Tuesday I was in Kraków with the team. Friday through Sunday I was in Jaipur at a partner’s summit. One week, two companies, one theme kept coming up: investing in people.
In Kraków, the team thanked me for coming. More than once. Somebody said it at dinner. Somebody said it again as we walked out of the office. It was my second visit this year.
I took it as a good sign. It wasn’t about me.
What the Thanks Measured
Nobody on that team had worked for a CEO who came twice in a year. Most of them don’t have a long list of employers to compare against. Two visits did not seem normal because nobody had defined normal yet.
The thanks wasn’t measuring me. It was telling me the bar was still open to be defined.
Two Days in Jaipur
The partner in Jaipur put two days on the calendar for their people. Not a town hall. Two days. Leadership sat on panels and took questions from the room. Teams were split into competitions built so people had to learn something and lean on each other to do it.
That team was grateful too. You could hear it. Not for the leaders being in the building. For the two days.
Same feeling, different scale. In Kraków the thanks went to a visit. In Jaipur the thanks went to an investment.
People Measure Against What They’ve Lived
Here’s what I got wrong. Gratitude does not tell you whether you are doing enough. What people are grateful for tells you where the bar sits.
A team that has only had absent leaders thanks you for a visit. A team that gets two growth days a year thanks you for them. A team with no history yet takes whatever you do first and calls it the bar. Nobody picks their bar. They get it from whatever came before.
In Kraków, not much came before. The bar is whatever I do next.
Say What Normal Is
The fix isn’t to visit more or copy the two days. The fix is to say what the bar is before a visit becomes the bar by accident.
I told the Kraków team this is how I do things. Not a favor. Not a special trip. Here is what “this” means, so nobody has to guess. I show up, and I invest in the people when I do. Both. And as the team grows, both grow with it. More people means more visits and more investment, not the same amount spread thinner.
I wrote in June that clarity is the job. I had it pointed at decisions. It applies here too. People need to hear the standard out loud from the person who holds it. Left unsaid, the standard they use is the last one they survived.
On the Way Home
Tomorrow I’m in a car to Delhi, then a flight home. Two companies in one week, both doing right by their people, neither one measuring it the same way.
The Kraków team thanked me for coming. I’m glad they did. Next year there will be more of them, and the thanks should be for more than a flight. That’s the bar. I said it out loud so they can hold me to it.