Crowdsourcing Gratitude

We've been doing some thinking about our strategy for 2018 and a lot of useful and insightful directions have been suggested as part of this strategic planning cycle.  Among the general categories are things like business and talent development and a new approach to how we consider crowdsourcing.  And that got me thinking about crowdsourcing in general and how that impacts our view of the individual contributor.  If we go with the notion that crowds do better at solving complex problems than individuals what does that mean for how we think about inspiring, motivating and appreciating the most critical assets in a crowdsourcing world - people?

Somewhere in a dark drawer there is a watch with my name on it - a commemoration of my 5 years of service to the company.  Even thinking about that watch makes me slightly angry and a little sad.  After five years at EPAM, I really got what I wanted - more responsibility and more autonomy.  After 10 years - even more so, but then a chance to work with a sometimes truly difficult and other times magical team of visionaries and managers.  I hope that after 15 years, I get even more  support in  taking EPAM's brand and my work to a higher power - that of inspiring and leading other people to be thought leaders and change agents.  But what we never really gave or got mostly because we don't really know how, is true gratitude - in its most intimate form.  

This past week I was fortunate to spend some time in Minsk, still our largest location and to a large extent the soul of the company.  It was incredible to talk with people from various teams and although we now have all of the requisite complexity of a close to $1BB organization, what struck me most was that every person was driven to succeed in their role.  There wasn't a single person who wasn't wanting to face the challenges and grow through them - but every one of them in their own unique way.  I must have had a hundred ideas over the course of the last week of how to harmonize all of these points of light (oh my god .. I'm channeling George Bush!)  But really you could take a look at the brilliant inaugural speech he gave on January 20, 1989 and replace the words with my woefully inadequate edits to come up with what an EPAM 2018 leadership conference speech might look like:

I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation Company and the Globe, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White House Headquarters, in the Cabinet agencies Global Delivery Organization and all of the local customer offices. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government team to become involved. The old ideas values are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism loyalty that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.[3]  

 That ladies and gentlemen, is the epitome of Crowdsourcing at its best and the missing ingredient for me at least, is true Gratitude (not to be confused with Employee Recognition in any way).  How do we inspire and organize global teams of people to contribute their best and having done so, how do we say Thank You for your contribution -Truly, Meaningfully, Timely and in ways that express the depth of our appreciation in a world where nameless Crowds are all the rage and everything if virtual.  Well - that's the rub. Meaning is completely different for every person and changes drastically depending on a large set of internal and external factors.  So you really have to know people in order to 'make gratitude real'.

 EPAM has an internal system (telescope) that can show us a really complete snapshot of any employee in the world and we can infer from their direct and indirect activities and networks, basics like career interests, talents, hobbies, social connections etc..  What we cannot infer is what would be truly meaningful for that individual as a force of gratitude.  So we have internal events, and we have give-aways and trainings and even a heroes portal that gives out merit badges.  But somehow, I think that we need to start at the very top of our org chart and work this true virtue into the fabric of how we interact with each other and how we build teams and the crowds of crowdsourcing.  And that has to be done personally in series of direct interactions and with gratitude being at the very center.  And so it seems we come full circle (at least in my very winding thesis)  - to propel the success of crowds, we need to deeply engage individuals and we need to do so in a way that expresses true gratitude and that can only be done personally - face to face.  

So my resolution for 2016 is to somehow make gratitude the cornerstone of how we work together.  If we make it happen, we've got the most important foundation for achievement -  the rest, I'm confident will come with time and technology.