How we kinda sorta created a cult at Dragon Army
Acknowledge someone today!
(If you’d prefer, you can listen to this issue as well.)
Hello friends,
For most of you, I know that each new year brings a commitment to hitting some aspirational goals or making big changes in your life. As we now find ourselves in February, I hope you’re off to a great start on your commitments. And if you slipped up, well, there’s no better time to get back on the horse than right now.
My main January goal was to make progress every morning on the first draft of my 4th book (The Culture Turnaround), and I’m happy to say that I met that goal. I’m just over 50,000 words in and probably have 5,000 to 7,000 words to go.
I’ll do a quick read-through once done to find any glaring holes or errors, and then I’m going to put the book away for six weeks before picking it up again (this I learned from Stephen King in his hybrid autobiography/writing advice book, On Writing).
The next step, which I’ve never been good at, is to read through the draft with fresh eyes, with the goal of CUTTING 10% OUT OF IT. 😬 In writing, they call this being willing to ‘kill your darlings’. Admittedly, I need to get better at this part of being an author. I love my darlings!
Lessons can come from anywhere
Years ago I attended the assembly at my kids’ school and learned something that changed the way I lead my companies forever. They do something called, ‘Acknowledgments’, and pass around a microphone to allow the children to recognize each other against the school’s core values.
I was blown away by the sweetness and sincerity of each of the kids, one child recognized Billy for sharing his lunch earlier in the week, another thanked Sarah for helping him up on the playground yesterday, and yet another acknowledged Danielle for helping her study for the big Spanish test.
The kids were eager to have a chance to celebrate each other, and each time I saw this at an assembly, the principal had to cut it off while there were still so many hands in the air.
Introducing Acknowledgments
About six years ago, in the early days of Dragon Army, I was looking for a way to build deeper connections within the team. We had recently developed our PVTV (Purpose, Vision, Tenets, & Values) and I remembered the Acknowledgments I had seen at my kids’ school.
At the end of one company meeting, with ten minutes to spare, I shared that we’d be doing our own version of Acknowledgments. I started by recognizing one of the team members for exemplifying our first Value, “Team First”, and then asked if anyone else wanted to go next.
After a few moments of silence, a brave dragon raised her hand and started what has become my favorite part of all of our company meetings since. The recognitions went on and on until I finally had to cut it off. More than one team member cried (either for giving the recognition or receiving it), and that has happened at over 50% of our company meetings since.
I swear it’s not a cult!
The Acknowledgment time at our company meetings has become legendary. We’ve even had a team member dial into a company meeting from vacation, just so that he could participate in the Acknowledgments (he had a few people he simply had to recognize).
I remember one new dragon’s first day happened to be the day we had a company meeting, and in the middle of Acknowledgments (in which she of course was not recognized nor did she recognize anyone, that being her first day) she started crying because of the emotions that were going through the room. Afterward, she said she couldn’t believe what was happening and initially thought, are these people crazy?, but before long she was swept up in all the feels.
And get this, we’ve had more than one team member say that after they started they wondered if they had joined some kind of cult 😂
Acknowledging one another at work should not be such a novel experience that someone wonders if they’ve accidentally stepped into a cult when seeing it. Every company should find ways to allow team members to do this - and I’m 100% comfortable with you stealing my idea for Acknowledgments because as you know from reading this, I stole it myself ;)
As I mentioned, my next book is called, The Culture Turnaround, and it focuses on building what I’m calling an Undeniable Culture. There are nine core elements that make this up, and as you might expect, allowing for opportunities for team members to acknowledge each other features prominently.
The point
People deserve to work at a place that appreciates them and builds a culture that creates trust, authentic relationships, and an inclusive environment. Whether you’re running a company or team, or you're a team member with no leadership responsibility, I hope you find ways to build an Undeniable Culture. You, and your teammates, deserve it.
And by the way, you don’t have to be at your place of work to do this. My advice: find someone today and acknowledge them for something they’ve done that you appreciate. There’s a chance you’ll actually enjoy it more than they will.
I hope you’re happy,
Recent podcasts
I produce a podcast called Begin the Begin. I hope you'll consider subscribing. Here are the latest episodes:
What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? (a conversation with Adam Albrecht about his new book)
Evana Oli, her daughter, and the amazing promise of their startup, Beautiful Curly Me