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If you didn’t do it at the end of last year, now is definitely the time to acknowledge and celebrate project successes – things you did really well last year as a team. And it doesn’t matter how big they are, every small step in the right direction should be marked if you can!
Why celebrating wins is important
I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that when a senior leader recognises the work you’ve done, it has a positive impact on morale and motivation. I can’t be the only one who thinks, “Ooh, I’ll file that email away for my end of year review.” That’s what you want to create: a sense of, “they think I’ve done a good job.”
Not everyone needs to be praised all the time, but celebrating wins also helps reinforce behaviours that are positive and shows that people are watching!
The biggest challenges I hear from project managers is that there isn’t enough time to celebrate success, and they don’t know what’s worth celebrating – is it just project completion? Well, it doesn’t have to be.
Here are some examples of project-related wins:
- Finishing a project (obviously)
- Meeting key milestones
- Signing a contract with a vendor
- Overcoming a major challenge, hurdle or issue
- Taking delivery of part of the equipment required
- Starting the work (good if you are literally breaking ground or clearing out a space – take before and after photos!)
Those are all tangible achievements but there are intangible ones too, such as resolving a problem with creative thinking, innovation, collaboration (especially if you can bring virtual colleagues into this one), and so on.
You can also think of wins that are specific to a particular person, for example, marking their one year anniversary on a project, or starting or completing a relevant training course.
How to do the celebrating
This is another area where people get stuck, because (surprise, surprise) there often isn’t any budget for marking celebrations during the project (and often not a project completion either, to be honest).
If you can, put some budget aside to allow for employee recognition. If that isn’t possible, tap into any employee recognition schemes that exist within the organisation and lean on those. Call out colleagues for recognition within team meetings, send digital cards or simply an email of thanks.
Record the successes
One thing you can do is create a ‘wins report’ which will sit alongside your lessons learned report at the end of a project as a reflection of all the cool stuff you achieved and how that work was acknowledged throughout the project.
If you’re in the kind of organisation where you want to share success stories with clients when you are pitching for work, you could also use your wins report as input to those.
Starting out 2025 with a reflection on what you achieved in 2024 is a good way to generate some momentum for the first few months and help people feel good about coming back to work after the festive break! How are you going to take this idea and bring it into your meetings over the coming weeks?
Posted on: January 16, 2025 09:00 AM |
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