Embrace the Power of Milestones

Remem­ber the Prince song about ​“Par­ty Like It’s 1999”?

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this

So sue me if I go too fast

But life is just a party

And par­ties weren’t meant to last.

It’s an amaz­ing song that inspires you to par­ty with wild aban­don. To cel­e­brate the good things – the mile­stones – that come and go, too briefly.

I was think­ing about this recent­ly when my daugh­ter grad­u­at­ed from high school. We are gen­er­al­ly good at cel­e­brat­ing rites of pas­sage. In fact, the social pres­sure to not cel­e­brate things like birth­days and anniver­saries, mother’s and father’s days is on the verge of crim­i­nal, for many people.

But, in busi­ness, there just isn’t the same social impe­tus to get togeth­er and cel­e­brate our achieve­ments and mile­stones. We usu­al­ly just move on to focus on the next big prob­lem or opportunity.

Cre­ate a Cul­ture of Celebration

After hit­ting a major prof­it mile­stone, the CFO of one of our clients was review­ing the finan­cials, in a recent meet­ing, when some­one said, ​“Hey, we had a goal to achieve this lev­el a cou­ple of years ago.”

After acknowl­edg­ing that for just a moment, we went on to dig into the finan­cials of one the divi­sions los­ing a bunch of mon­ey as we were con­cerned about what to do to fix it. In that moment, I stopped the meeting.

“Whoa! What just hap­pened here? We just reached a mas­sive mile­stone and we’re dig­ging into problems.”

Look, you’ll always have prob­lems to fix, and anoth­er tar­get to reach. But you miss out when you don’t cel­e­brate your achieve­ments. These occa­sions cre­ate and enhance a cul­ture of cel­e­bra­tion, peo­ple feel as if they are win­ning, and are appre­ci­at­ed – and they work togeth­er bet­ter, to solve the prob­lems that always come up.

A Shout Out

A shout out to Andrew Limouris and his team at Medix who do great work cel­e­brat­ing big achieve­ments. As a great foot­ball coach, Andrew gives his exec­u­tive team Super Bowl rings for their major achieve­ments like reach­ing $100 mil­lion and $250 mil­lion in rev­enues. I have both of mine and we’re all look­ing for­ward to the cer­e­mo­ny of receiv­ing anoth­er when we hit $500 mil­lion. These rings don’t just rep­re­sent achieve­ment, they are incen­tive and are an expressed part of the plan to get there.

Make Cel­e­bra­tion Part of Your Plan

Talk­ing about how you’re going to cel­e­brate your achieve­ments, when you set your goals, is important.

After our team at Lawrence & Co talked about this, we decid­ed to make a list of big mile­stones we want to achieve and how we plan to cel­e­brate them, in dif­fer­ent ways.

In fact, we’ve artic­u­lat­ed an oblig­a­tion for those cel­e­bra­tions by adding them to a new sec­tion in our strate­gic plan­ning tool.

The Chal­lenge

• What are the next big mile­stones you and your team are you going achieve?
• How are you going to celebrate?

Addi­tion­al Growth Whis­per­er Podcasts

• Plan­ning to Win in 2023 – Strategy
• Plan­ning to Win in 2023 – People
• The 20-Mile March Concept

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• The Pow­er of Cel­e­brat­ing & Iterating
• The Val­ue of Failure
• Cel­e­brat­ing Suc­cess & The Accom­plish­ments of Your People
• Which Crit­i­cal Busi­ness Met­ric Will Get Every­one March­ing to the Same Beat?

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.