Lots of Love - Learn to Laugh

My deficiencies relating to the new world of communication became glaringly obvious a few years ago. I was living in NYC at the time and part of a small company, comprised of people younger than me. Yes, every employee and partner was younger than me and I was the ripe old age of 40 at the time.

The communication was quick, clever and crisp with all consideration for grammar, punctuation or complete thought thrown out the window. Perfect! I can be a part of this I thought. I'm a hip guy (yeah right) and have always prided myself for thinking young, being agile and stubborn but not immovable. Being an Irish kid, God has blessed me with a quick wit that I never hesitate to use, which creates its own share of problems, but that's another Blog post. So I jumped into the communication fray and started sending quick responses to which I would receive nothing or responses of 'good one,' 'nice,' 'sweet,' (a personal favorite), etc. The senior partner and majority owner of the company and a full ten years younger than me, who also had a great sense of humor would almost always respond 'LOL'. Strange, but certainly warm and welcoming.

So this pattern emerged for about 3 months of someones post, my comment, responses 'good one,' 'nice,' 'sweet' and sure enough before long 'LOL'! Now this is a warm group of people and all the stereotypes about New Yorkers that an Ohio guy had heard were completely wrong.

One day my partners and I were sitting at lunch and I noticed the senior partner (Mr. LOL to me) was responding to something on his Blackberry. Shortly after he sent his messaged and holstered that immeasurable communication gift from Heaven in his belt, my Blackberry went off notifying me that I had a message. When I opened it and looked at the message, it was a response from Mr. LOL to one of my earlier comments, message reading of course 'LOL.'

Now was my chance. Just the three of us sitting at lunch, so I mentioned to the other two team members how impressed I was with the warmth of our company and especially the senior partner. I mean, I told them, it took me a while to get used to the "lots of love" responses I get from you guys all the time but I really appreciate their opening up on that level. Well, needless to say that after they picked themselves up off the floor from laughing hysterically and of course messaged everyone in the office and for that matter everyone that they knew, I was informed that 'LOL' stood for 'laugh out loud.'

Now this could have gone a multitude of ways. My being embarrassed, shutting myself off and not taking any more risk of exposing my very limited new communication abilities. My partners recognizing that 'this guy really is out of the loop' and distancing themselves from me moving forward. Or, another ice-breaking event where limitations were laughed off and relationship strengthened. Thankfully, the latter occurred and interestingly over the course of the next couple of years, LOL laughingly became 'lots of love' to everyone in the company with the net affect being closer relationships and greater transparency.

Organizations are recognizing the need for transparency with their customers and the markets they are focused. At Purely we're committed to a social media process that opens us up for inspection at all levels. It occurred to me that all transparency discussions I have been a part of or read about deal primarily with the external and very little with the internal. I am so grateful to Bluegill Creative, our branding and marketing partner for their taking Purely through a very insightful process of corporate self evaluation with the result being a better understanding of ourselves. Great, great progress.

John 15:12 commands us to "...love one another, as I have loved you." I reference this to try and make a point from this post. Organizations are recognizing the need for transparency with their customers and the markets they are focused. It occurred to me that all transparency discussions I have been a part of or read about deal with the external, market analysis and little of the internal. My goal for Purely in the coming months is that I become transparent to our employees and they grow more comfortable exposing themselves to one another and to me and that we will build on lots of laughing and love.

When we learn to LOL, I'm quite certain our gains in all areas will be tangible and life altering. It will also be very helpful if some of our younger employees help me with my acronym abilities.

Well, I have a beautiful Valentine who is tired of my typing away and I think ready for her diaper to be changed. Now that's transparency!