Dr Dani: [00:00:00] Hello, Peter. 

Designer Peter: Hi Dani. 

Dr Dani: How are you? 

Designer Peter: I'm very well, thanks. How are you today? 

Dr Dani: I am good. Today is a monumental moment for us. 

Designer Peter: Whoa. Monumental. That's a big word.

Dr Dani: I'm practicing my bigger words. 

Designer Peter: Oh yeah. Monumental. What is monumental about today? Dani, tell us. 

Dr Dani: I feel like we need a little suspense. 

Designer Peter: Okay. We're gonna build up to it. 

Dr Dani: I think you might know what it is. Hopefully you know what it is. 

Designer Peter: Oh, I definitely know what it is. We're just we're teasing our listeners, maybe they know what it is already as well.

'cause the, they've they've read the podcast episode description. Oh. Yeah.

Dr Dani: Shall I tell them? 

Designer Peter: Let's tell 'em, let's share our excitement. 

Dr Dani: This episode is monumental because it is our 50th episode. 

Designer Peter: 50th episode number 50. That, that, I agree that is something to to talk about. That's a monumental from our point of view [00:01:00] achievement.

That's a good milestone. 

Dr Dani: That is a big milestone. Who would've thunk it? 

Designer Peter: I don't think I did, or I had no idea that we'd have published 50 of our conversations, Dani.

Dr Dani: What are we talking about today, Peter? 

Designer Peter: What are we talking about today? I think we're taking this opportunity to talk about celebrating, I. So reflecting and celebrating, I think is what we're gonna talk about. Dani I'm a bit distracted and overwhelmed by the fact this is episode number 50.

But we're talking about reflection and celebration and the importance of both of those modes and activities. 

Dr Dani: Celebrating is not something that we do well, not we, as in you and me, the royal we. Even in, in an individual level, at a team level, at an organizational level, it's just not something that we do or we don't find time to do.

Designer Peter: It's not it's not as much of a habit as it ought to be for most of us as, and it's the collective us, [00:02:00] whether it's individuals or organizations.

And would you say the same thing goes for reflection? 

Dr Dani: Part of celebration is reflection. If you think about if we were celebrating birthdays, part of that moment is looking back on what's happened in your life since you were born, since the last time you celebrated.

There's a strong correlation between celebrations and reflections. So maybe today we go off our structure a little bit. 

Designer Peter: Oh yeah. Okay. 

Dr Dani: And as part of our celebrating, maybe look back on how this whole thing started. 

Designer Peter: Yes, let's do that and also see what I did there. Let's also just give ourselves, I'll send our listeners a little bit of comfort and do a quick bit of, defining, oh, 

Dr Dani: maybe 

Designer Peter: do that. Maybe we define and then and then look back. Yeah. So celebrate. There's a few, there's three different definitions here. There is acknowledge and in the bracket it says a parentheses, it says a [00:03:00] significant or happy day or event with a social gathering or enjoyable activity.

Number two is perform a religious ceremony, in particular officiate. And three is honor or praise publicly. And celebrate It comes from, emerged in late middle English. It comes from the Latin caliber which is frequented or honored.

So that celebrates we'll go on to reflect in a minute but celebrate. So I think we are definitely wanting to acknowledge a significant happy day with an enjoyable activity. And I think we will do a little bit of maybe honoring our praising publicly. Are we maybe we'll not get into the performing a religious ceremony today though.

Dr Dani: No, that's a little bit beyond our capabilities off topic. Yes. 

Designer Peter: And we're not we're [00:04:00] not in the business of leading a cult or starting a religion. 

Dr Dani: No. 

Designer Peter: No, not that. And then and then reflect wait, before you 

Dr Dani: move on to reflect. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And you're reading that de that definition, it mentioned a social gathering.

My question is, do we need a social gathering to celebrate? Is it not a celebration if other people aren't there? 

Designer Peter: Good question. What to define a social gathering? Is this a, is this recording, a social gathering? Do you have to be in 2025 actually face to face, or can you be like, we are distant but connected over the internet?

And also is two people a social gathering or do you need three or more?

Dr Dani: Given that we had, what, two years of virtual social gatherings.

We have some we have some, I'll call it experiments that we can pull from. [00:05:00] Yeah.

Designer Peter: But I'm sorry. You're, I'm, are you really angling at Dani the extrovert to go, do you want us to get together with some of listeners or something? Is that, what is that, what, is that what you're suggesting?

Okay. 

Dr Dani: That is not what I'm suggesting. Okay. I'm just questioning when we say we celebrate, does it have to be with others? Could, so if I have done something that I'm really proud of and I take myself out for a cup of coffee. 

Designer Peter: Ah, okay. Is that 

Dr Dani: celebrating? 

Designer Peter: Got you. Wow. Yeah. Great challenge to the dictionary definition.

I think so. I think you can acknowledge acknowledge your yourself and your own achievements and. Yeah, take yourself out for a cup of coffee. Give yourself a a pat in the back. Got you. Yeah. So that this definition isn't broad enough for our liking. 

Dr Dani: There's this misnomer that celebrations are for big things. But I think celebrations are also for little things, right? For [00:06:00] example, when we recorded our first episode and I published it was that celebration worthy, 

Designer Peter: Was for me, and I think for you too, was for us, we'd we'd achieve something small but definitely worth it or definitely worth while celebrating because I.

Yeah. That's a good question. Why did we feel like it was worth while celebrating that small milestone, or I'm saying small now? It seems like it in retrospect.

Tell me more. It feels like you're asking a bit of a rhetorical question. 

Dr Dani: So you and I had talked about starting this podcast forever. It got to the point that you and I were getting tired of talking about starting the podcast and we were starting to go, look, we either do it or we just need to stop talking about it, right?

The reason that celebrations are important is because celebrating [00:07:00] little things are important because we wouldn't have gotten to 50 episodes had we not recorded the first episode. We wouldn't have gotten to 50 episodes had we not recorded the second episode. Yeah. So all of those things are celebration worthy because they were stacking up to something bigger.

But had we not taken a moment to celebrate publishing this, the first episode, it probably wouldn't have given us the momentum and that dopamine hit to do the second one. 

Designer Peter: I see where you're going with this. Yes. If we'd simply treated it as a, we've ticked something off the to-do list and moved on to the very next thing without just spending a little bit of time to acknowledge what we've just done, then yeah. Maybe we wouldn't we wouldn't be here at number 50.

Okay.

Yep. Okay. I'm, yeah, I'm buying into this I'm setting something up for later 'cause I know it's too early to to talk about it. That's why I've gone a little bit quiet. I'm thinking. 

Dr Dani: Okay, so [00:08:00] celebration is, let's sum it up for our listeners. So when we say celebration, we mean 

acknowledging, 

Designer Peter: yeah, acknowledging.

And, unlike this dictionary definition, which is with a social gathering or enjoyable activity, I did say enjoyable activity actually in that. So an enjoyable activity could be going out for coffee by yourself. It could be phoning somebody or, jumping on a zoom call with somebody and, or like I said, social gathering could be a great big event.

There's more to it than that. I think there is this kind of. It involves pausing and being deliberate. It's like being like intentional. An intentional activity. 

Dr Dani: There's absolutely an, there's an intentionality. Intentionality, 

Designer Peter: yeah.

Dr Dani: There's an intentionality to it. I also think this is why rituals are so important, right?

Because rituals are a part of celebrating. Because, oh, do we need to define rituals? 

Designer Peter: [00:09:00] Sure. Why not? You gotta go breaking the rules all over the place. Introducing new words, ritual.

Dr Dani: How 

Designer Peter: you gonna have this? A ritual, a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. I'm not sure that's what you mean.

Dr Dani: That is not what I mean.

Designer Peter: See if we can find another one that

here we go. Ritual a way of this is the Cambridge dictionary. I think the last one was the Oxford ritual. A way of doing something in which the same actions are done in the same way every time. For example, coffee and the newspaper are part of my morning ritual. Another definition a fixed set of actions and words, especially as part of a religious ceremony.

So yeah, I think you're what you're talking about is more the first one. A way of doing something about the same Actions are done in the same way every time. 

Dr Dani: Rituals are part of celebration, we all have social norms of things that signify celebration.

So [00:10:00] cake, for instance. We take cake as a, birthday cake to celebrate your birthday and anniversary cake to celebrate your anniversary. Yeah. A farewell cake, right? So that is a symbol of celebration. We, or, even things like champagne and champagne glasses that signifies to us Ooh, something celebratory is happening.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Even the, and the ritual of opening the champagne bottle, the, the peeling of the foil they're taking off of the the wire cage and the popping of the cork. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. So we have these the symbols and rituals that signify celebration. Celebration includes rituals. They have symbols like cake and champagne. And I think the other one that you were getting to with your pausing I think now we're leading into the reflective part of celebrating. 

Designer Peter: Oh yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I'll take that. I don't, I'm not sure if I was getting quite to that.

It was just 'cause you can pause and not reflect, but yeah, maybe I was [00:11:00] getting to the, actually making time, setting aside some time to consciously, intentionally spend, invest in the celebration. And that could be four or five minutes, or I guess in extreme cases, five days. But reflection, I'll we'll go.

Dr Dani: No, actually let's keep going on that. Okay. So I think there is a need to be deliberate about making time. There needs to be the, there's a scale like you were talking about, right? So it probably wouldn't have been appropriate after we published our first episode to go take a seven day cruise to celebrate.

Yeah. But maybe that is appropriate when we, I don't know, hit our hundredth episode. Five, 

Designer Peter: 500 maybe. 

Dr Dani: Okay. 500. Maybe that's appropriate when we hit 500 episodes. Yeah. So there is this, how long do we pause and deliberately acknowledge this for that this the sort of a scale 

Designer Peter: proportional, [00:12:00] then maybe Yes.

Proportional and appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. 

Dr Dani: Yep. 

Designer Peter: Okay.

Dr Dani: Okay. Now, do we go into reflection? Yeah, 

Designer Peter: let's, yeah. 'cause I think there is or in my mind a good celebration does involve reflection. 

It's I think it, it's the, it's worth it. It's the classic, past, present, future makes a good celebration, doesn't it? You like, yo, what, where have we come from?

Where are we now? And where, what might happen next? Reflect the verb to reflect. Is first one is throwback heat, light, or sound without absorbing it. Don't think that's what we're talking about. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Think deeply or carefully about, or bring credit or discredit to the relevant parties.

So for the incident reflects badly in the operating practices of the airlines as the example given there is number two, isn't it? He reflected with the, with [00:13:00] gratitudes on the happiness of his marriage is given there. So reflect comes from what's another Latin origin .

Re in Latin is back and flick Terry was the verb to bend. So it's basically saying to bend back originally. 

Interestingly, it's a grown in use from. A low point in the early 19 hundreds to, a much greater usage in the last 20 or 30 years. 

Dr Dani: That makes sense. As our world has become more and more complex, there's a greater need to reflect. 

Designer Peter: Yes.

So reflection, part of celebration, do you think that's you buying into what I'm seeing there, Dani, that's an essential element of celebration. 

Dr Dani: I'm just thinking about things that I have celebrated in my own life, going to anniversary parties and looking back on, somebody's been married 50 years and looking at [00:14:00] their wedding photo and all the key moments in their lives or going to significant milestone birthdays and seeing a similar thing like this is, that is a.

I, it's not the form of reflection that it, reflection comes in many forms and I think looking back at those key moments is a way that we can reflect. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Agreed. And I think both the the high and the low points, the things that were easy and the challenges and the successes and the failures, that it's all part of reflection, isn't it?

And I think more maybe, especially when you're celebrating it's, it is just as important to think about those lows and those, those challenges and those failures as it is about the the highs and the successes. Yeah.

Dr Dani: The path to anything isn't always positive, even in our own podcasting journey,

[00:15:00] we've had not so good times. Yep. Yeah. It's not an authentic celebration if you're not acknowledging the highs and the lows. And part of celebrating is that you've overcome those low points and you kept going. 

Designer Peter: Yeah yeah. Exactly. And, and an actual fact that's more worthy of celebration if you have overcome challenges and difficulties to to get to where you are. Okay. So we've done a bit of defining a bit of exploring of what those words mean to us in our context of celebrating our 50th episode.

What's our next, you'd think by 50 episode you'd, that I would know what comes next, but for some reason my brain just doesn't 

Dr Dani: why 

Designer Peter: Why? We've touched a little bit on why haven't we, but why celebrate, why bother celebrating Dani? To be clear to the listener, I think we're, we, we're noodling on this because we've got something to celebrate, but I think it is we're talking about an encouraging celebration to [00:16:00] become part of more a part of our working and other, daily, weekly, monthly lives.

Finding things to celebrate. So why is it important? 

Dr Dani: When we celebrate, I. It's a form of reinforcement, I think you're the one that told me that quote. We get what we celebrate. 

Designer Peter: Yes. And that was the thing I was going to bring up later. Do you want me to elaborate on that? Yes. 

Dr Dani: Sorry. Spoiler alert. 

Designer Peter: No. Thanks for bringing up. So it's playing in my mind.

You I only heard this this quote or this particular use of those words only a couple of months ago. It comes from Frank Blake, who was the chairman and CEO of the Home Depot, or for American listeners. And Dani, the Home Depot. Yes.

DIY hardware retailer in America in USA. He was chairman, CEO from 2007 to 2014. And he has this wonderful perspective phrase, you get what you celebrate. So as the leader of that huge, big [00:17:00] organization yeah he recognized and lived by that that maxim you get where you celebrate.

If you don't celebrate something, then don't expect to get to get more of it. So therefore, as a leader of an organization, decide what you want and then go and look for it and then celebrate it. And the story I heard that brought this to life was, the example of somebody in, so he brought together his store leadership team, so you know, hundreds of people who managed stores all across the states to an annual conference.

And he told them the story and I think might even have brought the person on stage to the story of a someone at the cash register at one of the stores who had taken a decision upon themselves to, to give outstanding customer service. They'd had a strategic goal toward, they did it.

Frank Blake set the team's a strategic goal to improve their customer service. And, they had lots of different mechanisms for doing that and measuring it. And he could have, spent his [00:18:00] time on stage at this conference going through charts and tables and doing a PowerPoint presentation.

What he did instead was, tell the story of this checkout clerk who was helping an elderly gentleman pay for some timber. And the person just happened to ask, what was, sir, can I ask you what your project is today? And the and the gentleman said unfortunately my my grandson has has passed away unexpectedly.

And I really want to build his casket, his coffin, and that's what this timber is for. And the checkout clerk basically said to the gentleman, don't worry about this. We'll take care of it. We're you, we're not gonna ask you to pay for this, please. Just this, the, I'm sorry if you're a loss and this is our way of helping you in this difficult time.

The person didn't ask for permission to do that. They didn't have, a guidebook or rule book that told 'em that they were able to do that. They just decided that was the right thing to do in that moment for that customer. Frankly told that story on stage. And [00:19:00] the he may or may not have brought the checkout person on stage to celebrate them, but he used that as an example of, and celebrated it to, to reemphasize this message of you get what you celebrate.

Dr Dani: It reinforces the behaviors you want to see, right? Yeah. So when we see what is being acknowledged and what is being celebrated, it creates in our brains we're like, ah, that is what, so remember, our brains are very good at recognizing patterns. So it starts to build a pattern of these are the things that I should be doing.

Another reason that we need to celebrate is I hear leaders talking all the time about how people need to be more resilient. Resilience isn't an infinite pool of things. Re resilience is built and one of the ways we build resilience is by celebrating.

Okay. Because when we take the time to acknowledge and reflect, so when we celebrate, we acknowledge, wow, yeah, you've done this amazing thing. And then we [00:20:00] pause and we reflect on how we got to where we got to. We realize that we are capable of overcoming hard things. We are capable of doing difficult things.

We are capable of following through and achieving big results and big outcomes, and that is how we start to build our resilience. 

Designer Peter: Love it. And you brought to light me. For me, an important aspect of this pausing and celebrating is that it's very, you might be able to tell me why this is from a brain point of view, but it's very easy to forget our past selves. We forget we're looking at a snapshot of our current state, and we actually forget how far we've come either as an individual or as a group on a particular journey. Without looking back and remembering where we were, six months or 12 months or wherever far long ago, we just blank out the journey we've been on and blank out the difficulties we overcame to get where we are.

A and more, maybe more fundamentally blank out the fact that we've come so [00:21:00] far because we're still seeing the, perhaps seeing the road ahead and that it's full of challenges itself.

Dr Dani: We forget that once we've done something, the novelty wears off. Okay. I remember this happening when I was applying to PhD programs, it felt like this monumental task.

And the idea of finishing a PhD felt so big and so amazing and so far out there. And then after I finished it, it just started to , feel like So what? Everybody's got one, huh? Yeah, because it's now familiar to me. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. It's yeah it. So it sounds, compare that to, I think the phenomenon's called risk homeostasis.

Is that right? I guess it's yeah. Similar to me. Started to jump out of airplanes and that became my normal yeah. To, to most people. It's quite extreme. But to, to me and my [00:22:00] group of friends, it was just, what we did at the weekend that was normal to us. And yeah.

Dr Dani: That's more of a, that's just normalizing it. 

Designer Peter: Okay. Yeah. So it's different to what you're saying, which is you 

Dr Dani: No. We're saying the same thing. 

Designer Peter: Oh, okay. Okay. 

Dr Dani: It's normalizing it, yeah. So like to us now, recording a podcast isn't a big deal 'cause we've done it 50 times. But if we go back in time, three years and, if we had the ability to go back.

Three years and tell ourselves, oh my gosh. You're gonna be recording your 50th episode . Yeah. Do you get what I'm saying? Like the novel Yeah. Yeah. I do. Of this has worn off. 

Designer Peter: That's worn off. And actually that's the reason to pause and celebrate, isn't it? I think that's what we're saying the same thing yet.

'cause you go that we lose sight. The fact that we're still applying, even though the novelties worn off, for example, the, from recording the podcast, we're still applying the same effort. We're [00:23:00] still enjoying it as much or more than, we're still Yeah. Even though it seems normal it's still worthy of celebration and I'm pausing there 'cause my brain is going into work mode and going yeah, this is what happens in, in work and so many other aspects of our lives because things that were, that seemed impossible, are extraordinary at one point, just become normal and we're taking for granted.

And what we are seeing is actually every now and again, we should pause and reflect and go, wow, we've come so far. This is worthy of a bit of celebration. 

Dr Dani: This leads to another reason why we need to celebrate. 

Designer Peter: See what I did there? 

Dr Dani: Yes. Well done. This wasn't planned. Another reason we need to celebrate is because it helps us reconnect with the purpose.

Yeah. Yeah. Because what does happen is we go from delivering one big project to the next big project to the, and then we forget. I've delivered so many pro what were they even for? Yeah. Yeah. [00:24:00] And this is not even just in our this is not even just in our work lives it's our personal lives as well.

I often hear people saying, oh, I don't celebrate my birthday, which I personally think is just sad, but the fact that you have lived a whole other 365 days is really phenomenal. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Another orbit around the sun. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. So that, thank you. I will take that and go actually that remind us to be grateful can help us to remember, or to, yeah, to be grateful and reinforce. Gratitude make us reflect on the things we could be grateful for and pay more attention to. And science shows it's usually show, usually you that says that science or research shows that gratitude is very important.

But overlooked component of our our individual and group mental health.

Dr Dani: And celebration is a time that we can share [00:25:00] gratitude. So you shared the experience of the of,

frank Blake. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The former CEO of home Depot.

That is a time to be, so in when he got up on stage and told that story, that is a form of gratitude. It's celebration, but it's also gratitude. It's literally saying thank you, I'm very appreciative. Yeah. That there are people on my team that do these types of things that look after my customers.

When we celebrate anniversaries, you're literally telling your partner, I'm very grateful you're choosing to continue this life with me. Because they don't have to. You don't have to either, but they don't have to. Yeah. But that is the gratitude that comes in that is that you are taking that moment to go, wow, this person has chosen to spend X many years and continues to want to spend X many years with me.

Very grateful. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yep. Love it. Okay. Maybe where my mind is going is I think [00:26:00] especially in the work context and probably just as much in most people's personal lives, in the times we're living in things are hectic and, are, if we're not careful or I must went into Ferris buer mode there, but if we're not careful, life can flip us by.

I wish I knew that quote off by heart.

Life gets hectic and we, yeah, we just don't, we forget, or we choose not to celebrate. Even the small things. And it's a bucket filling activity. The metaphor of having a bucket full of energy at the beginning of a period, whether it's a, a day, a week, a year not the friends theme tune and, we're depleting our energy.

Investing in activities and striving for goals, accomplishments, achievements having tasks to do to keep life on the road or life our lives going where we want them to delivering things at work. And unless we pause and reflect and celebrate, then that bucket will [00:27:00] continue to be depleted.

Celebration is a bucket filling activity 

Dr Dani: celebration is a bucket filling activity. Yes. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah.

This is maybe a premature question, but can there be such a thing as too much celebration?

Dr Dani: Can there be some? Yes. Okay.

I'm a pragmatist, right? So I think everything has to be in balance. Yeah. We have to achieve some things to celebrate them. I think where we're missing the mark is there was two places we're missing the mark. One is that we have this idea in our head that celebrations are big and only worthy of big things.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think we've mastered scaling celebration. Yeah. The other part where we're failing with celebration is that we just don't do it for big or small things. We just don't. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. So I think my strange idea that we might at some point over celebrate, we're very far away from that because we're [00:28:00] currently generally under celebrating.

We're not celebrating enough. Where I was thinking about the over celebration is if we did it too much, then we'd start to lose the novelty. Plus we just wouldn't have, we'd spend all our time celebrating no time actually doing stuff to celebrate. So 

Dr Dani: you have to do some stuff to celebrate the stuff.

To 

Designer Peter: celebrate. You can't be celebrating a celebration. That starts to get a bit bit too inception, like however, what where my mind was going to was I wonder whether to get better at celebration. The part of our celebration is actually talking about why we celebrate. If you are like I reflect on times when I've been involved in agile ways of working and having, fortnightly sprints and then, reviews at the end of those sprints or the reviews at the end of say, 10 sprints or a quarter, and it's a good idea to have a celebration of those points.

Maybe yeah. Celebrating the ever end of every day or is getting too much, but what I think yeah, is helpful is at the beginning of a [00:29:00] celebration to remind us all of why we're celebrating what good it does us. 

So maybe that's another ingredient into our recipe for, oh, sorry, I've slipped, sorry.

I've sneakily taken us from why into how accidentally haven't I. 

Dr Dani: So why don't we talk about how do we celebrate ways of celebrating Yeah. Outside of the norm, right? So I think when we say celebrate, parties come to mind and Yeah. Comes to mind and yeah. So we all have these symbols and rituals that come to mind.

What I am talk I wonder if what we talk about in terms of the how is, how do we celebrate the things that we don't tend to celebrate? How do we celebrate the work? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I'd like to do that. And what comes to mind for me just to share with you is the celebration in the form of recognition at work.

And the, sometimes that that recognition [00:30:00] is well intended, but ill-founded, if I can frame it that way. And that, that the celebration becomes about the wrong thing. And I'm thinking here, I've mentioned it before a couple of times, my, one of my favorite books of all time and pieces of research, the progress principle Teresa Amabile where their research showed that contrary to most managers point beliefs that people would like or, people need reward and recognition as a motivator most people's main motivators making progress in meaningful work.

So therefore, that's the thing that should the thing that should be celebrated is making progress in meaningful work. And coming back to one of our earlier points, however big or small that progress is it's. Worthy of celebration and it comes, should come before the recognition and the rewarding of or the providing of re reward and recognition.

I'm getting myself a bit mixed up, but 

Dr Dani: Yeah. So if [00:31:00] you are a leader and you have individuals on your team that are working on big things, one of the best things that you can do to keep up motivation to productivity, to all the things that companies are wanting to achieve. One of the things you can do as a leader is to recognize progress. To celebrate progress. And that happens in very small ways. It is. It could simply be an email going, Hey, I saw that you got to this point in this project yet, congrats or. I know you've been putting in a lot of hours, just a very simple message to acknowledge the progress.

Yeah. That is celebrating. Yeah. That's one of the most effective things you can do. Yeah. The other thing that, while we're on this topic that I'll talk about is you also need to have, as a leader, you need to have a sense of different people want to celebrate in different ways. Super introverted people do not want to be ushered out in front of a group of people and have a big fuss made about [00:32:00] them.

Yeah. That is not, to some people that is not enjoyable. That's not celebration to them, that's like torture to them. Yeah. What they might appreciate is that quiet conversation. What they might appreciate is, Hey, you've made such good progress on this piece of work. Why don't we go out to coffee tomorrow?

Can I take you out to coffee, just as it, just to celebrate where you've gotten to with this? So you see the language, it's where you've gotten to with this, it's not finished it. Yeah. Yeah. Those little moments of celebrating along the way. And if you do that, if you do that consistently, those projects will get done.

That productivity of getting things done will go up. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So the, how we celebrate and is overlapping with it, but with what we celebrate, what you're saying there is it is just as important to celebrate along the journey as at the end of it. And often [00:33:00] we think that it's only worth celebrating when we get to the end of the journey and deliver something.

And what you're seeing, what research shows that actually, it's just as even more important to go, like you're saying, how far we've got so far, 

Dr Dani: because chances are if you don't have those celebration moments in between you won't make it to the end to celebrate. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Or what you get to the end of isn't actually worth celebrating.

And yet, and I think this is maybe where in the work context people we can sometimes end up with a bad taste, our mouths and therefore an aversion to celebration in that the launch party is booked in, months before the thing is actually launched and the launch party goes ahead regardless of how successful the launch actually is.

And, but the people under the surface realize that, the celebration wasn't proportionate to the actual achievement or event. 

Dr Dani: It has to be authentic. 

Designer Peter: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Dani: So in [00:34:00] terms of how, one, how is we need to celebrate progress. And we do that by small moments of recognition, whether it's an email, a message, or, even a chat to go, you've made such good progress on this. Thank you. I really appreciate the progress you've made on this.

Can we, can I take you out for coffee? And let's just celebrate where you've gotten to, and then another element of that is being authentic. Yeah. People are very good at sensing fakeness. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. We could we could spot when something doesn't fit a pattern 

Dr Dani: Exactly. So authenticity in celebrations matter.

And then the other thing that we've talked about is making sure the type of celebration matches the person. I remember there was a celebration for somebody for having worked at this organization for 30 years and they were putting on this big cocktail party for them. And this person was petrified, I ran into them and they were [00:35:00] gonna bring him out on stage and they were just standing there literally sweating he had taken his suit jacket on and like all of his arm, down his goodness shirt.

And he's I am terrified. I don't wanna be here. I don't wanna do this. And I'm just sitting there this is supposed to be a celebration of this guy's commitment to this organization. Yeah. And he is hating every moment of it. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Not good. Eh, we go back to why is it important? And and it's not ticking all the boxes, it's just crossing all the boxes.

It's like going this person, not that that this person will do the opposite of what he's just done to avoid this celebration in the future because it's very uncomfortable experience. Yeah.

Dr Dani: And I just got to chatting with him to try to get, and what he said is, why couldn't they have just given me a gift certificate to go to dinner with my family or something?

He said it very nonchalantly , being a design thinker, I'm like yeah. There's an idea. And maybe it's a choice. [00:36:00] Maybe it's you get this big fancy party or you get a gift certificate to go out with your family and maybe there's a. Maybe you don't like your family.

So there's a, I don't know, spa day for you or something. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: No activity. 

Designer Peter: It comes back to well intentioned doesn't it like the people who created that event for that person, I'm sure they were really, their intent was to give that, give that person adequate or, give that person the recognition they deserved.

But yeah, the way that they delivered it could have benefited from a bit of conversation or empathy for that person. Yeah. And I know I I'm thinking of places I've worked where, you know, annual rewards for individuals. Where things like winning a trip with the other individuals who'd been recognized to a place and spending time in a resort with some, colleagues and leaders in the work.

Some people absolutely love that. And some people were, felt like they were being made to [00:37:00] go. And the people who may have the purpose of is to incentivize and, motivate and as well as to, to recognize and celebrate is to, encourage other people to do their best work and contribute in the best way they possibly can.

But let's say 50% of the potential audience of that message are actually doing the opposite because they, they don't see that as a, an appealing 

Dr Dani: I'm not gonna perform my best 'cause they may make me go on this trip. Exactly. That I don't wanna go on. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, exactly. So again, intentioned, but not having the, always having the the desired result.

Dr Dani: An important thing here, and this applies to leaders, this applies to really everybody is asking other people, how do you want, I'm really proud of this thing you've done, and I'd like to take a moment to celebrate. How would you like to,

Designer Peter: yeah. Yeah, exactly. And another is another how is thinking [00:38:00] about are you wanting to, are you celebrating an individual or are you celebrating a group of people?

If your intention is to build an amazing culture in an organization. Then think about seller. I think my per perspective from my own experience in organizations is have a think about recognizing groups of people and the work that they've achieved together, rather than singling out or always consistently or only sing, singling out individuals and recognizing them.

Because as our friend Frank Blake says, you get what you celebrate. So if you celebrate individual contribution and achievement celebration, where is it might be and you do not celebrate team contribution and achievement or team working, then guess what will happen? You will reinforce the idea that individuals individual effort is more it is more important than teamwork. And in most organizations I've worked in, the emphasis is in the messaging at least has been we need to work [00:39:00] together as a team to achieve what we're doing. We won't be able to do it as individuals. And yet at the end of every quarter year, et cetera, is the individual that gets recognized more often than not.

Dr Dani: So this is why every organization's we need to collaborate better. Yeah. But nobody wants to talk about the reason that people aren't, there's lots of reasons that people aren't collaborating well, yeah. The simple solution seems to be let's send them on a training course that seems to be the answer to everything, right?

Yeah. Which you do need to, people do need to learn how to collaborate. So that is a skill you need to learn. Yeah. In addition to that though, if you want people to truly to collaborate, you have to have a reward system that reinforces. Collaboration and celebration is part of that.

At the same time though, there needs to be a balance. So in the case of that individual that was being recognized for 30 years of service, that is an individual achievement and he should have been celebrated. Yeah. Yeah. [00:40:00] In that situation, celebrating the whole team Yeah. Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. Yeah. But there are other situations. So like in a project if a team has been working together to deliver a project, that team needs to be recognized, not an individual, but the team, because the project would not have been successful if it had not been for the team. Yeah. And I know that there are different dynamics.

There's always passengers and teams that don't pick up their weight, but that is a performance issue that needs to be dealt with. Somebody's not performing on a team then deal with that. Yeah. The way to deal with that isn't to celebrate the individuals within the team. The way to deal with that is to performance manage the person that's not performing within the team, but then celebrate the team.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Agreed. Thanks for entertaining that mini rant there. So how, so we're still on house, so we want to be how we celebrate should be appropriate proportional, definitely empathetic and balancing [00:41:00] individuals and groups of any size. How practically how else, we, because I think where we started this was it doesn't need to be a big event and we've maybe straight into big event territory, like sending people on flights overseas to, or having big parties or, but maybe start at the other end of the scale, Dani, how else might we celebrate?

Dr Dani: So small ways to celebrate. The simple ways to celebrate is literally just taking a moment, Hey. You've just done this awesome thing. Yay. If we're going to go to the smallest way of celebrating, I think it is that it's taking a moment to acknowledge with words that, Hey, this is a big moment.

Designer Peter: I'm gonna coin a phrase here. And I am borrowing heavily but maybe atomic celebrations. 

Dr Dani: Oh, I like that. I like that. 

Designer Peter: Shout out to Atomic Habits and James, clear for [00:42:00] the inspiration there. Full credit. Atomic celebrations. Yeah. We tend to go I don't know, cosmic or global at least or, intercontinental literally sometimes.

But there's space and need for atomic celebrations too. 

Dr Dani: So the little celebrations can be the words. It could be treating somebody to coffees, treating yourself to a coffee. It could be, oh 

Designer Peter: for those was listening. I'm not watching first of all. Thanks.

Dani just held up some, some bars of chocolate. 

Dr Dani: One of my favorite ways to celebrate is with some chocolate 

Designer Peter: we bar of chocolate or a wee piece of chocolate. Likewise. We've got some too. 

Dr Dani: Oh, 

Designer Peter: We'll, we will not antagonize our miso phonic listeners by unwrapping and then eating our chocolate now.

We'll do that after we've finished recording. Dani and I have a little post record celebration of number 50 with some of our chocolate, [00:43:00] 

Dr Dani: but it doesn't ha but it could be, maybe you're not a chocolate person. I don't know. Maybe you're a candy person. Maybe you're not a savory person, so maybe it's you treat yourself to a state or Yeah.

Whatever it is. And this is why it's, this is why some authenticity needs to be there. 'cause if you say somebody and empathy needs to be there because if you say to somebody, Hey, I am really proud of, let's go celebrate what you've done. How about I buy you a cup of coffee? And they're like, I don't really drink coffee.

Yeah. It's not a celebration to them. You have to celebrate in a way that is meaningful to the person that you are celebrating. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. For us it could be chocolate. We could treat ourselves to a book or even, a trip to the library as a, as an atomic celebration.

We had an episode, or at least one episode in our 49 so far. Talk about rest being part of training or, the, and to me, celebration is a form or can be a form [00:44:00] of pausing. May maybe resting, but it's in this, my brain thinks of it in the same way.

You work work or train. And then you need to, that using the old muscle building metaphor you train at the gym, the actual. Muscles get built, not when you're training, but when you're resting. And I and I think there's something similar to the actual kind of inspiration, motivation, resilience, all the things we've talked about happen when we celebrate rather than when we're working towards the accomplishment or achievement or, 

Those pauses, those along, along the way in the journey.

A and in the same way that we can have kind of micro breaks then Yeah. Micro celebrations or atomic celebrations and if we're doing it for ourselves as individuals, then yeah. Getting to know what you like to do. I, but even as 

Dr Dani: a leader, getting to know what your team's yeah. That, that needs to be part of ironically, I think the thing that happens [00:45:00] is we get busy. And then celebrating is what we cut out. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. But 

Dr Dani: the way to get more stuff done is to celebrate. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great point. Just like the resting, I suppose the resting could be the celebrate.

You can find two things at once. 

I am thinking about our design thinker capabilities, Dani, and wondering how these can come into play. Let's put ourselves, we're a leader in an organization. We're wanting to create a, an even better culture and even yeah. We want to help our people be their best. We want to achieve more as a team, as an organization.

So we, our focus is on this question of celebrating and how we celebrate. How might we, or how do our design thinker capabilities come into play to think. 

Dr Dani: Definitely empathetic exploration. Yeah. Yeah. Getting to know what your people Yeah. Enjoy. Yeah. I think visual communication is a lot of [00:46:00] ritual wise and symbol.

So a lot of re rest celebration has symbolism in it. So I remember that somewhere that I worked, one of the things they had this big whiteboard and they would write it, it was a sales team and they would write. So and so made their first sale today, or, yeah. Yeah. And it was like a very visual thing.

Yeah. And then at one point they had a thing on the board where they were trying to sell like a hundred units in certain amount of time, and they would like, every time you made a sale, you got to go off and write like color it in. Yeah. So I think visual communication. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Is 

Dr Dani: a big part of that.

Designer Peter: I'll extend and expand that and say is visual and auditory. 'cause I worked somewhere where there was a bell that was wrong every time something was sold. It's the, yeah, it's the, yeah, it's the kind of paying attention to bringing attention to the little steps along the way towards the goal.

Yeah. Okay. So visual communication empathetic exploration. I think [00:47:00] the curious experimentation is something that, that we should pay a lot of attention to and 'cause in terms of, I think this is a, celebration in organizations even at home and non-work life. Something we should pay more attention to.

And it's likely that we won't find the. If we're not doing any of it or much of it, then we're unlikely to stumble upon the best way of doing it with our first effort. So we should, be kind to ourselves and our organization and the people we're celebrating and prototype, we should figure out what the right answer is for our particular context, circumstance, et cetera.

Yeah. Yeah, and combining that with empathetic exploration, like if we're a leader, then a great thing to do is to go and ask our team what are some different ways we might here's why celebration is important. Here's why I'd like to do more of it as a leader, I'd like us to come up with reasons [00:48:00] or ways to do it as a team.

Dr Dani: Yep. 

Designer Peter: And let's start experimenting. 

Dr Dani: Ask the team. If you're a leader, ask the team. But also, in the same vein, even if you're in your personal life, ask your partner, ask your children, ask your friends. This is coming up, how would you like to celebrate? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I personally think that, all organizations have project planning or annual planning in those planning processes. Part of what needs to be planned for is how will we celebrate? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. What will we celebrate? How will we celebrate? Yeah. Very good. 

Dr Dani: Awesome. Speaking of celebrating, 

Designer Peter: oh yeah.

Dr Dani: Shall we wrap this up so we can go have our chocolate? 

Designer Peter: Sounds like a good idea. Definitely. Worth a couple of squares of of special chocolate, Dani. 

Dr Dani: Yes. So as we have done 49 other times, 

Designer Peter: yeah.

Dr Dani: What are you taking away today, Peter? 

Designer Peter: What I'm taking away is first of all thank [00:49:00] you Dani.

For 49 and 50 episodes. Thank you for these conversations that we've had, and I've really enjoyed them all and I appreciate you being a podcast co-host. And what I'm taking away is this idea of remembering where you started and not jumping to where you are now, but recognizing how far you've come or what changes have happened between then and now.

And in particular, in this context, I have now moved from somebody who hoped that nobody would listen to our recorded conversations, to somebody who really hopes that people do listen to these conversations and also get something from them. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. So I did not realize that Peter was hoping nobody listened to our podcast when we first started,

Designer Peter: and [00:50:00] we should submit. We should say that we are delighted that we have people who listen to our podcast on six of the seven continents. 

That's something I would never have imagined three years ago.

Dr Dani: So we have listeners from. Six continents, and yesterday Peter and I were going through the list of countries and some of these places in the world we hadn't even heard of. So we quickly went and learned about them. So huge thank you to those that are listening to us from near and far, and places that we know, and places that we have a sense of belonging and connection to, and places that we don't, 

Designer Peter: that, that we haven't until now.

But now that we know, there's 

Dr Dani: yes 

Designer Peter: people listening in those places, we do feel connected. Dani, what's your what are some takeaways from this this conversation? 

Dr Dani: [00:51:00] Yeah. First thank you for saying yes. When I came up with this idea and pitched it to you. Hesitantly and secretly wishing that it didn't succeed.

But you said yes anyway,

so thank you. 

Designer Peter: I was curiously experimenting. Dani, 

Dr Dani: you were. Yes. So thank you for being curious and thank you for saying yes. And thank you for sticking with me on this journey of becoming podcasters. Yeah. And as I said before, thank you to the people that are turning in from six different continents to, to listen to our episodes.

We wouldn't have this podcast if you weren't tuning in, so please keep listening. Yeah. And my takeaway is the quote that you shared, you get what you [00:52:00] celebrate ' cause. I think that celebration isn't something that just particularly the small things I want to get much better at recognizing this needs to be celebrated.

Yeah. Nice. That's my takeaway. 

Designer Peter: Great. And I think that, to me, that's the perfect way to end up, is that message. Thank you, Frank Blake of you. Get what you celebrate. 

Dr Dani: Yes. Love it. 

Designer Peter: Chocolate time Dani. 

Dr Dani: Chocolate time. Bye everyone. Bye everyone. Thanks. Thanks.