You can lead a bee to honey but you can’t ……

make him drink….no, no, that’s not right!

How about…”Quit pollen my leg” or “I’m allergic to bees. If I’m stung they give me hives.”

Laughter is key to a workplace. Often at our hive you will hear a buzz from an office and then keys clicking in two offices, followed by a burst of laughter. If we don’t laugh, we die.  Creativity thrives in a place of humor.

This morning I had this thought about my tulips…my vibrant, colorful brave tulips. They bloom through all kinds of humor! Ice, snow, shivering winds. I felt bad for them so I dressed them for the day. I know they will make it.

“I’m a Beeliever!”

Queen B

The sweeter the honey, the sweeter the pot.

 

According to my best friend, Google, “The Queen Bee is the largest bee in the colony, with a long and graceful body. She is the only female with fully developed ovaries.”  Two strikes against you Google. You aren’t always fully accurate.

There is a swarm of intelligence happening here at the hive. A constant sound of buzziness…customer calls coming in and going out, calls to contacts abroad, markers squeaking on whiteboards, keyboards clicking, camera lights flashing and perhaps one or two  scolding the speed from which his information is up or downloading…..(cough,cough, Lebin). There is little time to not be producing honey. I am not sure how they do it some days…..these bees are hard to get to stop for breaks. They have to be pulled from their tasks and forced to rest. Luckily, bees like sweetness so every morning around 1030 they get a freshly made fruit and veggie smoothie whipped up in our Vitamix by Lorraine, our Keeper of the Kitchen. 🙂 There is no Honeycomb cereal in our cupboards. Much slurping is heard with yum sounds and then the rolling of chairs being placed back around the boardroom table as they return eagerly to their projects at hand… with refreshed antennas. Its the real bees knees!

Did you know I have the most thankful bees on the island?

I love my job-just sayin’.

QB

Did you know that bees dream?

Well, at AbbyShot the bees dream every day ; a bigger colony, more licensing agreements, more awesome emails from our amazing customers, heck, even trips around the world to some awesome sci-fi conventions in awesome cities!

I recall a coach recommending I should use Facebook at work for my staff to use internally. Talk about resistance from me! I could only imagine how much they might be hanging out chatting back and forth with friends.  As I let down the wall and trusted the process, I listened to the concept and the AbbyShot Dreamline was born. We set up a private group for employees only. I haven’t looked back since. That was about 6 or 7 years ago. Each week we make a new file that looks like this:

Bon’s Weekly Accomplishments

Monday

Top Three for the Day

1. Contact guy at Disn……never mind, I can’t tell the public that yet!
2. Sign contract with…no, can’t tell you that either!
3. Review our new leather…oops, almost let that one slip!

Top Ten accomplishments for the day

• a
• b
• c
• d….etc.

When we come in to work in the morning we post our top three priorities for the day and as we add value to the company throughout our day we share in our Accomplishments list. Posting top three keeps us on task, and if we don’t complete it, it gets moved to the next day. Often people will do their top three and add more to their list. Accomplishments are not suppose to be normal everyday tasks, they are things that we feel would move the company towards our goal, or vision. There is something very satisfying about checking things off a list. Honey sweet perhaps? 😉

Often we will also use our Dreamline to post some exciting news to the staff. “Guess who just contacted us about a possible licensing agreement!” …something like that. Or they will post an image of a product customers are begging us to create or a sample that just arrived from a manufacturer. Its like our own mini internal newsreel where dreams are often brought to reality.

I’ve been known to quote this one:

If you don’t have a dream, how can you have a dream come true?

We know how to make dreams come true here at the B-Hive.

Here’s to laughter!

Queen B

 

Culture of the AbbyShot Colony

Well folks, welcome to my very first blog post. I am about to begin sharing some honey-sweet stories about activities around the AbbyShot hive.

The bees here have taught me so very much over the past 12 years! There will be some sweet stories and some tales of stings and healing. One thing that’s for sure, honey comes from happy bees. This crew here at AbbyShot amaze me every day! They create the outcomes for our site. They work as a team, constantly buzzing each other on Skype, some yelling louder than others about something that excites them, acknowledging one another’s contributions!

A healthy  hive has multiple cells. Its a bit cramped in there but they get their tasks completed. They are different. They drink smoothies every morning on coffee break, they take a water break every afternoon (thanks Justin Lane!) to rehydrate their brains, and they watch wimp.com, laughing sometimes hysterically together. Occasionally the water glasses appear to have an odd golden color. Surely they aren’t….no,. no, never mind. They wouldn’t do that. Spirits and honey don’t mix well….. do they??

Stories are just that…..tales of an event. Yes, yes, I can be a tad descriptive at times, however what is life without a few stories? We’ve been to some pretty cool places over the years plus we think you just might enjoy hearing about some of our interactions with our cool, cool customers and other “bizz”ness colleagues!

Care to come along for a few chuckles?

Yours in Leadership and Laughter,

Queen B