Astro_Tim

Well...it happened. I could not stand on the sidelines any longer. When I learned that my West Point classmate and NASA Astronaut Tim Kopra (@Astro_Tim on Twitter) became the first to "Twitter" from the International Space Station, I knew I was missing out on something! Incredible! If we thought our world was getting smaller, what does this say about our universe?

So I have jumped in as well. For those who are interested, you can follow me (@LeaderBusiness on Twitter) or...let me know you are out there so I can follow you.

Twitter enables connections through little (140 character) updates that ask, "What are you doing?" By answering that question, I hope that I can provide input into the arena regarding my favorite topic -- leadership. And for those who are interested, I can provide some insight into what I do in leading my organization. I love my job and find it fascinating. I believe that the diversity of the work my organization does as well as the leadership challenges that come from an organization with the size (800+ employees) and scope ($1B+) of my team are worth telling people "what I am doing." If you are interested, come along and follow me.

Like you, I am doing my best to create and maintain connections in this increasingly interconnected world (universe!). Leadership is all about relationships, learning from others, communication, and providing inspiration to those who choose to follow you. I think that some of this is possible on Twitter. I was inspired to see my fellow West Pointer think that connecting with people from space was important. So...here I go...twittering away. Enjoy the "tweets." That's Leader Business.

Virtual Connections

I thought some of you might find some value in what we are doing to communicate with our workforce. Watch the video (or at least as much as you can stomach given the sorry excuse for an interviewer) and you'll see a method we are using to keep people connected.

Among many benefits, these videos do several things for us:

-- Puts people front and center. Everyone loves to see there face (or their teammate's faces) on TV.

-- Connects people spread across 3 states and gives them an understanding of what else our organization is doing.

-- Helps connect the field with the office staff, construction with contracting, laborers with lawyers. Everyone needs to see the end product and know that their contribution, no matter how small, helped make it happen.

-- Have fun. The feedback has been very positive. The videos allow people to see their leadership in crazy situations, having a good time, being irreverent.

We try to do these videos about every two weeks. They are on our intranet home page so that people see them when they open their Internet explorer. And, as you can see, we've even begun to put some of them on YouTube so that potential employees can assess if we might be the sort of team they'd like to join.

Is it working? I think so. I get a lot of positive feedback. I try to explore different hot topics or do interviews at different projects out in the field. And in this time of distributed work, I think it is an important tool to keep people connected. These connections, this sort of communication with and among our workforce, are great fun and important leader tasks.

Virtually speaking, that makes it Leader Business!