Once a year, slow the team down before the next quarter

Teams rush from deadline to deadline, sprint to sprint, quarter to quarter. Retro meetings become purely operational, focused on what went wrong and what needs fixing. Appreciation is squeezed into quick chat messages, emoji reactions, or brief mentions in all-hands slides.

The meaningful moments—when someone stayed late to help debug, when a teammate's insight saved the project, when the team pulled together through a crisis—get buried in the rush to deliver the next thing. There's rarely time to pause and acknowledge the human side of working together.

What if your team could pause once a year, between the end of December and the start of the next planning cycle, to really see each other again? This ritual isn't about fixing everything or implementing a whole new process. It's about creating a small, sacred space to acknowledge what matters most.

Pick a quiet meeting time when no one is rushing to the next thing. Make coffee or tea. Close laptops and put phones away. This is your time to remember why you chose to work together in the first place, and to set a few simple intentions for the year ahead.

You don't need a complete process overhaul or expensive team-building retreats. All you need is:

• •Each teammate writes one Thank You Card to another teammate or the whole team, acknowledging specific contributions from the past year
• •The team creates a small New Year Pact with 1-3 promises about how you want to work together next year

These two simple tools create a ritual that's meaningful but manageable. The Thank You Cards help you practice specific, genuine appreciation, while the New Year Pact builds shared intention for the year ahead without overwhelming anyone with process changes.