Recently we took a good hard look at how we do praise and recognition at the Crowd. We explored solutions that we’d seen done before - callouts at the monthly meeting or prizes for people who demonstrated our company values - but none of them quite felt right.
When we thought about it we came up with two things that mattered most for recognition:
- We wanted it to be frictionless so that people can call out the praise in the moment or as soon as they think about it.
- We didn’t want to reward anyone with anything of value. This might seem counterintuitive but the goal was to celebrate the little wins as much as the big ones. We didn’t want people not giving out praise because they were unsure if something was worthy enough.
Enter: Taco Bot
Using our existing tools Slack and Zapier (a workflow automation thingy), we decided to create Taco Bot. It’s a really simple concept, if someone does something and you want to call it out you just do a slack post and include their name and a 🌮 emoji. Taco Bot then joins the celebration with a taco gif and records the praise.
Why a taco?
Why the heck not? They’re a portable parcel of pleasure just like a well-timed compliment. The uptake has been immediate and surprised even me (turns out there was a lot of pent-up praise in the Crowd).
Why do I think it’s been so successful?
- We already have a great team with a great culture. For us, this wasn’t a tool to drive culture change but rather highlight what is already here.
- It’s low friction, there isn’t a dedicated praise channel. You can do this anywhere, in #general or in a project channel. This means your praise doesn’t have to be thought out and you don’t have to jump to another channel or click a link. If someone just helped you, you can simply reply and 🌮 them.
- It’s low friction. Ok yes, I am repeating myself but I think low friction is REALLY important here (and this is different friction).
There isn’t a minimum entry to praise, there are no prizes and you don’t have to submit your praise to management to see if it cuts the mustard.
- Delivered an amazing project to a customer with beautiful writing & design 🌮
- Being an inspiring leader🌮
- 5 min edit to a price calculator that saved you a frustrating morning 🌮
- Kind words when you were feeling stressed 🌮
If you're wondering if you should have a Taco Bot, I would say absolutely. It surfaces all those helping behaviours already happening. And by acknowledging someone has helped you, it gives you both a little kick of joy.
Lee Booy is our Crowd tech wizard and our wonderful COO. To learn more about the team you can do some guilt-free permission-granted stalking right here.