Make Their Day: FISH Philosophy

One of the four components of the FISH Philosophy is Make Their Day. While it would be easy for my team to say “Yeah, we do that every day” and not focus on this very much, we like to take it to a new level and make some days extra special.

This past Christmas one of our teammates was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is 28 years old and has 2 small children and while she wasn’t always a big fan of the FISH Philosophy, we knew that doing something nice for her would make her day.

What did we do?

First, we let folks give a free will offering and bought a Target gift card with the money we raised so she could get her children and herself something nice for Christmas. Our 90 person IT department collected almost $700 from 30 or so people.

Second, we asked folks to cook their favorite holiday treat, so she would have something for the boys to eat, and something she could share in a cookie exchange. 10 people participated in this.

I also decided to take my Flip video camera around the department and ask folks to share a 30 second well wish with our co-worker. I collected 17 short videos, with some as short as 3 seconds “Get well soon!” to 2 minutes from some who knew her well, sending her good vibes and sharing a fun story. I also went back by our computers and “interviewed” them, letting her know that even the computers missed her. I put the video together and burned a DVD copy using Windows Movie Maker, adding a few winter pictures and the year to the video.

Lastly, we had a card at someone’s desk to sign so if you didn’t want to do anything else, you could at least write a quick note and wish her well. I didn’t look at the card before we gave it to her, but I’d bet over half the department signed it for her.

This was a big success and I think it showed our fallen co-worker that when times are tough, we still cared about her, and that even though she wasn’t with us over the holidays, we still cared about her and her family.

3 Reasons for Success

No forced participation – we sent the email out letting folks know what we were doing, and we left it alone. We didn’t hound people for money, or for food, or anything.

Made it easy to get involved – Everyone could do what they wanted to do. Some gave money. Some made cookies. Some participated in the video, and some signed a card. Whatever you wanted to do, you could do.

Made it personal – With me interviewing folks, and then showing them their video and allowing them to re-record it if they didn’t like it, we made it very fun to participate. I’d make silly faces while I was holding the camera, I did the 3-2-1 countdown like a real videographer would do, and folks could say whatever they wanted to say. This let everyone add their personal flavor to the mix, and it made folks much more apt to take part.

How can you BE THERE for your team today, or someday, when they really need you?