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All Hail the Golden Kraut

Motivation can take many forms. At CentreSource, it takes the form of spray-painted canned food.

But first, a bit of backstory…

In 2008, we were the leading sponsor of Nashville’s Barcamp. We created a program for the day, acted as MCs, and designed some interactive games for what was a great day of speaking, learning, and networking. We forgot one thing, though, until the last minute: prizes for said games. So in desperation at the 11th hour, Nick grabbed the only free things in the house: two cans of spraypaint and two cans of canned food. And this begat the dumbest prizes ever — Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans.

The next day, at the culmination of this event with everyone gathered together in the main hall, Nick gave these prizes away. The Silvery Beans, given first, elicited mostly confusion from the audience. Lucky for us, however, the winner of The Golden Kraut played along with our game and announced his excitement by running through the aisles with his prize in hand, shouting like a madman.

Afterwards, I suggested we had two options for dealing with something so ridiculous: either we pretend it never happened, or we own up to it so tenaciously that it becomes the joke that never dies. We choose the latter.

So, we implemented Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans as an interactive tool. How?  We give one Golden Kraut and one Silvery Beans each month to the most deserving members of our team. We use the free Google Docs Form tool to submit nominations in a single location that is reviewed at the end of the month by our management team. The nominations are frequently so genuinely complementary (and hilarious) that we share them openly at our weekly staff meetings.

Jason "Shamus" O'Brien's Silvery Beans Win

And we built a website at www.thegoldenkraut.com where we feature a gallery of winners. Everyone who receives the Kraut or Beans gets to answer a questionnaire (again, collected using the free Google Forms tool) that is then posted to the site — a ritual that has become well-loved for the cleverness of answers. It gives us something to laugh about, and links to send around to our peers.

After five months of giving Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans, we’ve found that its already made a noticeable impact on our culture: we’re more likely to rely on each other, reward each other openly for outstanding performance, and collaborate to develop Kraut-worthy ideas. When the winners aren’t announced promptly, our team is openly asking for the results — proving that even silly ideas can be highly engaging.  It also proves that incentive can come from, well, anything – as long as you’ve earned it by earning the respect of your peers.

With an idea this ridiculous, we decided to expand it outside our little house and into our community. Each month, CentreSource hosts an Interactive Mixer for our growing interactive and web community, and each month we award one Golden Kraut and one Silvery Beans to non-CentreSource attendees who participate in our interactive games. We circle up in the foyer of North Fourth — a community of partners, references, competition, and friends — and laugh along as someone is bestowed a tongue-in-cheek honor and given the chance to answer an equally tongue-in-cheek survey online.

Sure, it’s mostly all about humor — but we like to think it means something more. It gives us a moment each month to laugh about something as a community and recognize two people, even for something as silly as finding the most hidden silver coins in the house or getting enough signatures from other attendees. And as such, our community is beginning to recognize names and faces as being a part of a community that is moving, growing, and learning together. And that’s exactly what we want for Nashville.

Not bad for a can of paint and some canned vegetables.