Corporate Celebration

"Ritual and ceremony undergird, interpenetrate, and intertwine with all aspects of corporate life: recognition, rewards, quality, teamwork, and leadership."

"If you don't feel comfortable with or know how to foster celebration, there is a leadership shortfall, particularly since ritual and ceremony play such an influential role in cultural maintenance, reinforcement, and transformation."

"Celebration helps narrow the performance gap by simultaneously stimulating positive feelings and knitting people together in a well-focused, unified work community."

"Cyclical events create an endless spiral that knits past, present, and future into a meaningful workplace tapestry."

"Properly planned, these are rarely repetitious, mindless occasions; they are secularly inspired efforts to give the cycle of life special meaning."

"Celebrations express and reinforce cultural values."

"Gathering people together to celebrate releases emotions, summons the corporate spirit, and creates stories and memories that kindle faith, hope, zeal, and enthusiasm for future efforts and performance."

"In a world of rapid change, we need to pay as much attention to loss as to gain, to demise as to growth, to disaster as to triumph."

"Cohesive cultures place a premium on learning the ropes?legend, lore, and traditional ways. "

"Pulling together to help others strengthens the cultural bonds of the workplace."

"Substituting more fanciful rules and eliminating material goals offers people opportunities to move outside formal boundaries, create novel ideas, spin new visions, form better relationships, blow off a little steam, and just have some fun together."

"Every act of celebration is a work of art?it bears the signature of the organization, its culture, and its designers. "

"Emotional engagement precedes intellectual connection, creating an openness to the deeper symbolic subtext."

"As designers of celebrations, we must recognize and challenge barriers to creativity and set an example of openness, imagination, and the capacity for surprise."

"One of the hallmarks of a cohesive, focused corporate culture is an abundance of stories."

"To avoid costly errors, celebrations need the same level of attention that is given to strategic planning, financial forecasting, and other important business functions."

"Celebration is an act of art and of the heart and will not be miscalculated if it comes from deep within individuals and from the shared values a company holds most dear."

"Celebration is at the center, not the periphery of business. It is the sacred fuel needed to draw out the spiritual resources that enhance performance."