Praise Economics

In the movie Sleepless in Seattle, the young son of Tom Hanks' character sarcastically responds to his father's dinner with the statement, "Thanks for dinner. I've never seen potatoes cooked like that before."

I always loved the sarcasm in that statement.  I also enjoyed that statement made after the young boy was forced to give thanks to something that was not at all impressive. It was satisfactory at best.  Many times I want to respond with the same sarcastic tone to things in the workplace that are praised highly but are pedestrian and/or status quo.

"Thanks for that presentation, I've never seen slides used like that before."

Instead of resorting to sarcasm - and instead of cheering for the status quo, you should truly reward work that does go above and beyond, and lessen your positive reaction to work that is satisfactory at best.

It is praise economics. Limit the supply of cheer sessions and the demand (value) of said cheer sessions will increase. Thus, resulting in a more focused and desired effort to go beyond that status quo.

Thanks for reading this post, I'm sure you've never seen sentences written like these before.