What Will Your One Word Be?

In the Jan, 18, 2016 edition of The Connection, you read an article from our chief administrator, Paula Vincent, about the book, One Word that Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page. Just as the title indicates, the intent of the book is to inspire you to simplify your life and work by focusing on just one word for a year. Simply put, One Word sticks.

The Agency Planning Council (APC) has been using this approach to focus our work. You may have noticed the small posters in our offices displaying the word we’ve chosen. In 2014 our word was coherence. This word helped APC focus on systematic or logical connections within our agency. The intended outcome was to address inconsistencies reflected in our culture surveys and focus group feedback. Our one word in 2015 was clarity, which was about ensuring our communication was easily understood and clearly made important connections (coherence) to our agency work. This year we have chosen leverage as our one word. We are interested in identifying and using any influence to gain advantage—advantage in area such as impact of our services, our professional relationships and our continuous improvement.

We know that other workgroups and individuals have also used this approach to simplify the focus of life and work. We would encourage you to consider checking out this resource. The One Word book is available in the agency library for checkout, plus there are five ebook copies in MackinVIA, in which staff can create a personal account and write in the book. If you'd like to read the ebook version, go to MackinVIA and log in with the Heartland AEA online database username/password. (Contact the library staff if you don't know the username/password.) For more information about the book, visit the One Word website.

And feel free to stop by and chat with us about this year’s One Word: leverage.

Your Agency Planning Council