Have Fun, Give Praise & Do Good

Wouldn’t you like your job better if you knew you were guaranteed to have fun? When you talk to people who love their jobs, one of the first things they say is how much fun they have. Besides having an inherent passion for their line of work, a large portion of how much people love their jobs can be attributed to how much fun they’re having. Having fun attributes to positive attitudes, and therefore, better productivity. But there’s something else, too. Another important, but often left out, part of the equation is praise. Who wants to work some place where they are never thanked, patted on the back or called out for a job well done? A place with no fun and no praise sounds like a nightmare I had once about being locked up in Alcatraz…but I digress. :)

I think that in a lot of companies and job situations, there are praise “nay sayers”. These are the companies or employees who think that praise is overrated. “Why should I praise or thank someone for doing their job?” Good question. The answer is that you should praise and thank them so that they CONTINUE to do a good job. Even your best employees and co-workers will go that extra mile when they’re caught doing “good.” And even your best people will get stuck in a rut or have days when they’re just not performing as best as they can, for whatever reason. As a member of Generation Y, I constantly defend praise and its powerful effects. Gen Y often gets criticized for needing “too much” praise. But I’m here to tell you, there isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t appreciate praise in some form or fashion. Luckily, at Drake & Company I don’t have to be so defensive when praise and fun come into play.

At Drake & Company, we’re always looking for excuses to have fun and we’re certainly not ashamed to call people out when we catch them doing “good”. We take our work and jobs seriously and we all work hard to accomplish our company’s and clients’ goals - but we all know that in order to run a good business, we need happy employees. And contrary to popular belief, having fun or giving praise when it is due isn’t hard or time consuming – being nice is easy and it is very rewarding! Long story short, everyone wins with fun and praise.

Here are a few examples of the fun and praise we experience at Drake & Company. Last summer our accounting department, out of the blue, decided that it would be fun to give all of us a beach themed party. They called it “Bean Counter Beach” and they brought in a ton of food, Jimmy Buffet music and they had us “over” for good food and good times. Our accounting department harbors some of the most hardworking individuals I’ve ever met, and just the simple fact that they took time out of THEIR day for us – the people who hound them for paperwork and numbers as fast as they can get them out to us – meant so much. Everyone was so appreciative. And true to form, our accounting department surprised us all again today with a Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday celebration. They gave us all beads at our staff meeting this morning and had us all down for lots of good food and treats. They even had door prizes for stopping by! How nice of them! A kind gesture goes a long way and it is overwhelmingly appreciated. When was the last time your company did something like this? The fun helps boost morale and puts everyone in a good mood – I know I’m in an even better mood now than when I walked in this morning!

In addition to wedding showers and passing around and the occasional birthday card, we also have other celebrations at DrakeCo. For example, we had a Moon Party last year in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. We played a moon and space trivia game, ate treats and reminisced about where (some of us) were when Neal Armstrong first set step on the moon. During football season we will often take a day of the week to wear our favorite sports teams’ shirts and decorate our office windows and doors – then we bbq in our parking lot! We've also been known to go outside and take a 15 minute frisbee break here and there, too. And our most recent bit of fun, which is a new tradition, incorporates fun with praise.

A lot of companies have a traveling “trophy” of sorts, given to an individual or team who has recently made a great accomplishment. Whoever wins gets to keep the trophy in honor of a job well done for a time until it is passed on to someone else. About two weeks ago we initiated our own praise/recognition tradition at Drake & Company - Dee Dee the Golden Duck. Our mascot is the drake duck; so naturally, our traveling trophy is a golden rubber ducky, named Dee Dee. The idea of Dee Dee isn’t exactly like the traveling trophy, in so far as it isn’t a competition to “win” him. Dee Dee is given to a DrakeCo employee by another employee once a week. The employee who has Dee Dee passes it on to someone who s/he has overheard or seen “doing good.” This is as simple as working extra hard on an upcoming conference or simply helping out a co-worker. Although Dee Dee has only been a tradition for two weeks, it is going over well. It’s nice to get called out for doing a good job, especially when it is by one of your peers. And to make “winning” Dee Dee even more special outside of the company, we’re sharing our story with the world. You can follow Dee Dee on Twitter to see all of the fun we’re having, and most importantly, updates on who has won Dee Dee for the week and why they were selected. The whole concept may be cheesy, but it works. You’re proud to have Dee Dee sit on your desk and it is nice to get a “great job” from your co-workers when you’re called out for doing good.

Here are three quotes that I believe fit the concept of Dee Dee the Golden Duck best.

The first is from Will Rogers: “Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.”

The second is from Mark Twain: “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”

The last is from Charles M. Schwab: “I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”

So, my main point in all of this, especially in dreary Missouri winter weather, is to remind you to have fun and to thank people – even if it is just for doing their job. Thank someone you don’t normally thank and try to incorporate fun whenever you can. It really goes a long way. And when people ask me why I like my job, I always say first, “Because it’s fun” and second, “and because the people are nice.”