Your team is built with people with perspectives and backgrounds? That’s the jawn!

While working in Florida, someone mocked my Philly roots by using the word “jawn”, a distinctly Philly word. There was a young man nearby who said “I can’t believe you know jawn. I thought I was the only who knew this word!”.

Know it? I lived it in the late eighties, and I now memorialize it on my bourbon barrel credenza.

We all come from different places and backgrounds, have different upbringings and perspectives. It’s the collective sum of all the differences in the people I’ve worked with over the years that has made my career remarkable. And it’s those differences that often bring about a greater work product.

Lesson I learned that I share now: when building teams at work, don’t build teams in your image…build teams of people that bring very different things to the table.

Oh, and if you don’t know the word “jawn”, look it up on the urban dictionary. It’s suitable for work.