Each year, we invite our 2,000+ staff (the entire firm!) to join us for a day of celebration. We call it our Firm Conference.
It’s one of my favorite days of the year, and it comes with a fair amount of reflection. What did we accomplish? What didn’t we get to? How sound are our day-to-day, one-year, and five-year strategies? At times I feel like I’m in a time warp; is this 2014 or 2020?
That’s why it’s so nice to shut down for a day simply to look back at all that we’ve accomplished and look forward at what’s to come. You can almost feel us take a collective breath as we pause to enjoy—for one special day—each other’s accomplishments, big and small.
A few years ago, we were fortunate to have Dennis Snow from Disney as a guest speaker at our firm conference. He spoke about client service and what he called “big wows”—arranging for a family to be grand marshals of a Disney parade, for example—and also what he called “little wows”—small, sincere, personalized actions that, taken alone, may seem like no big deal but, considered together, add up to make a big impact.
We have several big wows that we celebrate at our firm conference, such as partner and staff promotions, but this year, we asked our partners to share some of these “little wows” that our staff had accomplished. The responses were overwhelming. I thought I’d share a few with you now:
- A wealth management staff member got a request from a client to help him wire money for a down payment on a vacation that he was taking with his wife and kids. The remaining payment was due in five months. Our staff member set a reminder five months down the road to check with the client to see if he remembered to pay off the trip…and he hadn’t. Thanks to our staff, the payment was made on time. Wow!
- Recently, while a couple of our clients were visiting China, our country manager had welcome baskets delivered to the clients’ hotel rooms before their arrival. The baskets included business cards for each client translated into Chinese, pocket cash in Chinese currency (for tips, assuming they hadn’t yet exchanged dollars), American snack foods, frequently used Chinese phrases, and a welcome letter. The client was blown away.
- One of our audit associates makes a wildly popular banana pudding dish each year during a client’s audit. A new person at the client said she’d heard about the treat before the audit even began, and everyone was wondering what day it would show up. Sometimes even something as simple as a dessert can be a huge “Wow” to a client.
And there are so many more where those come from! This is just a handful of examples of how staff have stepped outside of what’s expected to make a difference and wow their clients and colleagues.
So how about you? What are some of the little wows from your organization? And do you have an annual conference to celebrate accomplishments? If not, how does your organization pause and reflect on a job well done?
