#10 Celebration

Too often we only celebrate the big milestones.

As a society, we break up the year based on milestones and rituals. It's how we segment the months, days, hours – and the general monotony of life. We have seasons, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, birthdays, and religious celebrations. But what about all the moments in between?

This year I am celebrating a major milestone, 10 years in business! The Edison Agency is celebrating this February with a soirée that will no doubt be fabulous. But I want to be more intentional about celebrating the small wins and I'll admit it, doesn't come naturally.

Because when you're working on a project – especially one that's big or complex – the journey can be emotional and stressful, with plenty of highs and lows. So, when you get to the end of that, it's really important that you honour the ritual of completion. 

For us, that might look like:

🤔  PROJECT REVIEW
We’ll do a review of the project that covers:

👉 A diagnostic of how we performed in hours
👉 Key milestones throughout
👉 What did we learn?
👉 What did we do well?
👉 What didn't we do well?

💬  CLIENT FEEDBACK
The only way you can evolve your product, offer, or the way you work is by knowing what's working and what's not. After every project, we like to ask our clients about:

👉 Paint points 
👉 Sticking points
👉 What they aren't getting value from
👉 What bits they loved
👉 What they remembered from the project
👉 Where they got the most value
👉 What made their job easier

The post-project ritual becomes an opportunity to improve yourself, rethink, and change things (so that every project doesn't feel like groundhog day!).

🥳  CELEBRATION! 
Finally, we like to go out for a drink or lunch with our broader team (and often clients, too) to celebrate the collective effort that went into the project. When you consider that sometimes a single project can go anywhere from 6-18 months, the team has been through a lot together! 

Celebrating also helps to keep those relationships fresh and create positive experiences that will get you through the less positive experiences. It enables you to nurture those relationships, honour the work, and complete the cycle so you can move on.

Speaking of celebration, how does that work during COVID? There's only so many hampers you can send people before they stop caring. We’ve had to be a little more creative in that department, whether it’s creating a meme or animation to sum up the project, sending a small gift, or handwriting a good, old-fashioned card. It's not about spending big – it’s about doing something meaningful.

And now something else we can all celebrate – this is the last post in my 10 year reflection series! 

To wrap things up, I’d love to know what milestones you celebrate and how you’ve adapted your rituals during the pandemic?