Brainstorming Meeting via email

Back in September I remember the media release coming across my desk about St.Marys CBM and a pink cement truck. At first glance I thought what an innovative concept for a few reasons;

1) A great marketing tool to place St.Marys CBM as a leader in the construction industry for the inititative.

2) Excellent opportunity for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation to reach a new audience of potential contributors

3) This is the first iniative of a construction related company taking on a promotion like this.

My wheels immediately began spinning on how can we do something as great for Breast Cancer Awareness and the concept initially escaped me until about a week ago our newest rep Cindy from Ottawa had mentioned an idea of doing a special theme profile on women in construction. I also was reminded of our rep in Sault Ste Marie, Leslie, she had become a member of the Canadian Association of Women in Construction (CAWIC)recently and wanted to do some coverage for them but had not gotten any strong support.

So the brainstorming began between Cindy, Leslie and I and a few emails later the concept of "Women in Construction" came up for a special profile in our February 2009 issue of the Ontario Construction Report. The concept was to cover all companies, trades and suppliers related to the construction industry and ask them to share their stories of the strong women leaders and employees in the companies.

We divided up some tasks such as contacting the major women construction associations to offer to do some coverage for the special issue, looking at potential advertisers and then my responsibility was to contact the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation with an excellent idea to test polite a fundraising program. I am hoping to hear back early next week if my idea will work and a new relationship will be started. I will then share the concept if they sign off.

What does this all mean? Well it goes to show the power of a team sharing ideas and working together and contributing. Three separate ideas suddenly collided and meshed into something bigger and better which is more likely to succeed. The best thing about this is that the entire conversation happened between a few phone calls and emails by three people, one in Niagara, one in Ottawa and the other in the Sault. So much for meeting at the water cooler at the corporate office.