The Power of Small Ball

With less than two weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training, I have diamonds in my eyes as I look forward to the upcoming baseball season.

While my beloved Blue Jays led the major leagues in home runs last season, this year their revamped line up will most likely rely on getting runners on, stealing bases, moving them along and scoring runs. To put it another way, small ball.

Although we all thrill at the Ruthian blast, there's something to be said for this back to basics style of play. There's also something to be said for the parallel that exists between this approach to the game and the way organizations recognize their best and brightest employees.

Too often organizations swing for the fences and laud only the heroic stories of employee achievement. However, TD Canada Trust has discovered in using The Hive that there's something even more powerful in recognizing the little things that people do every day.

The power of small ball is evidenced as well by Whitney Johnson's great blog post for The Harvard Business Review. In "Thank You for Doing Your Job" Johnson underscores the importance of simple and regular expressions of appreciation for your employees.

Manners matter. While a simple "thank you" is a small gesture it can have a big impact on engagement, discretionary effort and believe it or not, earnings.

So are you taking the time each week to say thank you to your employees?