Culture of Awesomeness

August 19, 2008 at 8:00 am | by Rachel Gold, Blog Wizard

I’m a gamer. I have a couple 70s in World of Warcraft and I run a small guild. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, bear with me for a moment.

My guild is a group of individuals who band together inside a computer game to achieve objectives that take teamwork. In the game setting when we do something we’ve never done before, like defeat a huge monster or rescue a prisoner on the brink of sacrifice, everyone cheers and afterwards we usually talk over the highlights of what went right and who was awesome.

In gaming it’s easy to have a culture of awesomeness – we’re all wearing heroic looking armor and using superhuman powers. Inside a number of CPA and law firms around the Twin Cities, I’ve seen the opposite: a culture of humility. I have a privilege to work with some amazing people, people who are saving businesses tons of money, making life easier for folks and who are generally smart, conscientious and generous. Yet they seem to not want to or know how to talk about it.

When service professionals are encouraged to share what they did right and to acknowledge each other, everyone benefits: excitement builds and positive strategies spread. I think one of the great gift of the Millennial/Gamer generation is going to be a willingness to be awesome and share the feeling of victory with others.

How can you help create a culture of awesomeness in your firm?

• Take time at staff meetings to talk about wins and victories and to acknowledge each other’s successes.
• When you do something amazing for a client, tell a colleague.
• When you do something amazing for a client, make sure you tell that client!
• If a client sends a thank you note, read it aloud at a meeting or post it somewhere public.
• Ask your clients what’s working for them. Listen for similarities and get comfortable with how you’re awesome. We’re all awesome in different ways. Do you know what your super-powers are?
• Think of ways to measure your awesomeness. One reason it’s easy to be awesome in a game is that the computer is keeping score. Make up a scoreboard of your own and make sure it’s one where you can win often.
• Listen for positives in the client stories your colleagues tell and highlight them.

There are a lot more ways to create a culture of awesomeness once you focus on it. And from my gaming experience I can tell you that once people can see their performance improving and start feeling like heroes, they just want to do more.

P.S. if you play WoW: yes, I’m talking about Zul’Aman. We’re 6/6 and 4/4 chests and I’m tremendously proud of my guild-mates. They are awesome.

Photo caption: The author as an Orc Shaman in her awesome-looking armor.

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How to be a great employee

August 12, 2008 at 8:00 am | by Wendy Nemitz, Blog Elder

I have been an employee at about 20 companies but it took being an employer to really understand how to be an invaluable employee. Dawn and I are blessed with an absolutely amazing team of can-do, brainy women but I want to share the impact on the boss-ladies (Liz calls us this and we find it hilarious) of being grateful.

Kathy Zappa, one of our talented communication consultants, is clearly grateful for her job. How do we know? She asks for her PTO, instead of telling us her days off, even though she knows she can take whatever time off she needs to get married (Congrats Kathy! Jeff is one lucky guy!). While asking is purely a courtesy, it shows her momma raised her right.

Kathy has three busy teen-agers and so needs flexible schedule. No problem for us because Kathy always checks her email and VM and is extremely responsive. She knows that the trust of a flexible schedule goes both ways. She is earning it every single day.

Kathy never takes anything for granted. Maybe because she has worked in a wide variety of places she knows that no job is perfect, no boss is completely awesome and most small companies struggle mightily to keep the doors open each month. She has actually thanked us for her job and acknowledged us for creating Ingenuity.

With Kathy’s experience and talents, she is very employable, so she is not grateful for her job because she can’t get another. We are darn glad to have her. But she actually gets that being a boss and business owner is a challenge and thanks us for taking it on.

How does that make us feel about her? Well, I am writing a blog post about it at 9:41 on a Saturday evening so you know it makes an impact. If Kathy needed extra time off or some other accommodation, you know we would take any request she has seriously. She has built a lot of trust and goodwill.

An attitude of being grateful, instead of coming off as subservient or brown-nosing, actually creates power and influence. Consider telling your boss how much you have learned or grown. Consider thanking your CEO for creating a great (if imperfect) place to work. Gratitude is a position of power.

How do you show you are grateful for your position?

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