Want to Get to Know your Neighbors? Consider Sleeping Around

Growing up, I lived in the kind of neighborhood in Michigan where everyone looked forward to snow days. On these days, after the dads in the neighborhood would finish plowing their driveways and sidewalks, my dad would be putting snow chains on the riding lawn mower for a different reason. All the neighborhood kids would bring their sleds over to hook up to each other while my dad pulled us around the neighborhood doing dramatic fishtails at every corner. I knew everyone on my street. On the other six streets in the neighborhood I knew at least two or three families on each street. read more »

Socially ILL

My Confession
In the fall of last year, I tried to combine advocating awareness to a social epidemic that I am passionate about with my actual consulting work. At the heart of both is a promotion of relationship building and social awareness. So in a tongue in cheek way meant to inspire conversation, I named the joint project/business SocialBling. Considering how our culture only seems to want to talk about material things (bling) I thought I would promote relationships as an over-indulgent luxury. Everyone told me it was ridiculous ambitious. They were right, but I don’t have a fear of being wrong so it did not matter. The only thing I truly fear is being alone and I did not feel like I was doing anything that was promoting that fear so I pressed on. After all, how could someone that promotes the value of relationships as an essential element of well-being and success; who loves meeting people, helping people meet others and who loves to entertain ever end up feeling isolated? Now reading through that list I know exactly how. It is a simple equation of inclusion vs. exclusion. read more »

Customer Service: Forget the Top, Aim for the Middle.

If I was to recap three conversations from last week I would probably be inclined to share the less than pleasant ones I had with the post office, an eBay seller, and a retail store clerk. This blog post could turn into a “gripe-fest” if I did, so I have opted out of recapping those conversations. Instead, I tried to reflect positively on them. What can I learn? What could I have done better to resolve issues of unfavorable service? read more »