classic gifting rituals for kickoff and project completion. But here are a few that stood out and should give you a laugh:
Ring that bell
"I used to work for a team that had a win bell. It hung in the middle of the office and you were only allowed to ring it once a project was complete. People took it really seriously — one time, a visitor to the office rang it without a proper win...and the office went dead silent. He left the office after that and never returned."
Giant vodka
"Yep. You can buy a 4.5L bottle of Vodka. That's what my supervisor did a few years ago and declared that the person with the greatest client NPS received it. It promoted some healthy rivalry in the office (and that was totally his plan all along). But it also prompted discussion, laughs and excitement at the end of each project. It cost over $400 to buy this giant bottle — but the value obtained through a boost in team morale and culture well exceeded that.
Plus no one can finish a 4.5L bottle of vodka, so the winner shared their earnings on one hell of a Friday night."
Brownies
"My team bought brownies every project. One box for the client on kickoff, and one box for us on project completion. Not just any brownies — Dello Mano. The one's Ashton Kutcher flew his PA over from the US to Brissy for.
One project exceeded its expected timeline, so we didn't eat the brownies for a few months. They're meant to be good for this timeframe if kept in the fridge. Ours were just sitting in a cupboard. So yeah the brownies were covered in white mould. Yet one developer still ate them thinking it was a white chocolate coating. Everyone judged him pretty harshly for that."
Conclusion
Whatever your celebration of choice may be (giant vodka FTW), start integrating it within your day-to-day or project process. The benefits for your psyche, project team and office culture is significant. Not to mention it gets those creative juices flowing and leads to better project outcomes.