One of the questions we often ask our clients is this: Are you humbled by the loyalty of your customers and employees?

I had an experience over the last couple of weeks that humbled me.  At the beginning of the year, my partners and I set some fairly lofty goals for this company.  The goals were across every area of our business:  financial, operational and what I would call spiritual.  So, about mid-year, we decided to make it personal for everyone and sit down and apply our business goals to some very specific, measurable personal goals.  These were not reviews, but goal setting sessions.  (Your personal goals are now a part of your Brains on Fire intranet desktop, and you can add comments to them at any time so you will have a journal of your progress.  Kind of a cool thing our IT director put on his goal list.)

Anyway, my conversations with every employee here took me about 3 weeks to complete.  And it was one of the most amazing things I have ever done. At the end of each discussion, I asked one simple question. “What three things would make your life better and how can we help you get there?” The outpouring of feelings that question evoked was the part that humbled me most. I am not going to go into detail here, because the answers were private, as you can imagine. But I will tell you this… if anyone out there in this blog world we are rambling in owns a company or runs a department, ask that question often.  You will learn a lot about the things that motivate the people you work with.  And about why your largest asset – your people – get up every morning and do what they do.  I hope it is humbling.

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