Flying Home

The PASS Board meeting is over and I am on the flight home sitting in seat 34A writing this as quickly as I can before my battery runs out. I have a short layover at DTW and I doubt I will be able to recharge at that point so whatever I feel the need to write about better get done now before I forget.

Attending the meeting this week really made me appreciate the wonderful people I have met along the way during my involvement with PASS. I consider myself very, very fortunate to be able to serve on the board. I remember how disappointed I was when I lost the election in 2007 and again last year, and how excited I was to be asked to serve a one year appointment. I consider this my trial year; if I like it enough I am going to run for a full term again this November and the community can decide for me if they like what I have been doing and vote for me again. And if I don’t like the job, I can walk away free and clear as well. It really is a sweet gig.

The past two days has also made me realize just how important image and branding is for each and every one of us. I have fun being SQLBatman, sure, but I need to be very mindful that as I increase my reach that means more and more people I have never met are going to be introduced to me by the things I write on this blog. I don’t know if Warner Brothers will ever get back to me regarding the usage of their logo or not, but chances are I need to make a switch to a different brand at some point.

More importantly than the name of my brand is the content. What was made clear to me this past week is that one post can undo the credibility built up by all the rest. And since I serve on the Board, in a position that I love doing, I could not be happy with myself if things I write here would somehow harm anyone’s perception of PASS or of myself.

Which brings me to a question that I ask myself periodically: why the hell am I blogging anyway? There are a variety of reasons and the level of importance for each varies over time but there are three main reasons for me to be writing. First is that I absolutely enjoy doing so and I highly doubt any of my English teachers from High School would ever imagine that I would have enjoyed writing and reading so much. Second is that writing about things helps me to learn about things (especially when people are kind enough to leave comments to help me understand something to a higher degree, thank you very much for that by the way.) Lastly, and currently most important, is that I use this blog as a way for me to connect with others.

So, if I know I want to connect with others, then I need to make certain that whatever words I put down into this space will not cause someone to think poorly of me, and certainly I would never be happy if I somehow caused PASS to be shown in a poor light. There is a reason for corporate conservatism, and I am learning more and more about not only why it exists, but why it is necessary.

If you want to succeed in the corporate world, or in sports, business, or life, it is often the people that find ways to limit their mistakes are the most successful in their endeavors. And if you know exectly when and where to take risks those same people can end up rising to greater heights. This is something I am learning the hard way as I play more and more chess or whenever I watch the Patriots play football. Limit your mistakes and put yourself in a position to be successful and you will often end up being successful. This is not rocket science. Good teams and great people all share a common trait, that they limit their mistakes very well.

I want to use this blog to do the same thing. I want people to find me approachable. The last thing I would want is for a person to have a negative opinion of me simply because they do not appreciate my sense of humor, for example. Does that mean I can’t be funny? Absolutely not, it just means I need to be mindful that there could be a person reading this blog that has not had the chance to meet me in person.

Many years ago when I was working in the food services industry I was told that when you give a person good service, they will come back. When you give them bad service, they tell ten friends about their bad experience. So, eleven people think badly of you and guess how many tell you to your face?

Zero.

Blogging works in much the same way. If people do not like, or approve, of something they read they are more than likely not going to bother telling you, they just will not come back. And that means they are closing a door that I want to be open. I do not want people to exclude me, I want people to be comfortable talking and working with me. If a potential future employer reads this blog and even one post turns them off or gives them a possible negative opinion of me than I am not going to be offered whatever opportunity they may have.  More importantly than the lost opportunity is the fact that they will not tell me any specific reason why I was left out, they will just say that they wanted to go in a different direction.

In the past I have always thought to myself “well, that’s not the place where I want to work”, which is still true for the most part. But the reality is that I want to be the one in control of those decisions. I don’t want to lose out on potential opportunities because of something written here. I enjoy eating, I really do, and food costs money, especially bacon. And what really hit me this week was that because I am now in a very responsible position on the PASS Board I need to make certain that the PASS Community is not slighted in any way either. I simply could not be happy with myself if I ever found out that somehow, someway, a person thought poorly of PASS because of me or something I wrote.

When Congress started producing the Junior Senators I realized that certain things in my life had to change because I had new, more important responsibilities. For example, I would not be able to spend twenty hours a week playing basketball, because I needed to be changing some diapers. And I stopped playing rugby because if I got injured there was no way Congress was going to be able to push me around in a wheelchair while also pushing a stroller. And I was fine making adjustments for those reasons.

And that is why I see the need to make adjustments here as well. I have very serious and important responsibilities to the PASS Community. I want people to know I take them very seriously. This blog is perhaps the only touch point I have to a lot of people I have never met, and I need to keep that in mind.

Does that mean I am only going to write about unicorns and rainbows? No way, that is just not me. I will still find ways for people to know that I am creative, and thoughtful, and fun. But that I am also professional, and serious when I need to be, and most of all that you can trust me to be someone that you can having working with you side-by-side in order to accomplish whatever task is needed.