Cultural Artifacts
Earlier this year, I participated in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program. It was a 20-week course, where I spent about one day per week in a workshop setting with other business owners. We learned about how to operate our businesses better and develop a growth plan. We were assigned to present a “Cultural Artifact” from our company in one of the sessions. A picture, story, or another item that defined or played a role in our culture.
There were a lot of exciting and meaningful artifacts presented, from pizza dough balls to specialized hand tools. For my business, I chose a $10 gift card for our company store.
How has a gift card become part of our culture? Well, it’s been a tool to reinforce our values. Each week in our team meeting, I ask my managers for stories of our values, which are:
- “Above and Beyond” – Dedicated and hard-working
- “Continuous Improvement” – Making it better
- “Teamwork” – Working together
If the managers share a story of an employee or employees who have exemplified one of the values, I give them a gift card to give to that employee. Some examples are an employee who comes in on their day off to cover for another employee who called in sick or an employee who stays late to clean up and organize their work area or equipment. We also use this card for employee birthdays, or when we see other positive behaviors, we want to reinforce them.
As a team, we have been doing this practice for over two years. It seems to be working well, but I have noticed that most of the stories my team shares only involve the “Above and Beyond” or “Continuous Improvement” values. I see teamwork throughout the farm daily. Why are we not rewarding these values? How are we missing these values in action? A couple of weeks ago, I had an epiphany. With the gift card, we have been rewarding individual efforts, not team efforts. Our managers are looking for persons who are excelling, not teams. So, I made a slight change to the weekly stories of our values. From now on, we will have a pizza party or buy donuts for examples of excellent teamwork. The managers are currently looking for team efforts along with individual accomplishments.
Maybe our new “Cultural Artifact” will be a slice of pizza or donut box. Time will tell.