I started blogging in late 2008 and I confess I felt a little like I was jumping on a bandwagon. There were a lot of blogs out there, why should I add another one to the pile?

This blog was started because I felt that there was something missing, a place for employee and customer and community stuff to collide. I’m motivated about making work better in order to deliver better service. I didn’t think about it much more beyond that – but I’d built up a few ideas to get me started and felt sure those and my passion for these connections would see me through. I was wrong. There’s a whole bunch of effort required to keep the train a rollin’.

Now it’s 2012 and it seems every Tom, Dick and Harry met Sally is just piling in. One of the by products of piling in is that after the euphoria of your first few comments and retweets comes the onset of frequent infrequency. It becomes clear that this blogging lark can be hard work, and the temptation to let it drift is often too seductive. The excellent A Better Mess blog says this about infrequency:

‘We crap rationalize with things like, “I’ll only write when I have something really important to say,” or “I’ll get back to blogging once I finish this project for work.” Rather than course correcting, the average blog dies a slow, painful and lingering demise. It’s a death march that not only disappoints your readers, it’s a public commitment that you’ve essentially neglected.’

And if you want people to read your blog, then frequently infrequent ain’t gonna get ‘em.  And don’t give me any of that ‘I’m only writing for myself’ crap. Were that true then you’d be ‘blogging’ on one of these babies:

So get real y’all. Blogging takes guts, sweat, persistence and a depth of madness most folk can only dream of. And if that ain’t enough to put you off, have a listen to this (kudos to @workessence for another musical collaboration):

I participated in the fourth ConnectingHR Unconference yesterday. It was great, useful and fun. There’s a super write up about The Buzz in the Room by Alison Chisnell. I’m sure lots more blogs and other content will emerge very soon, for now I’d like to share just a few tweets that resonated with me:

@charlie_elise: Negative capability – being able to cope with uncertainty. >>When you relax into this, it is great fun.

@workessence: If you can’t measure it, its probably interesting. >>Yep! Worth a look at least.

Respect me, not my authority! >>Eric Cartman might not agree

Trust. Role model it upwards, don’t wait for the CEO. Doing what we say we will is everyone’s job.

I feel the need to meet! Community thrives on some eye contact.

Overheard: if you stand for nothing you’ll fall for everything. >>Subsequently discovered this was said by @sarmason

I’ve eaten my own weight in biscuits today @alisonchisnell

If a particular tweet or two caught your eye from yesterday’s event – please share it.

Last year I was asked to talk to the board of a small company (employing approx 250 people all under one roof) about employee engagement. Turns out they were interested in starting an employee survey and wanted some thoughts on this. I said ‘give me an hour to put something together’ and came up with this.

Why do employee surveys suck

They decided not to bother with a survey and we did some interesting work together. I guess what I learned from this is that you just gotta go with what you believe. I mean, it would have been easy for me to share these thoughts and finish with ‘but we can avoid all these things and still give you a great survey’. I could have told them what they thought they wanted to hear, and that would have sucked even more.

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