Category: Engagement

I keep coming over all three lately. In my recent post “Survive and Thrive – How Was it for You?” I shared three things that mean a lot to me. The first one of those is “The folk I know, and have learnt to know, and am learning to know fascinate me.” And here are three of those folk:

Amy Dean

Amy is President of Keyword Communications. More importantly (to me at least) Amy is someone who writes well and informatively on her subject. Her recent post about inside out social media is a great example. Even more importantly, she encourages and motivates me to keep on doing what I’m doing and do it as best I can.

Peter Massey

Peter is the MD and a founder of customer experience leaders Budd. He helps explain and practise the essence of great customer service better than anyone else I know. He also writes well and informatively about his subject. This post about the recently launched bicycle scheme in London is a great example. Even more importantly, he encourages and motivates me to keep on doing what I’m doing and do it as best I can.

David Zinger

David Zinger is an expert on employee engagement, and the founder of The Employee Engagement Network, a place I enjoy investing some time to share and learn. David’s just written a cool book called “Zengage: How to get more into your work to get more out of it“. Another great practitioner and writer, why not pop over to his web site and check him out? Even more importantly, he encourages and motivates me to keep on doing what I’m doing and do it as best I can.

Tomorrow What Goes Around will be one year old. Has it really been a year? Yes it has. September the first is our birthday. We’ll come back to the celebrations later. For now, I want to share three things that I’ve focussed on and worked at to help What Goes Around survive and thrive this past year. Three among the many that I’ve practiced in the last twelve months. And I would really appreciate it if you could do the same.

Tell us three things you’ve practised to help you survive and thrive. I’m publishing this note on a number of networks. I’ll collate all the replies, and share them in a little ebook. Everything will be included, and of course, everyone gets a namecheck, a weblink, whatever works best for you. Here goes:

Number One – The Network

The folk I know, and have learnt to know, and am learning to know fascinate me. I was going to write “My Network” as the title, but it isn’t. It’s ours. A network is something to contribute to, and take from, and most importantly, to look after for you, and everyone in it. Connecting interesting and useful people purposefully. Joe Strummer said “Without People, You’re Nothing”. He was right. Look after the network, love the network.

Number Two – Future Focus

What’s done is done. Folk make decisions that don’t always go your way, or maybe they don’t even make decisions. And once they do make decisions, they rarely change their minds. So you can invest a huge amount of time wondering why not. Or you can look ahead to what next. I try and learn from what has happened in order to make better decisions next time. And I’m getting much better at not beating myself up about it.

Number Three – Be Positive

Shit happens. I’ve written before about losing my Mum just before I turned 19. Yes this made me angry, yes this made me sad. And sometimes it still does. Most of all though it made me even more proud to be my Mother’s Son, and it still does. Approaching people and opportunities with genuine interest is motivating. I believe that being overwhelmingly (and yet not permanently) positive helps to make good things happen.

So there you have it. Three things among the many I’ve practiced in the last twelve months. It’s our birthday tomorrow, maybe we’ll have cake. Now, how was it for you?

Photo c/o Vandy Massey