Contribute/Recognition/draft

Recognition at Mozilla: A Working Guide

The skill of acknowledgement is a statement of a person’s best qualities. It is more than just a compliment. You are observing and stating qualities that the person has that allow them to accomplish something. It is more about who the person is then what they have done. An acknowledgment might sound something like: ‘You are truly committed to a high level of excellence.’ Or ‘You are passionate about what you do.’ Or ‘Your persistence and focus have ensured that this project get done – despite all the obstacles that might have discouraged you.
Taken from TRIBE:Awareness of Self https://wiki.mozilla.org/People:TRIBE

Recognition at Mozilla is Mission-Based

Recognition is different from rewards. While recognition is the act of acknowledging that something has happened, or that an action has already been taken, rewards are thing used to motivate people to take an action.

People do not contribute to Mozilla for rewards. People contribute to Mozilla because they believe in our Mission.

People Contribute for Three Reasons

According to social science, people contribute for:

• autonomy (the need to direct our own lives)
• mastery (to learn and create new things)
• purpose (to do better by ourselves and our world in some way)

We recognize what people contribute to the project as a way to acknowledge that they have taken actions that have impact on our community, on us, and on our project. We recognize them in appropriate ways that acknowledge that they have achieved autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Recognition creates cultural identity around a project. It allows us to tangibly illustrate to people that they are part of the project, and identify that they make an impact as part of the group.

Our concept of motivation at Mozilla is drawn from Dan Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which he has conveniently summed up in this 18 minute Ted Talk.

We Should All Be Recognizing

We should all be recognizing. We should all be recognized.

The responsibility of seeing other people for their accomplishments, the impact they have made, and the work that they do belongs to all of us.

It's easy to leave it to people in "power", but that underestimates our own ability to make a difference in the lives of the community that runs and supports this project.