It is part of our company culture to celebrate. We celebrate reaching a milestone, company goal or achievement. In the earlier years the company supplied a special "snack" during Friday afternoon break for everyone when another 100 mowers had been produced- it used to take several weeks. Today, we celebrate hitting our production goals every other week on Friday afternoon.
We have celebrated reaching annual production and sales goals with company lunches "on the grounds." Producing the 5,000th, 10,000th and 25,000th mowers have been marked by a celebration.
We celebrated when our factory mortgage was paid off, and when each employee reached 10- and 20-year anniversaries. There is a plaque in our office that recognizes employees with perfect attendance for a year (seven last year).
Why bother? The fiscal conservative would say, "These parties are costing too much time and money." In our thinking, a celebration is a "party with a purpose" in three ways:
• Celebration is the result of goal setting and goal reaching, and goal setting is a vital company activity (without goals a company will perish).
• Celebration energizes, completes goal setting and striving to reach the goal, and helps start the next cycle (what is our next goal?).
• Celebration reinforces the teamwork aspect of a company where individuals recognize their part in reaching company goals, and realize they were able to accomplish more for themselves by working together in a company than working individually.
You will notice elsewhere in this issue the announcement of our 50,000th mower celebration. We are giving plenty of advance notice, hoping many of you will plan to join us in Colorado in August 2000 to make this a great celebration. It will truly be a celebration of the "Walker Mower Family."
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