When we created our core brand values [fearless, driven, committed, people-centric, and sincere] we realized that when we were the best versions of ourselves it was easy to live our ideals. But our day-to-day lives were a bit different because sometimes the grind just gets you down. It’s hard to be fearless and driven every day. And sometimes, it’s easier to be selfish and stubborn than to open yourself up. So like all good creative teams, we developed a system in-house to recognize those good moments.
We created a positive peer rating system our CXO likes to call the “happy happy gold star board”. When a team member does something that really exemplifies one of the five 300FeetOut brand values or if a peer does something that goes above and beyond the call of duty, anyone on our crew can give them a “gold star” rating on the board.
As you can see, using a few words of the action that generated the rating and one or more of the 5 brand values is flagged. We each have 3 stars to give out per month. At the beginning of each month our CXO reads off the comments in an all-hands meeting, awards a prize to the team member who got the most recognition, and then the board is wiped clean for the next month.
Yes we joke about bribes but honestly, it helps remind us about why we work here and that each of us has a bigger effect on our co-workers than we often think.
If you’d like to give this a try with your own group, you can access the plugin repo here.