Management 3.0: Kudos — A funny way to say “Thanks”

When we were children because that’s how we were raised, saying “thanks” to people used to be a simple exercise. Over time, for some reason, while we get older we got, the fewer compliments we usually give or much less receive.

Many organizations claim that happy people create happy customers, which may not always be expressed, is that working with people means that they should feel appreciated and hear that they are being appreciated in front of their peers or an audience.

The lack of correct recognition in the members of a company, generates different conflicts, such as rotation, attrition, demotivation, and lack of commitments, among others.

Jurgen Appelo (in his https://management30.com/) states that “The science of positive psychology confirms that positive minds are more productive and successful than neutral and negative minds. “. In this way, he invites us to reinforce feedback loops, focused on the positive and not the negative.

“According to a Gallup analysis, only one in three workers in the US strongly agrees that they received recognition or praise for doing a good job in the past seven days. In any company, it is not uncommon for employees to feel that their best efforts are routinely ignored. “ (https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236441/employee-recognition-low-cost-high-impact.aspx)

In a certain situation some time ago, the team to which I belonged would have met milestones requested by the client, the team´s hard-worked was excellent with great results. Being only a team of 8 people, in a software construction team, they managed to deliver the product in record time, meeting the expected quality level and above all meeting customer expectations. The client decided not to continue with the project, due to a budget problem and new priorities, so they only finalized with a couple of months of support prior to closing. The facts showed that the project had been a success, however, the feeling of the team and their motivation showed the opposite, and it was understandable.

How can you show the team their value and be able to motivate them once again? How can you prepare the team to work the next months of support ?, were the questions that I faced.

I decided to use Kudos Cards, which I invite you to know at this link: https://management30.com/practice/kudo-cards/

What are Kudo’s Cards?

To put it in simple words, a KUDO is a physical recognition, a card with different titles that are given to another person (or the entire team) as thanks and/or congratulations, which serves to encourage team motivation and therefore influence the good atmosphere of it. This acknowledgment is written and public, delivered by a colleague for having contributed to the team.

Kudo’s Wall

Considering the situation of the team, working 100% remote. The dynamic I used became a wall of Kudos online. It consisted of the following steps:

1. Create a great wall online in Miro, each member of the team had a particular area within the Wall in which they observed their picture and names.

2. To the right of the Wall were each of the Kudos for the team, based on the kudos proposed by https://management30.com/practice/kudo-cards/.

3. For the dynamics, we agree on the meaning of each of the cards.

4. The team used a time slot to place the recognition cards for their teammates.

5. As a last step, each member shared the cards with their peers and why they recognized their peers.

Learnings

As a facilitator, I learned how to exercise intrinsic motivation, through a simple dynamic, whose objective is simply to thank and acknowledge the partner in a sincere way.

This later led to validate the effect that kudos help to create an energetic culture of appreciation not only in the team but also contaminating the organizational level.

The team learned the value of recognition spaces and quickly adopted this custom, holding a Kudo’s Wall session at each iteration.

Starting a new iteration, my next experiment was to use Kudo’s Wall at the end of the team retrospectives. Allowing to give space to the recognition of people.
Facilitation in this scenario changed interestingly when it emerged recognition to areas or people who were related to the team but were not part of it. As a result of this action, the team designed a proposal to send the result of Kudo’s Wall to people or areas that do not have visibility of it, and that this helps to spread the culture of gratitude to the organization.

Conclusion

We know rewarding employees only for results is not sustainable in the long term, kudos cards provide us with a tool to create a culture of recognition and foster intrinsic motivation.

Oddly enough, Kudos Cards are not common practice in many organizations, and persistence is needed to implement them and make them a normal way of thinking and working as long as there is a culture of recognition.

Always keep in mind to create a safe environment for everyone, use Kudo’s Wall periodically, celebrate recognition actions and focus on the positive aspects of things.

I invite you to use and implement the Kudo’s Wall and generate a culture of recognition seeking that people work following their internal motivations.