Recognition idea - Mozilla Thanksgiving

Mozillians
#1

I had this idea, but too late to suggest it for Canadian Thanksgiving.

I think part of the reason why people see things like the participation leadership program as recognition is because we are still lacking on other forms of public recognition.

I think we need to encourage people to not overthink giving recognition, we just need to say more publicly to more people “thanks for doing x, y, z!”

Let’s encourage all Mozillians (but let’s give an extra push to staff to get the ball rolling) to send out some messages of gratitude on Discourse and social media, the week starting November 23rd. Discourse, Facebook and Twitter all allow you to like other people’s messages, too, so we can really show people their efforts are appreciated.

6 Likes
#2

Related reading:

#3

I love this idea!

1 Like
#4

It would be great if we could turn this idea into a launchpad for getting more people to contribute to the ideas you’ve linked.

I think the problem with the example in the two links is that people feel like they need to write something nice, and permanent, it needs explanation, it’s for an audience, for other people to read and it needs to be of a certain quality. If you don’t feel like a confident writer, or if you are thinking about trying to make an impression for the person you might put it off until you feel like you have time to write something of the standard you’re thinking of.

The idea here is to get rid of all that, and just say thanks to to the person, but in front of others. No permanence, no prose.

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#5

Yeah, like a 140 char thank you note will also be very lovely.

Also goes with this. Vouching someone who’s new. That’s a very easily forgotten way to recognize someone.

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#6

Hey @rosana and @r_oVhPfcJCUUC5wbm6i4_C2Q and @deimidis what do you think?

Also, how easy would it be to spin up a quick webpage that aggregates all of these thanks (with tags and such)? Seems to be pretty straightforward. Anyone want to make that happen?

And @helios, think you would be up for spinning up a logo for a week of thanks?

@majken want to start an issue in the Participation Team’s Github workflow?

2 Likes
#7

I think is a great idea. Another spin is to make like those memes that you have to thank X number of mozillians and them have to thanks other X numbers, etc.

If we use a hashtag, seems relatively easy (says someone that couldn0t make a script :stuck_out_tongue: )

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#8

Done!

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#9

Great idea. I was looking for a project like that for some time. Saying thank you and recognise contributions is vital for us.
It’ll be an upgrade of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Marketplace/Contributing/Recognition then?

1 Like
#10

Mozlove effort was based on this great blog post by Leslie Hawthorn, and while I often express gratitude in blog posts, and Twitter I also write LinkedIN recommendations, and have a gratitude workflow for Github & bugzilla that are not public.
There was huge excitement about a #mozlove ‘attitude’, but then it died.
For this me it’s less about preferences for getting and receiving, and everything about making it part of how we work - If I had one recommendation is to add a calendar event called ‘recognition’, last Friday of every month.

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#11

My guess is that a week long campaign will result in more of this activity
and more habit forming. Both are good!

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#12

@george sure, just give me a short brief and I can create a logo :slight_smile:

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#13

I think it’s a good idea. @majken which kind of support do you need to make it happen?

#14

I saw your messages on the github, thanks for the help. I am just behind on work right now so I can get to it soon. In terms of help, I think the missing piece is how to make sure people participate? How to encourage people to participate without inducing them to do something they don’t want to do? Can we identify teams where volunteers feel particularly discouraged or disconnected and strongly suggest to staff on those teams that they participate as a step towards healing that divide? How can we structure the ask in a way that doesn’t tell people who they should thank, but also helps prevent closed circles where people are only thanking their close friends/co-workers?

Also what opportunities do we have to use metrics to prove that this type of recognition has impact?

I like George’s suggestions of a site and that elio should help with the logo :wink:

I like Emma’s point about trying to make sure this happens more regularly, so help coming up with a plan on how to activate participants into a longer term program would be awesome. Why not stick with Emma’s idea to do it the last Friday of the month? Just need to build some process around making sure it happens.

On the surface I like Guillermo’s idea to replicate the challenges of the past, but thinking about it more deeply I am worried that it will have a negative impact- we don’t want people to wait until they are challenged to join in, and we don’t want people to feel obligated to give gratitude either, then it’s not really genuine. But we should have a general “why not thank someone yourself?” message to encourage the momentum.

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#15

An idea came to mind mind where you join a site with your mozillians account and you are randomly presented with other mozillians in same groups/regions. You can skip random suggestions to get the next one and you would have a box telling “I know him/her and I want to say thanks” with a link to tweet with:

“Thank you @twitter_username for your work at @Mozilla #mozlove”

Then we can encourage people to join this page each Friday (or anytime) and play this game to find someone to say thanks.

1 Like
#16

I think the social effects of a week long campaign is much stronger than
every Friday. It can provide focus and energy for communication and urgency
for action.

The key, as @majken says, will be to gather some metrics. Maybe we can do a
quick baseline survey with a sample of Mozillians, and then repeat that
after the campaign. I would suggest only 2 questions.

  1. When was the last time you explicitly recognized someone for their
    contribution?

  2. When was the last time you were explicitly recognized for your
    contributions?

Maybe a third…

  1. Do you feel you’re being adequately recognized?

We track trends over time, expecting a bump from the campaign and hoping
for an ongoing behavioural shift.

Thoughts?

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#17

Side tracking detail I learned the other day:

We asked: Do you feel that mozilla values your contributions?

Answer: I got praise by a few individuals, but not from mozilla.

I was surprised.

But if I accept that there’s a bridge to cross, it’s a tough bridge to find.

1 Like
#18

IMHO an event like this can launch a more permanent place in our culture for recognition - like #mozlove Friday. I think that should be an intention to avoid repeat cycle of enthusiasm and drought, but I’ll leave that as my opinion and share a few more thoughts triggered by what what Pike said.

That is, that I believe an issue with ‘Recognition’ is that it is a catch phrase I think to mean a number of things:

  1. Thank you
  2. Good work! Keep going
  3. Accomplishment (like first pull request, or completing a participation step)

If we really want to launch in fresh and sustainable way, I believe we also need check what our existing behaviors are, and what they might unintentionally be rewarding, for example I don’t think it would be a stretch to say we have a history of:

  1. Recognizing people like ourselves (meaning someone you can relate to significantly)
  2. Recognizing people who are good at raising the profile of their work
  3. Recognizing people whose efforts are trending towards burn-out.
  4. Promising recognition, we may or may no be able to deliver.

Finally, thinking about personalized recognition. As part of Marketpulse we asked people to identify in their Mozillian profiles what their preferred forms of recognition (for being thanked, encouraged rewarded) were. And that was interesting because in some cases people deferred recognition entirely. In the David Eaves survey it showed as one of the lowest motivators for participation - although I understand the reason for that trend to be more about ‘why we’re here’ vrs the value of being appreciated.

Anyway, I think this is awesome, but having experimented with this quite a bit in the last year, I wanted to share these thoughts. It’s a huge opportunity, if done right, to help create a culture - surfacing the accomplishments of others. And to show leadership in open culture for how to do that well.

3 Likes
#19

This resonates for me. My motivation behind this idea is to help shift the culture from seeing recognition as something withheld to reward “exceptional” contributions into something that is done for anything that helps someone else.

Think of it as the MVP of recognition:

  1. Notice someone has done something helpful
  2. Thank them for it
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#20

I prettied up the github issue based on the template Nuke linked (thanks!). Let me know if I should make more changes!

1 Like