@bbcomCIO

Reaching out to the minds you work with and getting input and how something as small as a 1.5 hour lunch can change everything.

Last month I had my administrative assistant setup appointments for me to have lunch with all my employees.  I have a large number of them so I wanted to take two at a time to lunch, each one being in a different team.  I felt this would allow some cross pollination at the lunches and bring an interesting dynamic.  Yesterday was the first lunch and it was an amazing 1.5 hours.  I was able to gain insight from the day to day activities, ask questions, and allow them to be very honest and frank with me as they wanted: no holes bared.

What I gained out of the lunch was a much larger insight into some areas in my organization that need attention.  Areas that the teams support and perform in, in spite of challenges that tend to slow them down.  I asked a lot of questions, questions like; what can we do to speed up things for our teams, what can I do to help empower you and your teams better.  What I got back was some very direct answers that will help me with my roadmap for the department in 2010.  It will also benefit our customers by making our development cycles much faster moving forward.

I also gained insight into their desires to help grow the company, help other people in the teams external to them and overall make the department and the company a success for delivering value to our customers.  This was exciting for me to hear and watch as the conversation continued.

I’m now able to look at my next 90 days in a new way with the input provided from the lunch.

Question: Are you having lunch with your teams?  Are you getting you game on for the next 90 days with input from the teams?  I can tell you my new plan will for sure include that as a model to feed my plans going forward.