The Impact of a Written Note
We did a Kaizen event last week...it went well, more on that in later posts.
But just a few minutes ago, I was on our production floor and two of our associates turned and said "Thank you!" as I walked up to them. I looked a bit surprised and they said "For the note!"
Oh yeah. After the kaizen, I wrote a short, hand-written note to the home address of each of the seven folks on the team. Not a big deal...they even had to wade through my less-than-Palmer-Method handwriting to make sense of it. I just expressed my appreciation for them being on the team and contributing so many good ideas.
And the note seemed to mean a lot, perhaps more than the mere effort to send it.
As I've said many times before here, a Lean environment is a high-change-rate environment. For it to work, there must be a reservoir of trust. And one way to build trust is to say "Thank You" in numerous ways.
In this email-driven, largely impersonal world, a hand-written note stands out, more clearly than ever. It is so unusual, so unexpected, so surprising that it becomes memorable. Take a moment today and mail a short, hand-written note to someone who deserves a "thank you".
I hope this is helpful.