I spent a couple of hours today doing something that most people may say was a waste of time. We’ve identified a group of customers that we wanted to send a physical Christmas card to. Through the mail the old fashioned way.

Our cards (that we’re using this year for partners, suppliers, customers, etc.) have the following printed on the inside of them:

Wishing you and yours the very best this holiday season and throughout the new year

All of our customers will get an email message from me in the next week or so, but this is a group that we wanted to send this physical card to as well. We printed a small insert with this additional message:

As 2006 comes to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your business. As one of our valued customers, I appreciate the relationship that we have with you. I wish you the best this holiday season, as well as smashing success in the coming New Year!

JEREMY HANKS, CEO

I think many people would have figured this effort was good to go. A physical card and an additional message from the CEO. But I wanted to sign the insert. Again, easy enough to scan my signature and hit the print button. But you know what? That’s just not very personal at all.

So I signed each insert. Hundreds and hundreds of them. With a real pen. In blue ink. And it took a good few hours. And I can barely move my arm. And to me, little things like that really do matter.

Because of my CEO title and relatively young age (I turned 32 last month), I am occasionally tapped by the business community as a business owner / entrepreneur to watch. Case in point… in the Fall 2006 issue of Utah Valley Business Quarterly, I was recognized as one of the Valley’s Top 40 Entrepreneurs Under 40.

On the surface, a mention like that may seem like quite an honor, but if you dig a little deeper, the honor itself pales in comparison to another article from the same issue of the magazine:

The above article, titled Go Team: Cheerlead Your Employees to Corporate Unity), highlights Doba’s efforts at creating a casual, fun, and challenging work environment. In particular, the two-page spread shines a spotlight on Doba Day, a daylong celebration of our company’s birthday, complete with prizes and recognition for every employee who chooses to celebrate the day by dressing up, performing in skits, and authentically showing their appreciation for a workplace culture and environment unlike most others.

Peter Senge, the former Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management, once said, “…collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.” I’m honored, not so much by the fact that UVBQ named me to their “40 Under 40″ list, but by the fact that I’ve contributed to a collaborative work environment worthy of recognition in any publication.

Gooooooo Doba!