Work Achievements and Success Stories

We would like to share with you some short inspiring success stories about employees who were determined to reach work achievements, and were able to do so with the help of their colleagues, managers, and organization’s culture.

An engineer at Hewlett-Packard bursts into his manager’s office. With excitement and joy he informs his manager that he fixed a product defect which was causing a lot of trouble for the company. The manager was so excited with the great news that he didn’t know how to reward his staff, he grabbed his lunch box took a banana and gave it to him instantly. The engineer was shocked at first, but then both laughed and people started talking about the event. The story reached to upper management and they tried to benefit from the experience, thus they created the idea of the golden banana award. What happened here is really simple: Instant Recognition. The power of instant recognition can really make a difference in your employee’s performance and productivity. It is not a matter of just money, but to instantly recognize and praise someone for an outstanding job he or she is doing.

The Ritz-Carlton hotel is one of the best hotels in the world. Employees at the Ritz-Carlton have the authority to spend up to 2,000$ instantly to fix any problem for any customer without taking permission from their managers. Empowerment and building a trust worthy environment are the key items here; if you show your staff that you trust them to such extent, you can expect nothing less than achievements, outstanding performance, and a strong sense of belonging to the organization.

A chemist at 3M created non sticky glue which can be easily removed on any surface it touches. However he didn’t know how to make use of it in the product line of the company. As he was thinking along with his colleagues how to utilize his new glue, an employee passes by and complains about note papers dropping off his desk and losing them. One of the employees suggested that he uses the glue which the chemist created. The idea worked perfectly, and since then 3M has become the leading company in post it notes which generate millions of dollars. Group thinking and creativity can sure lead to outstanding results.

A final story from Hewlett-Packard, where an employee was working on large screen monitors prototypes in the early 90’s. He thought that these monitors will dominate the market in the near future and can be used in special projects as well. He showed his prototype to Dave Packard himself, one of the cofounders of HP, but Packard thought that the product won’t sell in the market and asked the employee to stop working on it. The employee determined that his vision of the product will succeed, kept working on his own until his product was done. The product was sold to NASA and other medical centers in USA generating more than 35 million dollars in profit. Determination, initiative, and believing in yourself can lead to unexpected work achievements and inspiring success stories.

These are some of the great stories which inspire many people to start thinking about themselves and what potential they hold in achieving great things at work and even outside work.

Photo Credit Chuckumentary

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