Twitter Summary: Recognizing individual contributions with artifacts of success are a part of any team culture. Make sure to do it right.
Physical artifacts of success have been around as long as people have been cooperating in accomplishing goals. Hunters collect trophies of their first kills. Microsoft programmers get “ShipIt” awards. These physical mementos are typically very group sensitive and can be very elaborate especially when you compare the United States Military awards and decorations to the simpler but more permanent Maori tattoos. Despite the differences, their purpose is so that groups can identify their own and have an idea of how each has contributed to the benefit of their group.
Most companies I have worked for has had an analogue to this from t-shirts and laminated sheets of 
paper for product launches to Lucite plaques for creating patents. In the best of cases, there are pretty clear requirements for awards. To get a patent block, you must have a patent application. In the worst case, it can feel like the mementos are just being handed out to anyone who is standing nearby or to curry favor. This can cause resentment among the team members and create disincentives among the very people who you want to show your appreciation.
With the potential issues surrounding physical artifacts of success, it is tempting just not to create any at all. However, every group develops its own symbols to self-identify. If you can come up with a clear simple rule set for how these artifacts are given out, you can maintain the integrity of the mementos and give people recognition for how their efforts have helped the team.
Qualities for creating a meaningful physical “Artifact of Success”:
- Goal based — Give “artifacts of success” only for contributions that help with company’s goals. Product, project launches that create substantive value and took focused organization effort for the company should be recognized. Don’t recognize things that are nice, but not distinguishing for the company.
- Limited — The mementos will only be created for the few that achieved the goal or contributed for the benefit of the team. If necessary, create a simple rule to identify who gets things and who doesn’t. Don’t devalue the identification by handing them out arbitrarily.
- Inexpensive — By using inexpensive tokens (paper, baseballs, golf balls, origami birds, colored pins), there is no mistaking that the purpose of this is recognition not compensation.
- Portable — As much as I love a good t-shirt, I can’t carry all of them with me, so having a jar of launch golf balls, or tokens that I can post on a wall or hold on a desk will suffice.
- Sincere — I am always a fan of the memento listing: The name of the event, the date of the event, and being cross-signed by all the team-members at the launch party, or by the CEO/organizational lead for the company.
- Composable, stackable, groupable — If the physical artifacts of success can be composed, similar to military badges, Maori tatoos or Amazon’s patent blocks, you create a compelling visual effect that enhances the value when you have sets of successes.
By spending a little time on what qualifies as something that deserves “recognition” and what would be team appropriate, you should be able to create your own visual shorthand to recognize team members contributions to the company.