Restarting the Journey

I stopped writing altogether 10 years back. Not exactly stopped writing, but more like creative writing.

Back in 2003, I was asked by a senior colleague to start a newsletter for our team, which was a global contact center. Initially, the idea was to focus it on some highlights and the colleague's idea was to have corporate kind of a thing. Performance and achievements and stuff like that.

First few issues, we used to put some numbers, some achievements, some inspiring message from the senior leadership team, nothing fun.

It used to be one, two pages at the most and it wasn't much well received initially. ?I mean, people would read it and yes, fine. But that was not what I had thought of. Oh and yes it was digital.

Newsletters for the teams or within the organization should be less about numbers and all that. You can read it in your usual announcement emails and company corporate websites.

There were other things that were happening, something which involved people, something which resonates with people.

That should have been well received and for me it was an employee engagement activity. ?I pushed people to contribute, write for newsletter, create a cartoon or a story, a poetry, share a personal anecdote. ?Yes, we had editorial oversight and then it wasn't as easy in those days to, you know, format and publish.

I had to have some support from the tech team and it was a monthly activity. ?Later that newsletter became something people used to wait for and used to ask me when it's coming. Although everybody knew it will be live on 1st of every month.

There was a deadline that by particular date, whatever the contributions you have, share with us and we will see if it is suitable of need to tweak a bit and it will be published. And yes, we would highlight the top performers in the newsletter and then it also became a competition who does well to appear in the newsletter. And there were many other stories, somebody who went extra mile or did something or there were different competitions during different times and we used to publish the whole thing in in the newsletter.

And for next few years, it became something employees, team members used to look forward to, wanted to contribute because that was giving them a creative outlet. And it was more focused on fun side of the business, not the numbers and targets and stuff like that.

Later on, when I moved to another organization, there wasn't any such thing. The team was 500 plus and they were more into corporate world. ?There wasn’t any newsletter on company level.

Being the trouble maker, I started it from my contact center, my region as an employee engagement activity because employee engagement was one of my KPIs.

I think newsletter brings people together, first few issues were more likely a single-handed effort with a bit of help from some naughty elements. ?And later, it became something everybody used to look forward; even my senior management and it was made a KPI for my counterparts in other regions.

Till the time I was in that position, it was a regular feature.

And after that, of course, I moved on. ?And later on, I worked for few other organizations, I never got around to publishing a newsletter, but I used to do a lot of internal communication. And that was it. The END.

But recently I realized that something which I stopped doing is quite an important thing if you want to be on LinkedIn, if you want to use LinkedIn properly, want to use your knowledge and experience to make a dent. ?And here I am again, I will start publishing the newsletter, which will be more focused on customer service, customer care, customer experience about people, a bit on technology, some references & recommendations for further reading.

I hope to share content which subscribers or larger community waits for. Something which helps people to at least pick a few things, learn some, make use of that information.

Moving forward, I would also take contributions from LinkedIn community if they wish to be published in the newsletter. That's for this month.

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