How to mark success

Imagine a sporting event without a scoreboard. It makes you laugh, doesn’t it? Sure the game is fun, but without the scoreboard you can’t tell the progress…or the winner!

daisy’s story

Margaret, the director of a social services agency, was desperate. Absenteeism was high, complaints were on the rise, bugs were rampant, and no one was talking about getting better. I asked her to name what she would most like to change and she said, “Morale. If we had higher morale, employees would be more willing to work on the other issues.” When I asked her how she would measure morale, she said, “Smiles.” My suggestion was that we put a large marker on the wall. We asked all employees to keep track of the number of smiles they saw and give the total to the receptionist at the end of the day. The results were recorded on the scoreboard.

The first three days were horrible: about half a smile per employee. So Margaret came to work in a flashy wig and acted completely normal. No one mentioned the wig, but smiles were up 100 percent. Then the receptionist wore too much lipstick that was too red. Employees made jokes about her sobriety and her personal relationships. Result: smiles increased another 200 percent. On the sixth day, four employees wore cowboy hats and used cowboy language throughout the day. People began to conspire to see how they could reach five hundred smiles in one day. It only took three more days. The place was filled with weird hats, baby pictures, internet jokes, and funny accents. After two weeks, the employees formed a High Morale Action Team (“The Clowns”). This team designed to keep people smiling. They instituted dress casual days and dress up days, single color days and more. A year later, absenteeism was almost zero, complaints were nonexistent, and errors were down 83 percent.

Score with colleagues

Make a list of all the ways you’ve watched rated games. Use these methods with your work teams as you compete for prizes. Try to keep track of: Productivity, Speed, Quality, Job Skills, Clients You Contact, New Ideas You’ve Shared, and Meetings That End Early.