Since I travel extensively and facilitate multiple meetings every day, you might assume teamwork and collaboration are at the center of my daily grind. You’d be mostly right.
Teamwork and collaboration are at the heart of my work, because they’re what I love most about working. I love people. I love working with an active team. I love, love, love the synergy that comes from collaboration with a productive team comprised of different personalities and specialties.
Because I travel so much, I actually don’t get to collaborate as much as I would like. My professional team travels as much as I do. Sure, we talk on the phone as we drive. We set aside time each week to catch up. But because we spend the bulk of our days behind the wheel, we don’t often get to hunker down in front of the computer and just chat and figure out how to bring our varying talents together in some brilliant way. When we do get the chance, the brilliance is blinding. I work with some amazing folks.
I try to turn my center meetings in collaborative projects as much as I can. I endeavor to establish myself as a member of the team. Thankfully, many of the centers I support allow such rapport and we accomplish a lot. We banter. We debate. We share how our bias might be affecting our view of the digital landscape. And hopefully, we all walk away a little broader in the mind.
Heck, many of the people I work with at centers know as much (maybe more, shhh) about automotive marketing and operations as I do. Those folks are the most fun to work with. We have the best conversations. Sure, I love to teach, but I love learning from the people around me more. It’s even better when the learning is bi-directional.
Where am I going with this?
Today I had one of those meetings with two smart and passionate minds. We debated. We argued. We finally agreed on the best strategy according to what the data supported. It. Was. So. Much. Fun.
Days like today help me remember why I drive 20 hours a week.
But my Darling Frank continues to bribe me to spend more time at home. The bribes are pretty darn good. We’re talking puppies and goats. He might even concede to a kitten and a chicken flock if I hold out a little longer.
An accounting manager explained to me early in my career that when the car business gets in your blood, you can never get it out. I remember telling her that the car business would never get into my blood. I was merely taking a year off from school. Twenty years later, I was still with the same automotive group. And now I’m in automotive consulting.
I think the car business is my blood.