When your work depends on people, start measuring your human touches.
I track the moments when I proactively reach out to thank someone for work they did well. The goal is simple: by the end of the month, make sure every person on the team has received at least one genuine note of appreciation.
This is not about turning gratitude into a performance metric. It is a prompt for the manager. The count makes an easy-to-neglect behaviour visible, and the game creates enough awareness to turn good intent into a habit.