The Heart of the Harvest
Let people know they mattered.
An orchard eventually produces fruit.
But the harvest is more than the fruit itself. It is also the moment we stop long enough to notice what grew, who helped grow it, and what the effort produced.
Leadership is like that.
People work hard. They solve problems. They help customers. They support one another. They learn. They recover from mistakes. They quietly do things that make someone else’s success possible.
Too often, we notice—and move on. The Heart of the Harvest is about something remarkably simple and deeply human:
Let people know when their contribution mattered.
From Contribution to Meaning
Recognition becomes powerful when people know what they did, why it mattered, and what it meant.
SELF
Who has helped shape me and may not know it?
Am I noticing the contributions around me, or moving too quickly to the next thing?
Do I express appreciation specifically and sincerely?
TEAM
Who did something worthwhile recently that may have gone unnoticed?
What behavior would we like to see repeated?
Are quiet contributions being recognized as well as visible results?
ORGANIZATION
What does our culture teach people about whose contribution matters?
Do recognition practices reinforce the values and behaviors we want more of?
Are we celebrating only outcomes, or also the people and practices that made them possible?
A Story from the Orchard
The Apple We Personally Grew
I can see several objects from where I sit.
None is especially valuable in the usual sense. Their value is in what they help me remember.
One is a collection of signed books from authors, mentors and people whose thinking shaped my life. I treasure them, but especially the books from Tom Peters. Tom has famously difficult handwriting. More than once I have photographed an inscription and sent it to his editor asking some version of, “What the hell does this say?” That still makes me smile.
One book matters more than the others. It is 60, the deeply personal book Tom created around his sixtieth birthday. My copy is number 107. The book itself is beautiful, but that is not why I treasure it. The inscription is personal. When I read it, I can imagine Tom pausing and thinking of me while he wrote it.Tom is 83 now. I am 75. But once, we were 60.
Only recently did I recognize how much of the Wisdom Orchard was already present in that book. Tom gathered sixty things that mattered to him—experience examined, lessons harvested, meaning passed along. The inscription transformed the book into something else. It became evidence that someone I deeply respected had seen me.
A few feet away sits another object: a small die-cast UPS package car. They are package cars, by the way. Not trucks. I don’t even remember which member of my team gave it to me.
Yet nearly fifty years later, it is still here.
That little brown vehicle reminds me where so much of my professional life began—the standards, discipline, service, performance, friendships, mistakes and lessons that helped shape who I became.
The person who gave it to me probably had no idea I would still be looking at it decades later.
That is one of the mysteries of recognition.
We rarely know which sincere gesture will stay with someone. There is one more object I often carry with me.
It is a command coin given to me by General James Clapper when he led the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. I admired Jim, and I admired the extraordinary people of that agency. Much of their work was invisible to the rest of us, yet all of us benefited from it. The coin reminds me of service.
But it also reminds me of what happens when someone you respect takes the time to let you know that your contribution mattered.
The book, the package car and the coin are not the recognition.
They are vessels that carry the memory of being seen.
That may be what we underestimate.
A kind, sincere word costs almost nothing.
Yet it may be one of the most important nutrients we ever add to the soil in which another person grows.
And there is another side to this.
We deserve to know when we have been part of that nutritious soil for somebody else.
The apple we personally grew always tastes the sweetest.
Perhaps that is because we remember more than the fruit.
We remember the soil.
We remember the people who tended it with us.
And we remember the moment someone noticed what we had helped to grow.
Take a Look at Your Own Harvest
Recognition does not have to be elaborate. It has to be real.
The free Heart of the Harvest worksheet will help you choose one person whose contribution deserves to be seen, identify what they did, the difference it made and the value it represented—and decide how you will let that person know.
Carry the Harvest Back Into the Orchard
The work continues.
The Five Groves are not a sequence you complete once. Roots need tending. Horizons move. Old growth needs pruning. New leaders need room to grow. And every healthy orchard needs people who notice what is growing.
What will someone experience differently because of how you choose to lead?