Valentine's Day: Showing your Love for Clients and Supporters

Happy Valentine's Day to You!  I hope you had a wonderful V Day and opportunities to feel loved and appreciated.  If you are anything like me, you spent some time this past week thinking about how you would show your love and like for those special people in your life.  And more importantly, you were actually able to do something that expressed your adoration. A card, some flowers, chocolate, jewelry, (hopefully not an appliance), or even an email that professed your special feelings for that someone. And if you were successful in your efforts, you will be appreciated and acknowledged for your thoughtfulness and remarkable capacity to have done just the right thing!

Whether it's Valentine's Day, President's Day, or Groundhog Day, how do you express love for your clients, customers, board members, supporters, and followers?  Do you send them Valentine's Day cards or Candy?  Do you take them out to dinner or buy them gifts?  The answer to all of these questions is probably NO.  

I offer you the following Challenge for next week:

1. Choose one segment of your Organizational EcoSystem (Service Recipients, Donors, Board Members, Staff, etc) 
2. Identify what your Service would be like if that segment ceased to exist (Kind of like "It's a Wonderful Life" for Board Members.
3. Dedicate at least two hours to "thinking about how you would show your love and like for those special people"
4. Choose your own "Valentine's Day" for that segment and shower them with the gifts you've dreamed up in step 3.
5. Start the process again with another segment of your EcoSystem.

If you are successful at following each of these steps, you will change the culture of your organization for the better before next Valentine's Day. And that would be the greatest Valentine's gift you could give yourself and your organization.

PS: Happy Valentine's Day Babette, Ally, and Josh.  You remind me everyday why I'm a very fortunate man.