We will hear about successful sustainability initiatives at international companies (Sartorius and Wacker Chemical), green tech entrepreneurs including Shantonio Burch from ThermoVerse, and cheer the City of Ann Arbor’s green business challenge award winners. I will emcee.
See you there!
Update – we had a fabulous time. Hope to see you at the next one.
I walk to keep my back feeling better, to shake off some of the despair of the pandemic, and to plan what to write when not in front of my screen with the blank whiteness telling me I’m empty when I’m not. This morning I walked in the sunny chill.
As I crested a wooded hill on the road, I heard what sounded like rain in the woods. Rain? The sky, visible through the bare tree trunks and branches, was endlessly clear. Yet, I heard slow, arrhythmic taps all around me in the low mounds of crispy and curled leaves, each with a thin coat of frost.
I stopped and watched. Eventually, I noticed water falling. Not rain from the far away sky, but frostmelt dripping down from the nearby tree branches as they warmed in the sun.
What stays with me is a moment of feeling enveloped by the woods. The small mystery made my thinking stop, made me look. I heard the woods surround me as drops fell slowly behind me, to the side, and before me. I felt the sun warm my skin just as it warmed the twigs and frost.
An unexpected gift, a moment of microcosm and unity in my neighborhood, just a few steps from my door. Something I would have missed if I hadn’t left the house or had traveled by car.
A photo of frost on the twigs of a shrub near the road.
Last Friday morning, Robert Pasick, Ph.D., and I spoke at Leaders Connect, a networking event at Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor. Our topic was “Ten Steps to Meaningful Goals for 2017,” based on our recent book Self-Aware: A Guide for Success in Work and Life.
If you’re interested, you can watch the entire hour-plus of video on YouTube here.
I thought I’d share a quick video excerpt here, about three minutes of Rob and I chatting about how we collaborated on the book.
Back to School, made available via Creative Commons by Leland Francisco on FlickrI’m pulling down the shingle here at Scientific Ink for the next several months. I’ve taken a position at Washtenaw Community College – I will be Interim Executive Director of Marketing & Web Services through January 2016. This new position will keep me busy enough that I will not be taking on client projects.
What is your team doing when they aren’t “customer-facing?” Hint, it influences the customer experience too.
Welcome, made available by halfrain via Creative Commons on Flickr
There is a fancy grocery in Ann Arbor where I sometimes shop (and that will go unnamed). Generally, the folks here are friendly at the cash registers and at the cases where I order seafood, meat, or prepared food. Yet, I’ve noticed that the staff at this grocery are in a hurry when they’re in the aisles. When I’m shopping with a cart, I’ve had to “pull over” and wait for staff hurrying by to pass me.
When this happens, I wonder what’s so important in the back room—a smoke break, the punch clock, or an angry manager? I imagine that the store’s leadership has stressed quickness or efficiency over courtesy (a customer experience failure). In my head I rewrite my shopping list to frequent other stores.
There is another “fancy” place in town – Zingerman’s. I visited a friend at the Zingerman’s Bakeshop recently, and he walked me around behind-the-scenes. Everywhere we went in the facility, people stopped what they were doing (at their computers, wheeling a hand truck through a loading area…) and greeted me. I’m sure they had as much to do as the staff at the other location, yet they weren’t in a rush, seemed genuinely glad to meet me, and meeting each of them was a pleasure.
Through stopping to greet me, the Zingerman’s team exemplified courtesy and the mission of the company. While I didn’t yearn for a chat with the team at the other store, I would prefer not to feel “in their way.” I don’t shop there as often as I might, and I don’t want to work there.
So the question becomes—what values do you promote in your organization? Values and intention matter whether it is a knitting group, a writing circle, a start-up, or an established business.
What experience do you want newbies, visitors, new team members, and the old guard to experience? Because it is those values that shape the behavior of your team and the experience of your customers.
![[066/365] Back to School](https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2564/3838634535_739f0ff5a8_z.jpg?zz=1)
