As part of incorporating 3 Birds' eight core values into daily activity, it has become a cultural tradition to kick off every Monday morning with a leadership meeting where each attendee first shares their ‘one word’ before getting down to the rest of business. The idea is to encourage our members to summarize their individual and teams’ collective impact on our continued company growth with a spotlight on overall personal and professional well-being.
Loosely based on the concept of choosing One Word, explored by Jon Gordon in his book One Word that Will Change Your Life. He explains that rather than trying to tackle a traditional list of resolutions at the top of every new year, he picks one word that will inspire him to be the best version of himself throughout.
Our weekly approach to One Word simply adds a richer layer to our already established yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals and serves as a tangible gut-check in order to focus our immediate efforts on the current state of business and of our people. Many weeks we find that these words reflect on where we are. Most often they are motivation for where we are going.
The graphic in this post captures those words collected over the first quarter in 2021. Some appear larger, representing words that were chosen by more than one person on more than one occasion. This simple exercise helps us visualize the pattern of our cumulative thoughts becoming actions (another great concept!) and prompts each person towards outcomes that support:
- FOCUS: centering everyday efforts on growing their impact
- CONNECTION: building deeper connections with team members, family, and community
- TRANSFORMATION: encouraging small, incremental changes that have positive and meaningful results
Rolled out as a fun icebreaker in our January Town Hall Meeting, we look forward to other ways of bringing this practice to life throughout the year to our staff, friends, family, and partners. As 3 Birds continues to grow, we find it important for us to take time to celebrate our successes, evaluate our efforts, and encourage each other to stretch ourselves to grow along with it. Our version of the One Word concept is just one example of our team doing just that.