Little

A little piece of dirt,
I see you, dried up in the scorching sun,
Waiting for a drop of rain,
To soak away the cracks and pain.

A little piece of land,
With dirt and bugs a little bland,
No vegetation growing in this earth,
I wonder what it’s worth.

A little piece of me,
Deserted from the life I know,
Is this the way I want to live,
No experiences to help me grow.

Moisture for the dirt,
Water for the land,
Emotion for my life,
And the will to take a stand.

All the little pieces,
Are essential for the whole,
All the little life experiences,
Are essential for your soul.

Give yourself a little dream,
Take a little glance,
At the life you’ve left out to dry,
Give it another chance.

Each

Each night each moon,
Will come and close the afternoon,
And I will still be there in the shadows,
Awaiting my time to shine.

Each day, each sun,
Will close the night and darkness there is none,
Casting my shadow of the day,
What will I become.

I listen to my soul when all is still,
And it tells me I am real,
It tells me I am doing right,
Each sunny day, and moonlit night.

Tribute to inContact

A man stood among the crowd, he spoke about a dream,
Slowly built a legacy,
And called it the inContact team,

If we unite to become stronger, dare our passions to give,
This company will be a solid foundation,
For all our dreams to live.

If we work smart to become faster, lend a helping hand,
We will have an environment that listens first,
To better understand.

If we strive each day to be better, and to our goals we don't neglect,
Our customers will learn to trust us,
From industry respect.

Our products are the future, we won't ever second guess,
We'll be the first to captivate our customers,
And overly impress.

We’re better than our yesterday, we'll be even faster for tomorrow,
Making us stronger than ever before,
To reach in for strength when we must borrow.

Every meeting, every conference, every training, every contact,
Will represent the initial dream and life,
That we call inContact.

Every person, every group, every vendor, every team,
Will be involved and inspire the vision,
Of the man who dared to dream.

Now is the moment, if you were looking for the time to say,
I can be better, faster, stronger,
In all I do each day.

Now is the moment to feel, why you come to work and give,
And now is the moment to know,
inContact values the way you live.

A Positive Note

Where does inspiration come from when you're surrounded in sterile walls?
Must I leave my seat, get on my feet, and walk the spiral halls?

I can't read another depressing article about how or why we'll all be destroyed,
Or whether or not will wage another war, against the rich, another country or the employed.

Could it be we've focused on too much negativity, and no longer understand?
What it's like to be an American, a human, and to live on Earth's promise land?

Just once a day I would like to read, about a story that brings me to tears,
Based on kindness, love, or sharing, not anger, fighting, or my fears.

So to the papers I challenge you, start a column for those of us demanding positive news,
Let us shine the light of happiness, to eradicate our blues.

Bless us all and our talents, our giving nature, our helping ways,
That we might pass to the next generation, the beauty we have had through all our days.

Grandmas are Forever

To My Grandmas,

I wanted you to know a grandma is forever.

You’ve imprinted in my heart what living out of pure joy and love can be,
I have seen it, I have felt it, and it is part of your legacy.

I know someday we all must go, but long before those days arrive,
I wanted to let you know how much you’ve done for me, while your still alive.

As days have turned, and I’ve gotten older, you have gotten older true,
But in each of those days, we have grown together, and our relationship has grown too.

From being so small and being held by you, and looking into your eyes,
I have always known I was lucky, to have you this was no surprise.

And then I became a child, and wanted to come over to your house and play,
Those memories of spending time together, are cherished in every way.

And then I became a teen, and even through the times I had a selfish phase,
You were always there for me, to encourage and give me praise.

And then I was out on my own, and still you were there to support me in my career,
Even remembering my birthday as if I was still just a kid, each and every year.

And now that I am a parent myself, and my mom became a grandma too,
I realize the cycle of our wonderful family, was instilled because of you.

I wanted you to know a grandma is forever.

The delight and joy you bring the world, with every smile you give,
Makes me proud to call you my grandma, and the reason your memories will always live.

A simple poem of simple words, can’t capture all the wonderful things you do,
But it can let you know you are wonderful to me, and that I am thinking of you.

My grandma is forever.

Back Country Fishing Poem

A six hour drive to be outdoors, the peaceful sounds of nature,
Sleeping in an old converted school house,
The night is dark, and I sleep in the quiet escape.

Morning brings the chilled air blowing off the lake,
Numbing my fingers as I fish the river’s edge,
Another trout flails in the air caught by my line.

A hawk circles to see my fish on the bank,
The sun breaks the canyon wall,
The warmth reflects off the water onto my face.

The sound of the river blankets my inner thoughts,
The moment stays clear and my body is aware,
My instincts guide me from hole to hole.

All alone yet embraced by the surrounding environment,
My line splashes into the water upstream,
It tumbles down the waters current to the bank.

A small nibble, and then another, I pull my reel,
Moving opposite directions are the fish and I,
Yet we meet at the river’s edge.

I release the hook, letting the fish swim free,
Looking back down stream I see my wife smiling,
We are happy fishermen.

Winter Wedding

Let me start by giving you a few details. My wife and I live in Utah. We chose to get married in the winter because we thought the snow would be beautiful with its soft white tones and shiny glisten. The place we decided to get married was on the canyon base and it always had plenty of fresh white snow in January. In fact I can't remember a time in my life where it hasn't had snow once it started coming down. I told my soon to be wife, dress warm, tell the family to dress warm, it gets fairly cold and they will be standing or sitting in about 1 to 2 feet of snow. You can probably tell by me building this story what happened next. You guessed it. Not a single speck of snow was to be found in our beautifully planned winter wedding. The grass was brown; the lights we dangled in the trees only illuminated the brown twiggy structures instead of reflecting off the snow. It looked more like a spring wedding then winter.
You could say it was our warming hearts in love that eliminated any possible chance of snow! Or you could say that winter weddings are just simply unpredictable.
Of course our plans were for the outdoors, not typical for the common winter wedding. Wherever you choose to hold your wedding I give you two pieces of advice. First, It is better to overdress and be too warm (you can always shed a layer) than to be stuck chattering during the ceremony or other events. My other piece of advice is to try to hold the wedding during the day. This will make attending your wedding much easier and safe for those driving during the frosty season.
Truly it won't matter what you are wearing, what mishaps take place leading up to the wedding if you are truly in love and this is why. Guys, we don't care what we are wearing as long as our lady shows up looking beautiful. In fact we probably prefer someone just telling us what to show up in. The bridesmaids and groomsmen, there is a reason your outfits are only half flattering no matter what season it is. You aren't the star of this show. And for the bride, you are already perfect. Find the dress that you feel the most comfortable and pretty in and it won't matter which one you choose as long as you are happy.
To sum this article up, dress your heart with love, happiness, respect and unity, and your outer appearance will be just perfect!

Tips for Mentoring

Somehow mentoring has turned into a large corporate agenda and companies are spending good quantities of time to set up a Mentoring Program that rarely sees life. Mentoring is not a complicated system that needs to be put into place. In fact, it is just opposite. Mentoring is this simple; one person has a skill that another person would like to learn. When you start to elaborate on the idea and possibilities you start to dilute the main principles. Here are 3 streamlined steps to setting up a mentoring culture, not system in your workplace

First: Have a Mentoring Culture
Establish the culture that you are company that encourages mentoring. This should be done in the New Hire orientation. It can also be done through examples by the leadership team, posted in break rooms, and advertised on the company intranet. The sooner you start emphasizing you embrace mentoring, the quicker the results will show.

Second: Have a place to connect Mentors and Students
If your company has an intranet this a great place to host a mentoring connection. If you do not, then a break room or hallway wall can work too. Here are the simple rules to the postings. If you are looking to be mentored on a specific topic write down your name and contact information and post it in the “Mentor Wanted” section. If you are a mentor that would like to offer your skills, place your name and contact information and place it in the “Mentor” section. You now have a mentoring connection.

Third: Give out best practices for being mentored
It is important to do a little research before spending time with your mentor. Once you have identified a potential mentor it is a good idea to write down the specific objectives of your meetings. Being prepared before you meet up with your mentor will show your mentor you are serious and respectful of their time and give them an agenda of topics on what to cover. This will also help them determine whether they are helping you achieve your goals or not. Each mentor will be different as some people have a natural gift to teach and others will just have the skill you want to acquire and will need to be done through observation or shadowing.

Start by meeting your mentor for about a half hour to go over initial objectives. This small amount of time is easier to schedule and will help you both decide whether it is a good fit to move forward or perhaps find another mentor.

Most corporations will encourage mentoring, however few are willing to invest company time to allow for the exchanges. More than likely you will need to meet your mentor after work hours or during lunch. If you are able to offer to buy their drink, lunch, or snack while you speak I recommend doing so.

Once you have established it is a good match, try to schedule out a good time to meet on a weekly or biweekly basis. Getting your mentor to schedule you time will secure their commitment to you.

Have your initial objectives ready along with questions prior to each meeting. Write down as many notes as possible so you can review them later and get the most amount of information as possible per meeting.

Mentoring is a great resource in helping transition management, it provides internal applicants strength in their current positions, and it is free! Stop thinking about how much work it might be to set up a mentoring culture and start doing the first steps. You don’t have to have miraculous results right off; it will take time to grow. Have patience and the let those with a strong desire to learn more launch your initiatives of having a mentoring culture.

No Bad Experiences on Resumes

Stop immediately with the thinking that your past experiences are bad. Experience isn’t good or bad, it doesn’t have a personality, nor does it have an opinion. Experience is just that, what took place. Employers aren’t searching for candidates by “negative” experiences; they are looking for qualities that can translate into benefits for their company. Don’t be afraid to put down your employers or experiences where challenges occurred. In fact, I strongly suggest you do. Write down as a quick description for those companies what you learned and how you grew from the experience. Every situation that happens can have a positive outcome toward your future working environment.

Here is a scenario. You have been working for a company for six months and you are given a new boss. Your old boss knew your schedule and that you attended classes every Tuesday night. Your new boss is not willing to work with you and keeps you too late on those nights to the point where you quit.

You could look at this and define your experience in two outlooks. First, the “bad” way. I can’t put this on my resume because I was only there for a limited time and I hated my boss. Or, you could try a second option. In this position I gained valuable experience in the importance of leadership and working as a team truly generates the best results. I also worked closely with my supervisor to assure optimal outcomes and work productivity. (Of course the last line refers to the first boss)

Do you see how changing your view on an experience can get you in the door or shut a door? I suggest you choose getting in the door.

The real key to turning the situation around from a “bad” experience is to look at what skills your future employer would want you to have and extract those experiences from your previous position and explain how you obtained that skill. Take the time now to go back through your experiences you feel you have labeled “bad” and remove all the skill-based pieces you can to help create a new resume. A resume built on your current knowledge of I have the ability, not the lack of ability.

When you accomplish this task and write your resume you will be armed with the answers you need to provide in your interview as well. This is the benefit of taking the time to write a well written resume, it answer the hard questions for you allowing you to know what you are capable of doing for your new employer.

Good luck and stay focused on the positive outcome.

New Hire "Bore"intation

New Hire “Bore”ientation

Why do human resources, management, and team leads go through a great interviewing process to select top candidates only to kill them with boredom on their first day of work losing all momentum? Perhaps, my long question doesn't have an exact answer; however, I think it does. By changing your verbiage to holding a New Hire Celebration and providing new hires with exactly just that, a celebration!

Celebrate the fact that you just landed an individual to fit your company's current needs. So, the question is; how do you get your message across as a celebration and not a “bore”ientation? Here are some examples. Tell an exciting story to start the day off right. How did you become part of the company? What are you excited about? Why should they be excited? Then, let them tell their story of where they use to be and why they are excited to start with your company. We all know that we need to go over the dreaded policies and procedures, but why the first day or even the first hour? Do we really entertain the thought they might memorize that lengthy novel of technical jargon? Of course we don’t. Instead, build onto their story. Have them create an actual cover page to their story. Give them a chance to be creative and introduce themselves to the rest of the group through their home-made book cover. Have them come up with a creative title, their name, and some of the things they enjoy in life. You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can get to know a lot about a new hire by having them design one.

My last suggestion in this short article is to have new hire's develop a vision. I'm not talking about some miraculous sighting, I am talking about having them come up with a direction on what they would like to achieve within working for your company. Give them your mission statement, values, competencies, initiatives, or whatever you might have, and let them tie their vision into your company's plan. Just as a company is driven by a strong sense of identity and purpose, so are the individual's who work within the organization. There are many ways to captivate your new hires and celebrate on their first day. Be creative and change your "bore"ientation into a celebration.

Quick ideas to implement:
-If you have a product, let them see it, feel it, use it.
-If you can send something home with them to show family and friends, give it to them.
-Bring in the highest level of management to speak with them and let them know they are an important part of the company’s success.
-Go on a tour through your building and introduce them to some of your friends or friendlier people of the company.
-Have them eat lunch with their team or supervisor if you can afford too.
-While you are covering policies and procedures incorporate an activity.

Handling Customer Dissatisfaction

In order to best assist in working out customer dissatisfaction, leaders must understand what dissatisfaction looks like.

Often time dissatisfaction can be doing the minimum of what is asked and from a leader looking in from the outside it can be somewhat difficult to address because your team did nothing wrong. Let’s take a look at several forms of dissatisfaction and how to get to the root of the cause to solve the problem, not band-aid it.

What if I were to walk into a training or learning event and taught straight from the book not leaving any room for modification or specification to make it more catered to your needs? It doesn’t tell me I need to be personable, for all I know I just need to read this information to you and I will have done my job.

How satisfied would you be if I just kept clicking through power point slides over and over while I read off the material?

OK. So we have discovered that just doing your job isn’t necessarily getting the job done. This is the most important form of customer dissatisfaction because it is the one that is rarely addressed and often overlooked because it’s not a crisis or recovery problem.

Why address it? Simple math. What does 1 + 1 = Of course 2. And what does 2 + 1 = 3. And three strikes and you’re out. You didn’t know you were going to learn math in this article. Three times is the magical number that customers will most likely not return to your establishment if they do not receive the quality they are expecting. Sometimes it will be only two or one if they have taken time to speak or write about the concern to management and the concern is still not addressed.

As supervisors and managers it is essential to empower your teams to make good decisions on their own under the guidelines of your policies and procedures. If situations arise and are new, address them immediately as to what is OK for them to handle and what needs approval. This saves time, money, resources (which is both of those), and improves the overall satisfaction for customers.

How do you empower your team? Inform them on their capabilities. Usually team members enjoy the ability to problem solve and deliver good service. By letting them make good judgment calls and supporting their decisions you are allowing them to take control of the situations. If bad judgment is used, curb it immediately and give them an example of what should have been done instead.

Questions to ask. What could I do immediately to help my team be empowered to take care of situations? What situations have occurred in the past that I had to approve that could have been approved at the front-line level had they known?

It is crucial to empower your teams to do the right thing.

We know now what just doing your job doesn’t necessarily equal the best outcome for customers. What about doing your job strictly under the policies and procedures?

How many times have you heard, “it is our policy?” Better question. How many times have you heard that and been pleased and just said, oh it’s their policy, oh well? Yeah right. The policy is like a brick wall that cuts the line between problem and solution leaving customers dissatisfied.

Customers want solutions, not policies. I am not asking you to break rules or to bend what the policies enforce. Not at all. Just next time your team has the urge to speak in tongues and policy, ask them to create solutions for the customer.

Even if you absolutely cannot accommodate a customer’s request, giving them options is a much softer way of saying no.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, but exercise your creativity and come up with options first. Even though it might not be accepted right away, often times customers will look back and realize you were doing your best to help.

Burt the Snowman

You may have heard of Frosty the Snowman, but have you heard of his twin brother, Burt. No, no one has...until now. Let me tell you about Burt the Snowman.
Burt the Snowman,
Knew there was only snow for one,
So he said, make my brother
And if there’s enough for another,
You can make me too one day.

Down to the village,
Burt was left behind to melt,
He could hear them there,
All around the square,
Playing catch me if you can.

Frosty led them down the streets of town,
Right to a traffic cop,
He paused a moment and said I’m Burt,
And the officer yelled out stop.

That’s why Burt the Snowman,
Was never known by kids today,
Cause he was never made,
By the kids who played,
And sadly melted all away.

Meltity, melt, melt, meltity, melt melt,
Look at Burt go,
Meltity, melt, melt, meltity, melt melt,
Into water out of snow.

That is Burt’s song, and he should be a hero as he sacrificed for his twin brother who hogged all the glory and fame of the heart of the kids. I just hope that Frosty one day realizes he has split his family apart and got the melting he deserves.

Now as it is told this saga between the brothers continues every time the snow falls. Each one wanting desperately to be rolled into three nice shaped snow balls stacked upon each other, decorated with random items to look more personable. Next time you grab a corn cob pipe and a button nose and two pieces of coal, give Burt a shot. He might just last longer as he is not likely to be mischievous and run through town getting yelled at by a cop.

Now, how to create a great snowman.

First you need to have good packing snow. You can test this by packing a ball of snow together as large as you can in your hands. Then, clump more snow onto your ball on the ground making it about basketball size. Give it a few rolls across the ground and see if it picks up the other snow by itself making it bigger in size. If it does, roll away until you have a nice strong base for your bottom snowball. Remember you are going to have to stack additional snowballs on top so don’t make them bigger then what you or your friends and family are capable of lifting. Continue to roll your other two snowballs each one a little smaller until you have all three stacked on each other. After this, the real creativity begins. What can you find around your house to decorate your snowman? Or, what can you find around your yard or area to decorate him?

Good luck, enjoy the snow and dress warm!

Belly Shirts in the Workplace

I’m convinced that if everyone at work had to wear belly shirts we would be a skinnier nation. How does one discover such an observation? I was doing some research (surfing the web) when I felt my stomach slightly overhanging my pants and cinched belt. Curious as to what my wiggling belly looked like as it made its way out into the crisp office air (stale heater induced oxygen) I lifted my shirt ever so slightly to glance at my white (it is winter) pooch. Like I had just seen….sorry I lost my train of thought, pizza was just delivered to the office and I had to go get me some before it was gone…(there’s a reason I have the pooch) anyway, let’s see. Oh yes, like I had just sucked a lemon, my face cringed in moderate disgust as to what my belly looked like. Hence me writing this short article on if we all had to wear belly shirts, I think we would be a skinnier nation. But because I don’t have to wear a belly shirt, me and my greasy fingers are going to grab another slice of pizza and be deliciously full.

I’m looking forward to sitting back at my computer only to be in a food coma and spend a good half hour with a body position of what appears to be working but really zoned out.

Until next time, cinch the belt and discover what I did today. An overgrown belly isn’t the prettiest site, but as pregnant people will confess, it makes a great place to rest your arms.

Try this tip if you are ready to lose some weight.
Every time you get up to go to the bathroom, use the restroom on a different floor. If you have bathrooms that lock, do a few standing crunches and move your arms around. (Just make sure the door is locked or you might find yourself in an awkward flying position in front of co-workers)

Drink more water. (Duh) We all know drinking water would be good for us, but let’s be realistic, you are at work. If soda pop were water then you would be fine. Here is what I do. I get a mix in for my water that only has five calories and makes the water taste more like Kool-Aid then liquid nothing. Drinking water does two things for you. One, it hydrates your body and is healthy. And two, it makes you go to the bathroom a million times more which will make you walk to the bathroom more, which will make you do more (door locked) bathroom exercises.

Those are my tips, good luck.