Prompt: We are all opsimaths

In the last installment, I spoke about a manager at a previous job. I’ve been lucky to have some really good bosses in my career.

Going back to my first manager though, and one thing I’ll always remember.

An early task I was set was to send him three interesting things I’d seen in our industry (marketing) every week. 

It’s a simple task but it’s one I love for a few reasons. 

Firstly, ‘interesting’ is totally objective. 

Secondly, the number is completely arbitrary. It could be three, it could be five, it could be ten.

Thirdly, I don’t remember now if my manager ever gave me feedback on the things I sent through. Were they interesting enough? Could they be applied to our role? 

It didn’t really matter.

What did matter was that each week I was scouring blogs and social media posts, trying to find the thought leaders in our industry. I was learning. And I was finding interesting (to me) things.

It instilled in me, a desire to always be learning and looking for new knowledge. 

It’s something I’ve brought into my own management style, because I think it’s important to always be learning and I think it’s important that you instill that in the people who work for you.

So, that’s inspired todays prompt:

Send yourself the most interesting thing you’ve learnt this week. Try and do this every week for as long as you can. Try not to break the habit!

Happy journaling.