Our two teen-aged sons attend the same high school. Yesterday I heard the youngest thanking his mother for the notes she puts in with his lunch each day. He then related to her that the group of kids that he sits with each day at lunch think it’s “cool” or “rad”(short of radical) that he gets these notes. Often times the notes are quotes… and some times just “I love you” messages that include something specific about him like “You are such a thoughtful son” or “Thank you for all your help with your sisters yesterday”. Josh says it doesn’t seem to matter what it says… they gather and wait to see what’s on his napkin… and think it’s cool that his Mom cares enough to do it.
If something as simple as creating a tradition of putting a quote or note on a napkin into a brown paper bag can influence the culture of a table of teens in a high school cafeteria… then we should feel very encouraged that there are many simple and inexpensive things we can do to influence the culture of our workplaces.
I remember in our college cafeteria and in a few of the military cafeterias we would place our meal trays on a conveyor belt that would move them through a small hole in the wall delivering the dirty dishes to some people we would actually never see on the other side. One day I pulled out a marker and wrote a thank you note with a big smiley face on a napkin and waited outside the portal to listen for a reaction.
The reaction was almost immediate as an excited female voice said, “Hey look… we got a thank you note with a smiley face!” Then other excited voices joined in as they gathered behind the wall to look at the wet napkin of happiness. Well their excitement and appreciation was all I needed to do it again tomorrow….and a tradition was born.
It didn’t take long before people around noticed my peculiar daily behavior of “writing on napkins” and asked what I was doing. So I invited them to stand outside the conveyor belt portal and drink in the joy of the voices on the other side … it was all they needed to want to join in. Soon there were several of us saying thanks or writing and sharing our favorite bits of wisdom and conveying them through with some dirty dishes.
It was always my preference to remain anonymous and with the exception of one place where I did this, I never actually met anyone on the “other side”. But once I did hear from the supervisor of the kitchen crew at a college facility. He related to me that for the past several weeks notes had been coming through on the dish trays to his staff and that it had been a real morale lifter for all of them. In fact he said that all the notes were shared across shifts and pinned to a large message board in the kitchen break room. How cool is that!
What will you feed your culture today? I am sure you can think of some noteworthy way to do so. And I hope you will share your story with us here at the T4D so that we might convey it forward. Enjoy your weekend…. Kirk
Mzsunflower's Say What? 