Third Thursday Thoughts, 8th Edition

Gratitude gets a seat at this year’s Thanksgiving table

What are you thankful for? It’s the question posed around Thanksgiving every year. It’s a time to be thankful for plenty.  Despite the obvious, it’s a time to be thankful for whatever you want.  Maybe its family, or health, or for having a great job.  Many of us this year will be grateful simply to celebrate Thanksgiving together. In a way, Thanksgiving may be the perfect holiday for this time, reminding us of the things we’re grateful for and how much many of us have taken for granted.

It’s easy to take things for granted when they move along as planned. During the pandemic we stopped taking many things – even a handshake and, often, each other – for granted. Many of us celebrated an intimate, quiet Thanksgiving last year. This year, many Thanksgivings will be bigger, even if some tables have empty seats. The thrill will go beyond the taste of a 20 pound turkey with all the trimmings.  Last year we were in a different time and space. You couldn’t celebrate with elderly family, or have large gatherings. This year, vaccinations have transformed home life and the workplace. It’s a time to be thankful for so much.

I think many employers, at least sometimes, took their Staff for granted and Staff may have taken employers for granted pre-pandemic. This is the perfect time to be thankful for staff who stood by their employers this past year and brought their A game.   It’s also a good time to be thankful for the employers who stuck by their staff.  I can say with certainty that the Marcum Search team did amazing.  They showed up to work, remotely or in the office, did what they had to do, performed their jobs and fulfilled their responsibilities. This team often went the extra mile, figuring out how to be successful under much different circumstances.

This is a time when we can also be grateful for clients who stayed with us. We worked with many companies in many regions and industries and helped them when they needed it. And we are grateful that our clients continued turning to and trusting us during the pandemic. We’re grateful that our clients continued to figure out ways forward and depended on us to help them achieve it.

While in-person has benefits over online interaction, we were fortunate that the infrastructure existed to let companies shift to virtual communications. Many people hadn’t heard of software like Zoom until the world went to a remote work situation. The pandemic shut down big parts of the economy, but technology often gave us a tool to be safer and still serve our clients. If this pandemic had occurred a decade ago, I’m not sure that companies could have transitioned to a virtual world the way they did.

Thanksgiving is only one day, but it is a day we can look forward to and use to remind ourselves that, even amid difficult times, gratitude has its place at the table. What does Thanksgiving mean to you? To me, it’s a time of turkey, football and family, an appreciation of togetherness and recognition of how much we depend on and can accomplish together. We should be thankful every day.

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope Thanksgiving remains a day we all look forward to next year, but also a day that stays with us just a little bit every day of the year.