Happy Thanksgiving!
I love this time of year. Just being outside to see the leaves and feel the colder, thinner air. Enjoying the warmer days where I am satisfied with a harvest salad, and the colder nights when I can experiment with making a yummy soup. At StarCIO, some of our work with clients and speaking at conferences slow down, and it gives me time to lift my head and spirits.
I started a tradition a couple of years ago when I posted five reasons for CIO to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and followed it up last year with five special activities for the best remote Thanksgiving. Several years ago, I shared a CIO top ten guide to preparing a Thanksgiving feast.
It didn’t take me long to conclude that this year’s post should cover how digital transformation leaders should take extra steps to thank their teams this holiday season. I am hoping we’re closing a two-year chapter – going from lockdown/remote to hybrid working, from crisis to survivability to digital transformation 2.0. (Look for that post soon!)
Our teams have been there along the way – from the service desks helping people transition to remote work, our data scientists identifying supply chain risks, our developers accelerating cloud migrations, and our product managers for sharing the evolving customer needs.
So here are five suggestions on how you might thank your teams.
Sponsor a Hybrid Work Pot-luck Lunch
Back when I was CIO at McGraw Hill Construction (now Dodge Data and Analytics), my team hosted a Happy Diwali potluck lunch at this time of year. Samosa, curries, and biryanis sat side by side with American favorites such as sweet potato pies and green beans. It was a big event, and my team leaders invited their colleagues from sister McGraw Hill businesses. The event took over the cafeteria.
It may be a little more challenging to organize a hybrid pot lock lunch, but it’s not impossible. Be creative! Maybe some of the people working remotely but living near each other can pod together for the event. Ask people to share their recipes and build a scrapbook of everyone’s photos.
Share and Discuss Your Favorite 2021 Books
One way to foster a learning and collaborative culture is to share great books and discuss key insights. I do this every year on my blog, and you can see review my favorite books from 2020, others from 2019, and my top books on digital transformation storytelling.
My 2021 list is coming out soon, but you will definitely see these books on it!
- Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Ray “R” Wang
- Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
- Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross
- The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer by Steven Kotler
- Digital Roadmap: A Transformational Journey From Analog to a Digital Business Model by Rahul Bansode
Create a Health and Giving Challenge
If I was managing a big team today, I would evaluate at least one of these options:
- A health and fitness challenge – See these 50 office challenges or these suggestions on creating a fitness challenge.
- A giving challenge – Check out Charity Navigator for ideas and ask everyone to share why they sponsor specific causes and charities.
- A volunteer challenge – See these fifteen ideas and these other sixty-five ideas.
Zoomless and No Meeting Fridays
Want to reduce stress and increase innovation, learning, and creativity? If your organization can slow down this holiday season – and even if you’re in retail and it’s a peak business period – there’s no better time to find ways to simplify work for everyone.
Creating a Zoomless and no meeting Friday, or another day of the week, is one way to give back to employees that may be tired and worn out from all the screen time. Also, consider my other suggestions from an earlier post on three really simple activities to reduce stress in hybrid work teams.
Reset Priorities to A Few Meaningful Goals
If you want to take destressing activities one step further, then attack stress’ root cause in your people and the drivers of digital transformation. The pressure almost always starts with having too many ill-defined priorities.
Want to make everyone’s lives easier and hit your goals? Provide clear and a reasonable number of priorities. One way you can do this is with the free StarCIO Vision Statements.
Lastly, Just Say Thank You!
Seriously, the easiest thing you can do is say thank you to every person on your team. Make sure everyone knows you are thankful for their efforts!
Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you, Michele, Jay, Mitch, Ginny, David, Anshul, and Liz!
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