The Problem of Celebrating Short-Term Milestones
Common advice for contemporary leaders is to learn how to celebrate before the project or initiative comes to a favorable conclusion.
Celebrating short-term milestones and wins provides immediate motivation, boosts morale, and helps to sustain momentum during longer, challenging projects.
Recognizing smaller milestones through celebration also helps team members to see the difference their work is making, which naturally increases engagement and commitment to the project.
Team members make more of an emotional investment in the project when they are celebrated for the steps along the way.
The benefits of celebrating team members and teams earlier in the project are well-documented, yet many leaders resist this best practice.
They claim that celebrating too early or at milestones along the journey encourages team members to take their foot off the gas and declare victory prematurely.
Leaders with this view abhor sending a false signal that the work is finished or nearly so. They want to prevent teams and team members from becoming complacent and lowering their commitment to the project.
While it is certainly possible for people to declare victory too early, it is usually the size and scope of the celebration that sends the wrong message.
A celebration is any event or activity that marks a special occasion with recognition and appreciation. No definition of celebration defines how large, festive, or expansive a celebration must be.
Too many leaders believe celebrating requires an all-out effort and a large-scale event, such as team dinners, large group gatherings, and tangible rewards, such as gift cards or extra vacation days.
Such activities are certainly appropriate for great outcomes; they are highly inappropriate for celebrating small, short-term wins.
A short-term milestone should have an equivalent expression for celebration. Such micro-activities may not even be viewed as celebrations by team members at all, but they serve the same purpose as large-scale events.
The list of possible smaller celebrations is long: an email chain of acknowledgement, recognition on social media, handwritten notes, coffee delivered to workstations, a callout at the end of a meeting, a team photo to mark the journey, celebratory songs during a virtual call, recognition stickers, and so on.
The point is to make the celebration fit the milestone.
When leaders match the short-term wins with the appropriate activity, celebrations motivate and recognize without any possibility of encouraging people to sit on their hands and declare victory.
Leaders who decry celebrating early typically view celebration in a singular dimension of BIG. Small celebrations get the job done, infusing the work with passion and purpose.
Don’t forget to smell the roses along the way.
I would guarantee any group, team, or organization that adopts this perspective of acknowledgment and recognizes the wins along the way with their team will reap the rewards in many ways.
As an example, in Nursing, we celebrate INTERNATIONAL NURSES WEEK every year around May 12, which coincides with Florence Nightingale's birthday. Of course, every country does its celebration, with a theme and various activities.
I have been invited to be part of local nursing events as a keynote speaker, etc. Last year, one event was postponed due to a lack of meeting space. I assured the Nurse manager that there was no problem with the delayed celebration, and suggested to her that perhaps they could incorporate monthly mini-celebrations into their staff meetings. It has made a big difference for the teams coming together and celebrating the small steps of progress they are making in both large and small projects and initiatives. The difference this makes in connecting the nursing teams is rewarding not only to the nurses, but to the people they serve and care for.
Leaders who regularly celebrate small wins with coffee, pizza, muffins etc. are far more likely to have a motivated team. Leaders who never say thank you because ‘I’m not thanking people for doing their job’ are less likely to.