If I ever turn this blog into a book, I think it will be called “Give em a yo-yo.”
A week or so ago I went to a great human capital conference in the middle of the desert (Tucson, AZ) and enjoyed myself immensely. This also means that I learned a lot, took electronic notes and even implemented changes in my life/work as a result of the inspiration from the conference.
One of the inspirations ended up being to create a trip report in a newsletter format, intermingled with some of the side activities (eating at In-and-Out burger, inspecting the University of Arizona and Arizona State campuses, and sipping root beer by the hotel pool) experienced along the way.
I sent the report out to the team and encouraged them to share what they had learned from the conferences they attended. No one shared anything and none of the upper management responded.
Until the other day…
We have a weekly production managers meeting in the cafeteria seating area (lack of conference rooms now) and in walks our fearless leader. He comes up to the table smiling (not sure if it was a witty or stupid look) and hands me a yo-yo and says:
“See, some people write reports when they go to conferences and some people think of the team and bring back goodies.”
He then walked off to find cheap conference bag to give as a freebie to one of the production managers in the meeting.
It would have been funny if there was some back up acknowledgement of the efforts I had gone through. The way it was presented, and in the context it was shared, gave no indication of our fearless leader even caring about the value of bringing back information to the team after attending events on the organization’s dime.
Does one drive home crying, laughing, complaining or ignoring these experiences?
