Off Topic: Feeling Grateful on Thanksgiving

While only some of you are celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope that all of you can find a way to be thankful today. Gratitude is a powerful tool that I hope you regularly embrace. I’m taking advantage of Thanksgiving to share 10 things for which I am very thankful:

• My growing family. I am blessed to have a wonderful family that gives me great joy. Additionally, I’m really excited to meet my soon-to-be-born great niece.
• The CXPA community. I really enjoy leading and being a part of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, because of the wonderful volunteers and the amazing culture of sharing across our community.
• Temkin Group clients. We’re very lucky to work for and with such a wonderful group of people who are passionate about improving customer experience within their organizations. More importantly, they’re just really nice people.
• Our Temkin Group team. We may be a small company, but I’m very proud of how our team sets the pace in CX thought leadership. We’re lucky to have such great people on our team.
• The New England Patriots. I was bummed out when the Patriots lost to Kansas City, but it’s been really fun watching the team go on a dominant winning streak after that disappointing game. Now I’m hoping to see the team in the Superbowl. There’s a lot to learn from how Bill Belichick builds a resilient organization!
• Red Sox retooling. Despite the Red Sox’ terrible year, I love following the team’s off-season (“hot stove”) activities, both rumors and transactions. It’s fun to watch how Ben Cherington and the rest of the Red Sox front-office are assembling next year’s team. I like the the Sandoval deal, but am not crazy about the Ramirez contract (although I like having his bat in the line-up).
• Boston Celtics’ resurrection. I’m enjoying trying to figure out what moves Danny Ainge will make to (hopefully) transform the Celtics’ collection of young players and draft picks into a championship contender. I have mixed feeling on whether to keep or trade Rondo.
• MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Every year I look forward to spending two days at what Mark Cuban affectionately calls the dork-a-palooza. This wonderful conference combines two of my favorite things: sports and analytics. Actually, make that three things, since my son has been joining me the last couple of years.
• NetFlix. After watching both seasons of House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, along with my recent binge-watching of Prison Break, I’m hooked on NetFlix. Who wants to wait a week for the next episode of anything?!?
• A sense of humor. I really enjoy laughing and am blessed to find so many things to be funny. That’s why I enjoy sharing this picture every year on Thanksgiving.

The bottom line: I hope that you and your family have a fantastic day (Thanksgiving or just plain Thursday) and that you find the way to be grateful for many, many things.