Life, The Universe and Everything

We had a potluck at lunch today for our department. It was great to relax and enjoy each others company. We have a great team, get along really well. We hit it so hard during the week that it’s nice to take some time and just sit and visit.

That’s what I’ve been doing this week on the topic of community relations projects. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and be with what you are doing. It’s good to reflect on what works and what needs tweaked.

We recently launched an employee volunteerism group called the Avnet Cares Governing Board.

Here is what we officially say about it:

Made up of employee volunteers from the Americas, the Avnet Cares Governing Board was formed to inspire Avnet employees to make a difference in their communities and to use community outreach to make a positive impact on our business. Avnet Cares strives to promote a culture of community service by creating a structure for volunteer opportunities that shares best practices and ideas.

Unofficially I can tell you that this is the most incredible committee I’ve ever worked with in my 16 years of doing community relations work. Heck, it’s the best committee I’ve worked with ever, community relations or not. I’ve never seen a group come together so well, accomplish so much and make such a difference, let alone to do it so very quickly.

Our president is an employee from our materials operations group, Priscilla Kadi. She’s got great leadership skills, is very passionate and sets a great example for the rest of the team. The team itself, though, is pretty incredible. I’ve never seen a committee where everyone on the team pulls their weight, have (or is that has? I know you are not supposed to worry about AP style when you write a blog but I just can’t shuck all those years of doing media relations) ….

Ok, lost my train of thought. Let’s see …where everyone has great ideas and work towards a common goal so well. Anyway, we’ve been hitting it really hard all year. We’ve got another great program we were just about ready to launch and then business conditions got really bad.

So, we’ve been reflecting. We didn’t stop meeting and accomplishing things, we just remembered to breathe (that’s a yin thing). And because we did so, we fine tuned our next program and tested the waters a bit with some focus groups. The final product is going to be even more incredible because we did so.

So, Father’s Day is/was June 21. That’s as good a reason as any for all of us to sit and reflect on Life, The Universe and Everything. I’m sure you “hitchhikers” out there will realize that if you do so, you will discover that the answer is 42. Happy Fathers Day all.