Some things should not be automated!

A few days ago, I received one of those automated "Great job!" emails from a company platform. You know the ones. A system triggers it, maybe based on a milestone or a peer click, and it lands in your inbox with a little confetti graphic.

I stared at it for a moment. And I felt.. nothing.

There's a growing wave of platforms designed to automate recognition (Bonusly, Kudos, WorkTango, Nectar, Achievers, and so many more). They promise to "scale appreciation" across your organization. The intention is good. Leaders want more recognition happening. They see a gap and try to close it with a system.

Nobody sets out to make appreciation feel fake. It just happens the moment you delegate it to a platform. Appreciation is inherently tied to human effort. The second a system handles it for you, the core value quietly disappears.

And we FEEL it. We can sense the difference between a human who took a moment to write something specific.. and a system that generated a congratulations email because a checkbox got ticked. That difference is not subtle.

For appreciation to actually build trust, it needs four things:

It must be genuine. Not a template. Something from your actual experience of what the person did.

It must be personal. Not "the team did great." YOU did great, and here's what I noticed.

It should be unexpected. Scheduled recognition loses its spark.

It must require visible effort. This is the one automation kills. Remove the effort, and you remove the meaning.

It must be precise. Great appreciation includes details that show someone paid actual attention. ('Good job' = lazy feedback!)

Many organizations are being sold on the idea that AI agents can handle "the soft stuff" to a good degree. Recognition, feedback, check-ins. But appreciation is not the place to automate. This is not the right use of AI agents. Don't get deceived by the lure of startups offering to take this off your plate. Some things need to come from you, personally.

So try this instead. Write a "Power Thank You" email this week. Pick one person. Write them something short and specific about what they did and why it mattered. No platform. No nomination form. Just you, writing to them.

That automated email I received? Deleted it within seconds. But I still remember, word for word, a three-line email a former manager sent me years ago thanking me for how I handled a difficult client situation. Three lines. No confetti graphic. Just human effort.

Who is one person you could write a genuine "Power Thank You" to this week?