Team Mottos
One of my favorite things to do is to create little team motto’s that reflect the culture of the team. Some of them are general purpose, some of them are tailored to the needs of my team; but all of them are pithy.
One last tip: I’ve had the best success with mottos when I can piggy-back on an inside joke of the team.
We care more personally
Caring personally is a common trait for me and my teams; I like to use a motto to make it a point of pride for us. Our team puts in the work to send hand written cards, personalize our hiring approach, or have mandatory fun because “we care more personally.”
We do our best work when someone else gets credit
This motto was a really powerful one for a specific team I worked on: we had a strange method of working where we would constantly partner with teams in different organizations to ship something in their domain. We wanted these partner teams to feel responsiblity and pride for the work we did and didn’t want our own egos to get in the way of having a lasting impact, so we went out of our way to redirect the glory to these other teams. We included them on the list of project memebers even if they only advised on the project, invited them to present at all hands meetings, etc.
Never miss a chance to say “mission accomplished”
The “mission accomplished” part is an inside joke referring to a time when I celebrated before the team thought the project was done See the 5 phases of a project
and they teased me for behaving like an American President who doesn’t realize the war with Iraq has only just begun. It was a liberal team and a little bit of teasing of the manager is really good for helping the team jell, so I absolutely encouraged this
This mostly means “never miss a chance to celebrate.” Celebrations are a great way to build morale and an even better way to spread awareness of a project.
We don’t get cake until the second time our product is used
This makes sure we prioritize adoption through easy onboarding; not just of the first customer we white-glove onto our project, but of the second customer who must onboard themself.
Put me in coach
Volunteer to do dirty work