Today, on the eve’s of Josda’s launch, we’re taking on the topic of celebration. How celebration connects to the culture of Josda.
What is - and what is not - worth celebrating - and why.
I’m not exactly sure how many products I’ve launched in my career. More than 25. Less than 50. I have no enduring memory of a single celebration for any of them. Vague recollections of dinners here, beers there, but nothing that felt substantial.
Yet the products themselves, in some cases, become substantial.
They changed industries. Begat legislation and rulemaking that changed industry performance standards or legal requirements. Won awards. Saved lives. I was blessed with the opportunity to participate in the development and launch of some serious, and successful, products. Yet - on the day in which they shipped for the first time - the launch of these products really never felt like a huge celebratory occasion.
I find launch day to be a weird combination of anticlimactic and “oh crap.”
Where the world didn’t change enough, seemingly, on launch day for all the effort we put in which is then coupled to the dreadful realization that despite all of the work that we just did - the struggles to go from zero to one with the product pale in comparison to the work that lives between that moment and the full realization of the product’s potential (that's the oh crap).
This weekend, and today on the eve of Josda’s launch, I’m reflecting back on these moments, drinking a cup of tea, and enjoying Josda’s launch moment.
The truth is I’m not strongly motivated to celebrate.
I’m not strongly motivated to celebrate because I don’t see the launch as being worthy of a celebration - per se. This opinion doesn’t mean I’m great at celebrating other things. I recognize I have work to do recognizing the accomplishment of both my objectives and the objectives of others. I just don’t believe that launching the thing is the right time for a big celebration.
So if launching isn’t a celebratory accomplishment, after many months of hard work to reach this point, then what is?
The time for celebration comes when we have the opportunity to recognize and appreciate good outcomes. Not good efforts. Launching the product is a huge effort. This was a tremendous one. More Josh than me - we’re good at this and we busted ass to build it. Honestly, we both had fun doing it. But creating Josda isn’t the outcome that matters.
The outcomes that truly matter, paradoxically, aren’t the outcomes typically celebrated in corporate life. That is because they are not the outcomes of the corporation.
The satisfaction of whatever KPIs we, or any other, company might drum up at the end of the day are pretty arbitrary. They lack inherent meaning and are too easily gamified. They are only a proxy for what really matters - both intrinsically and extrinsically. They need to be minded, but they do not need to be celebrated.
On a personal level, when I think of the intrinsic rewards connected to the work I’ve put in, while wracking my brain and looking back over the last 20 years of building businesses, I’ve never received lasting and enduring satisfaction from hitting a financial goal for a business. For the moment, it feels good, as a representation that we did what we set out to do. The next week, it feels less good. A couple of weeks later, the accomplishment no longer registers.
But there are things that I look back on, from ten or more years ago, that still give me the same good vibrations they did then. So what are they? These enduring positive feelings which were so worthy of celebration then, and remain so today.
Well, there are two.
The first are the outcomes that change the lives of our customers.
I can remember where I was, vividly, when having conversations with customers where I discovered the positive impact our products had on their lives. I remember leaving meetings with regulators knowing we’ve blazed a trail that would result in rulemaking that made our industry safer. The moments where the potential of our impact was made flesh in the grateful stories of our customers.
Knowing that their personal gratitude for our hard work would endure for years - or in some cases lifetimes. That felt great then. Still feels great now.
But, in the past, we were poorer at celebrating those moments than we were at celebrating our product launches.
The second group of outcomes that I still feel great about, and still celebrate, are the outcomes where being on our team positively transformed the lives of our team members.
The lives that were changed because we backed an employee, even when it was difficult, and with our backing lives were changed for the better. Not just their lives, but the lives of their families and their children. Or the lives that were changed when we gave an employee feedback that might have been difficult to hear at the time, but which they used to fuel creating a much better version of themselves. Seeing the connection between a conversation and a changed life.
My commitment in Josda is that we’ll be better at celebrating the outcomes that have enduring, and more positive, effects on families and industry. That our celebratory efforts will go into appreciated the impact we have on others, instead of the energies we’ve expended ourselves.
In closing, on the eve of our launch, I want to say thank you. For trusting Josda.
As your solution to guide you through a difficult time. As your employer. As your business partner. We will not let you down and - in the future when we have outcomes worth celebrating - we look forward to celebrating them with you.
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