My new CEO shared good life (and good business) lessons about gratitude this Thanksgiving week, and I'm passing them on
My work history is a rather odd one. I've been everything from a ballroom dance studio receptionist to an assistant high school debate coach. In the last 20 years, I've focused in on the #utilities business—writing about it, running magazines and online forums and #socialmedia channels about it, and even spending a good happy stint with #Oracle Energy and Water (an Oracle global business unit specializing in utility-focused software) marketing it.
Every business has its own culture, focus, and community. With my latest gig at ESC Partners , I feel like I'm returning to a family-like atmosphere, to a place that remind me of those thriving small businesses (in ballroom dancing, for example), I worked at in my youth. But this family is also full of #utility and #smartcity insiders and knowledge levels that, trust me, is not the office gossip at a dance studio.
It's a nice blending, a delightful combination of what I loved about working in #smallbusiness and what I loved working in the #corporate world—the best of both.
Yesterday, our CEO RJ Kumar , sent a note out to our partners and our ESC family about his feelings of gratitude, and I asked for his permission to share it here as supporting evidence, if you will, of that in-the-moment family atmosphere I'm getting to see again with this job.
Here's that note from yesterday (hashtag additions are mine):
Well-known columnist Arianna Huffington once beautifully wrote: "#Gratitude for the journey is our gateway to grace. It’s no coincidence that gratitude shares the same Latin root (gratis) as the word grace. So, in addition to a day of gratitude, we can choose to live in a state of gratitude and thus in a state of grace."
Thursday is Thanksgiving, and it has always been my very favorite holiday—a time when people stop and think about what they are truly #grateful for. It’s a day when we purposefully ponder on the concept of gratitude, and, in my case, I am always reminded of Arianna’s note about that state of grace #givingthanks can bring.
For me (and for many), Thanksgiving isn’t so much about turkey and football as it is about family and giving heartfelt thanks to others.?This year, I have so much I am thankful for: family, freedom, good friends, a warm house, and blessings of my forefathers, mentors, and teachers. But, at the very top of my list is this: I am extremely thankful to be working with the amazing employees at ESC Partners, our community of clients, and our smart and savvy network of business associates.
I was thinking about how to convey those thanks this morning when I walked into #Starbucks and was served my coffee in one of their #holiday cups. (It is Red Cup season, and with each cup an annual greeting.) This year, that Red Cup message is: Trust your journey.
It spurred even deeper thinking about grace, blessings, and the people and moments that have made my personal journey and the journey of ESC Partners so very special. I love the idea behind that message because it highlights the concept that each challenge, interaction, or moment has something to teach us. Even days that go in a completely different direction than planned have a lesson in them—giving us the opportunity to find something every single day to be thankful for, returning us daily to that state of grace.
Every day, we make decisions about our own journey and the journey we are leading for others. We have no guarantee that our decisions will be the right ones. In fact, we know some will be wrong. But each decision is part of the journey, and when we can find a way to be thankful for those wrong choices, those gray or dark moments, then we’ve truly learned that message about gratitude. We live in a culture of achievement; we focus on the destination, the success of what we achieved, the trophy. But trusting your journey—and our journey together—and being thankful for both all we’ve achieved and all we’ve learned from what went wrong will make us all tougher, smarter, and more agile in every decision we make in the future as a team. I truly believe that.
And there is nothing I am more thankful for than the opportunity to take this entrepreneurial journey with this team we’ve built together, from coffee talk to hard decisions to amazing wins (and even a few losses, too).?I am so grateful to be on this journey with all of you.
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All of those thoughts from a single stop for coffee.
For our ESC employees and their lovely families, thank you for your hard work, focus, and passion to serve our customers and the citizens of clients’ communities. For the customers who have been with us on our journey of strengthening our purpose, you make us better; your passion for our services, your support of our mission, and your genuine love for our team is extraordinary.
Today, tomorrow, and always: thank you all for this journey we’re taking together.
And now to add my personal thanks: It's so nice to be a part of the ESC Partners family this holiday. Thanks to RJ Kumar , Valerie Ross , Lori Waugh , David Greenberg , Aditya (Adi) Menon , Jessica Speed , and all of the ESC for welcoming me in so graciously.
And to my previous work families at Oracle Energy and Water (and greater 甲骨文 ), Energy Central , DISTRIBUTECH , Allumia , Megger , Wichita State University and others I cannot tag here because they're not in the LinkedIn fold, thanks for the friends who have become family and the knowledge that has added to my skillsets tenfold.
Not sure who we are? This is ESC Partners.
ESC Partners crafts, supports, and ties together software that enables the modern smart city from back offices to electric, water, and gas utility functions.?Our care-as-a-service offerings respond to the needs of small and medium-sized municipalities around the world, with customer engagement our primary focus.
A proud #Oracle Gold Partner, all of ESC’s products are built on proven, tested Oracle cloud applications from Human Capital Management (HCM) to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Customer Care & Billing (CCB)/Customer Cloud Service (CCS). Every ESC customer benefits both from the history and heft of the Oracle name as well as the dedication and installation experience of ESC Partners.
As a certified minority business enterprise, we know our greatest resource, our biggest differentiator, and our largest benefit to our clients remains our dedicated, empowered people who are always available to help your city’s back-office team or utility customer service department anytime.
Absolutely agree! I'm so grateful to be associated with ESC Partners. When I received the letter from RJ - it warmed my heart and to be included by him meant the World to me. Wishing ESC all the best in 2023!