Pink.  Fluffy.  Drum.  Rabbit.  Energizer Bunny.  What an interesting mascot for quite an inventive contraption, the battery.  Think of how revolutionary the battery was when it was first introduced.  Now a days, batteries can store tons of energy, can dispense it through various methods, and many batteries can even be recharged.

I’ve been thinking a lot about energy and batteries over the past few months leading up to the various meeting cycles.  I think we can all agree that these few months have been draining.  If the Energizer Bunny was doing our work he would have had to take a break by now.

This got me thinking.  Do you shut off or do you recharge?

By design batteries need to do both and we do too.  Battery powered devices need to shut off in order to preserve the life of the battery.  We need to shut it down from time to time and disconnect from work in order to preserve our heartbeats, our battery life.

The thing is that shutting off is not the same as recharging.  There is a big difference between deciding not to use any additional energy and doing something that refills the energy tank.  Batteries need to be put in one of the chargers that can transfer energy back into them.  We need to do the same.  Are we finding those recharging stations?  Are we serving as those recharging stations for others?  I didn’t realize how bad I needed a recharge until last night.  It was the end of the day, I was beat, tired, exhausted.  I was invited to a breakout room after the final general session.  This room was filled with customer experience champs.  They were totally nerds for helping others.  They were sharing stories about trying to push the movement forward, sharing successes, AND failures (because they are brave enough to roll that way).  You could see it in the room.  We were all tired, but as we talked it’s like our energy meters started going from red to green again.  I’m sure none of them planned to recharge everyone like that, but that’s what happens when we unleash some of the things that give us energy to push on.

Now, are we all 100% fluffy Energizer Bunnies?  No.  We will still need to shut down and recuperate, but what I do know is that the energy they gave me put some fuel in the tanks.  Do you shut off or do you recharge?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry