We need to take time to celebrate; we need to celebrate the little things and the big things. It’s not very often that I have celebrated things at work with more than a toast. As a lawyer, I’ve worked on hundred of deals and seen many contracts signed, licenses negotiated, and so on; but these are rarely ever celebrated with anything other than a celebratory drink or lunch or if its something really big, a dinner at a cool place like Restaurant Gary Danko.

I had the most amazing day at work today. I had the opportunity to celebrate something that might seem ordinary, but I hope will become more meaningful as all of the study phases complete and the results are published in more detail.

Today my team and I were celebrated for our performance — We submitted results for a study earlier this year and we just found out the results yesterday and were very, very pleased. To participate in the study, we worked crazy hours and nights and weekends for two months straight because we took on a project doing things we don’t ordinarily do. We did it to prove a point about the technology that we use. We did this on top of our regular, out of control work load. We were exhausted to the point where some team members wanted to quit. But, we did it anyway to prove a point.

Today, I had the honor of standing up in front of the whole company at our all hands meeting (just happened to be great timing) and singling out each member of my team and thanking them. Then the CEO got up and thanked me for leading the effort and having no fear in taking it on. Then my boss got up and gave each team member a gift and a bottle of champagne. We had already celebrated with chocolate and champagne at our own team meeting an hour before.

We had a company goal to finish the study, submit our results on time, and finish in the top quartile. I can share the overall study results, but I can’t disclose which team is which as we signed a nondisclosure agreement.

2013 EDI Study Results

I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like this before at work. At Cataphora, I can recall celebrating when our first company patent issued, when we hit our first million in revenue, and each year at our anniversary party when we finished another year of operation without taking in any outside capital. At Intuit, we celebrated the launch of Quicken each fall with a launch party, and other products as they launched, but the biggest celebration was the Microsoft-Intuit dis-merger. At Sega we celebrated the launch of various games, some with a bigger splash than others – Sonic the Hedgehog 3, anyone??? At IDO Systems/Avatizing, we celebrated the issuance of each of our patents.

But, I can’t recall celebrating people, as a company like we did today, almost spontaneously. I wanted to do a cartwheel to celebrate, but I had a dress on, and it didn’t seem to be the right thing to do in front of the whole company!  Yes, there have been deals signed and other projects completed but this was what I hope to be game changing for us. Not enough people take the time to celebrate the little things (or big things for that matter), but this was really satisfying. I am really proud of my team and what we accomplished! Woo Hoo!