It’s been a week of progress. Each interaction has been a blessing, has sparked new life, and has taken me a step forward.
I’ve had two Zoom meetings and two in-person meetings this week, and each of these is giving me great benefits. I am reinforced by the thought that there are people in my life. As busy as people are, I have found people to set aside time for me. Each come to me with an open mind and a big heart.
I see the power of reaching out to people. My own community has witnessed the tragedy of boys and young men who have taken their own lives over the last fifteen years. Each time this has happened, there is a soul searching of trying to find an answer, a root cause, a sign. There may be some broad statistical commonality that experts can cite; however, I’ve found that there are no easy answers. I do know that there are many family and friends who just wish each of these young men had reached out, had held up their hand.
I am finding that there are dozens and dozens of men and women who will help me in many ways. I am getting braver at reaching out, setting aside my fear of being found out. Each of the people that I met with in person prefaced their response to me with something along the lines of “…I don’t know if I can help…” which was true. None had a job they were looking to fill, none work in an industry where I could help. And yet each has helped me immensely so far.
Allow me the opportunity to tell my story
Allow me to acknowledge my story
Draw from their own experience to tell me they have been through their own valley
Look me in the eye and listen to me
Allow me to actively listen
Give me ideas
Connect me to someone else
One of the parts of my preamble when I present research findings to a client is making the point that asking customers for their feedback and input raises their expectations that the client will act on what they hear. This is a point of fear for me in these meetings, a point I am still struggling with. How do I go from interesting conversations to calls to action? How do I push through hearing about real opportunities to pursuing them? I can’t really articulate where I want to head, so all of this is input in figuring that out. I’m thankful for the patience these first people are showing me.
I had a great Zoom meeting with an executive that was involved in a professional benchmarking group during my AlliedSignal days. We’ve connected maybe once in the last twenty years in addition to a couple LinkedIn comments. It was really humbling that he took an hour of his time for me. I really benefited from talking shop with a thought leader, and it reinforced that I do have much to offer. My brother is encouraging me to create a podcast, and I want to explore this. I’ll need help on the production side as I don’t know much when it comes to editing, but it would exploit my interviewing skills and would help me tap into thought leaders.
I co-founded a youth soccer club in 2008. I’ll share more about this in the coming weeks. I met some great men and women in the last fifteen years (really the last twenty-three years if I go all the way back to when my soccer coaching began). The men and women who have coached share a trait of caring about young people. It has often been very difficult, as our club tends to draw players who are learning the game with fewer who are elite players.
One of the things I dislike the most is the lack of responsiveness of others. Parents who suddenly don’t have their player at a game or show up after kickoff. I see parents who are much more transactional when it comes to youth sports than I was growing up. Especially other professionals and administrators at other clubs who do not respond. It is a slow drip of insulting behavior that erodes morale in me as it has become the norm rather than a one-off behavior.
It is a busy time in the soccer calendar, which has given me a great reason to do less on this search. Note it has been a week since I posted here. I need to add some hours each week, probably late night after my wife goes to bed. I really look forward to our kisses when she arrives home from work, and I know a new job would take many of those away as I would throw myself day and night into the venture. I remember the night after night of a hotel call with her, where the long-distance relationship of our courtship returned as the norm of our marriage. I don’t miss being a Platinum Delta Sky Miles member, I can tell you. I know it would take some rehab to return to that, and I don’t know if post-COVID corporate life has the travel it did. I assume no.
I am going to add content on Customer Excellence and Customer Experience/Success to my weekly plan, probably posting that on LinkedIn with links here. My discussions are sparking good stuff, and I think it will help me advance my content and allow me to have new discussions.
You’ll notice a variety of photos that I’m adding. Most of them are from my travels. I brought a camera along to my business trips, and it was a forcing mechanism for me to get out of the hotel room and to explore the community that I had landed in or to make day trips out. One of the best things I did was something I called Voice of the Customer Workshops. These were 1-2 day work sessions that typically started with the leadership team of the company or business unit then launched into regional or segment-based crossfunctional audiences. I would teach the methdology of listening to customers, would share the results of the research we did, handed out 50-200 pages of organized verbatims in addition to various analyses, would submit my conclusions and recommendations, then would break the audience into subgroups to make their own conclusions, refine their own metrics and goals, and develop action items. The customer is rarely viewed in a cross-functional environment, often outsourced to a Salesperson or Customer Service/Experience/Success associate. They were draining at times, jumping from Paris to Milan to Brussels to Singapore to Melbourne. They were great though, and I don’t think very many companies do this even today.
I appreciate each of you who has subscribed and who take the time to read these words. If you haven’t subscribe, please do so as a Free Subscriber. All of the content is available whether you are a Free or Paid Subscriber. I’m offering Paid Subscribers really as an opportunity for individuals to have some skin in the game to encourage me. Leaving comments, emailing me, speaking with me, texting me, being a lurker—all of these are incredibly encouraging to me. Sharing craig’s journey to impact is another way to help me and to be part of my community.
I think if you think of the podcast as a hobby, you'd get a lot out of it. Like you said, you'd be just listening to people talk about their life and talking with them, and that just independently could be useful for you. Everybody likes talking about their jobs, and their life even, but not everyone has someone who wants to listen. That's a good service you could provide.