Why it’s important for startups to celebrate little victories

If, like me, you run or work in a startup, you may (should!) read lots of business books and attend conferences, honing your leadership skills. And they all urge us to ‘celebrate small victories’ with our teams.   It’s a great principle, but reality can get in the way: it’s hard for startups to set aside time and money to celebrate wins.  When you’re burdened with a list of unmet goals, it’s easy to overlook what you have achieved.

I’ve struggled with this, in both Posse and my former music company ‘Scorpio’.  Sometimes at Scorpio, when our artists hit #1 on the chart I focused on the next goal, working through rather than celebrating.  As my team expanded, I learnt that this approach weakened motivation.  The team didn’t feel appreciated and productivity dropped.  Worse than that, we weren’t having fun!  I discovered the importance of setting goals and celebrating their achievement, every time.

The Posse team celebrating our app launch

Last week we hit one of our small goals: 50,000 signed up users (stores and people).   Everyone on the team has worked incredibly hard over the past few months in the lead up to SXSW.  It paid off at the conference: a number of media declared Posse one of the standout startups, and our user numbers exploded as a result.  We still have the next goal and the next – but won’t we always?  I decided that we celebrate this milestone.  I’m in New York just now, away from the rest of the team, so I sent in a massage therapist to treat the team, along with a box of champagne and chocolates.   We’d usually go on a group activity like bowling; that’s what we did when we hit the first 5000 users and we’ll plan an activity when I’m next in Sydney.

In the chaotic, pressure-cooker of a startup, where time and money are critical, here are five reasons for celebrating small wins.

1. It reminds people that goal setting works.

I want everything to happen all at once, but accept that this isn’t achievable.  Our team make steady progress because every quarter we agree on a plan and set of goals.  The goals are challenging but achievable, and when we hit them it feels great!  Celebration underscores the success of our process.  It motivates everyone to set and reach for the next goal.

2. It unifies everyone around a positive outcome.

In a small startup team, each person is often responsible for their own department.  On our team we have one Community Manager, one Business Development, two retail engineers, two mobile engineers, two web engineers and so on.  We set company-wide goals but everyone contributes differently.  Celebrating company-wide success rather than just individual achievements unifies everyone around the goal and reinforces that we’re working on something bigger than ourselves.

3. There’s an opportunity to look at the big picture.

Celebrating provides a great moment to reflect on the big picture.  What are we planning to achieve?  In previous blogs, I’ve mentioned our end of year goal: gaining a million users.  Stopping to reflect as we reach each milestone in the journey enables the team to reflect on what’s working, what’s not and where we should focus our resources next.

4 Everyone wants to be on a winning team.

Everyone likes to be on a winning team.  Success is the best way to boost team morale.  It can’t be faked but when it’s achieved, you should make the most of it by celebrating!  Our engineers slogged away for months when people weren’t using the website, and the community manager struggled to engage our audience.  Now that we’ve turned a corner and lots of people are using the platform, I’ve found that the team’s enthusiasm, creativity and productivity have exploded.

5. It makes everyone feel appreciated. 

Startup teams work much harder than regular people – well, ours does.  It’s vital that founders demonstrate how much they appreciate and value their team’s contribution, and celebrating is a great way to do this.

Team bowling last year to celebrate hitting the first 5000 users.

Everything about running a startup is hard.  I find the challenge of leading a team – keeping everyone motivated and focused in the right direction incredibly difficult.  It’s even harder at the moment when we’re in different countries.  I’ve tried everything I know to build a great culture: bringing inspirational shareholders to speak, running regular offsite events, and hosting regular team lunches are a few.  All these help, but there’s only one way to make a smart team happy in the long-term and that’s progress.  Regularly celebrating wins guarantees that progress is felt as much as possible.

Disclaimer.

I don’t claim to be an expert; I’m learning too.  Posse is my first tech company and we’re not home yet.  Please consider my suggestions, but form your own opinion.  These posts aren’t ‘lessons’; they’re my notes on what I think I’m learning along the way.  In fact, I’ve changed my thinking on some of the views I expressed in earlier blogs! 

I’ll clear that up later.