Little Things, Big Impact
May 9, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
In the recent The Small Revolution manifesto by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they discussed the power of the little things you can do to get by in these crazy times, based on their new book The Power of Small. One of the things they mentioned was renting out an ice cream truck for the day, and parking it behind your building, to give our ice cream to your whole company.
To me, that’s no small thing. That’s a pretty darn big thing, and it costs more than I have the budget to spend. But it reminded me of how we did something similar, and the amazing results.
About 2 months ago we had an ice cream social. We picked up three 5 quart pails of ice cream, 4 boxes of cones, and 3 toppings, and our telecommunications manager and I served ice cream for an hour to all the folks in IT. It was a Friday afternoon, and it definitely brought a smile to folks’ faces.
Had we stopped there, it would have been mission accomplished, as we just wanted to feed the IT department. We had a few quarts of ice cream left, so I picked up the phone and called people I knew on every other floor. Not everyone came by to share a scoop with us, but the folks who did were delighted to share in our cool treat.
A few weeks later our operations department decided they were going to host their own ice cream social, and they made sure to invite the IT department. So my team got doubly treated, all because I shared what we had left.
It’s funny how the littlest things create the biggest results.
Folks still say thanks to me for inviting them to share in our ice cream, and folks who didn’t come asked me to call them next time we have a social, because they don’t want to miss it.
What do you have that you can quickly and easily share with others?
It doesn’t have to cost you much to make a difference in the lives of someone else. Isn’t a smile worth a little ice cream?
