Mountain Springs (Intern Edition)
Our intention is always to expand your thinking. We do so by weaving water analogies with business and life. We often write about internships. Recall, this passion project is bringing dignity to the internship discourse. Intern Management, the second book in the internship series, is nearly ready. Like a mountain spring from which water and life flow, an excerpt from the prologue setting up key internship principles starts thus.
Intern Management Prologue
The next time you host an intern, will it be an exceptional experience? Will it leave you and the intern utterly fulfilled and happy? Will outstanding work be completed in a joyous manner while the intern learns new skills and matures professionally? Afterwards will you be eager for the next internship? Will your friends and colleagues ask you how you created something so inspiring when you talk about it?
When I speak with leaders today and share about the internship program I developed for my firm, I mostly get questions of disbelief: “You mean an intern is picking the projects they work on?”, “They talk directly to the executives you work with?”, or “You demand they not work nights and weekends?” They think this cannot be so. Yet it is – every year.
This book details how I do it and shows how you can for yourself and your organization. Rather than just share a step-by-step methodology, the book approaches this endeavor by using underlying principles highlighted in the first chapter and woven into each chapter thereafter. Why? Because each company, non-profit, government agency, university department, trade or other entity that hosts an internship is unique. There are nuances, rules, regulations, customs and the like that make each organization what it is. Guiding principles – or ways to think about an internship – can be leveraged and implemented to suit any organization’s unique circumstances.
Look at leaders today and ask yourself: Why are some so effective while so many others are lacking? Maybe it has to do with their very first hands-on experience in their career. Maybe seeds are planted while they are in high school, college, or graduate school that bear various fruits years later?
I assert that the success of future leaders in business, government and countless organizations is shaped by how they are guided as students today. For many students, that guidance starts with entry into the professional world with an internship. So what better place is there to set the tone for our future leaders than with an exceptional internship.
Mountain Springs
Most great rivers start from water welling up in mountain. Many extraordinary springs create an amazing river that flows hundreds of miles for years. How and where they begin determines so much of their future. It is so for massive water flows; it is so for budding leaders (otherwise known as interns!) of our society.
Expand your thinking beyond where you are. What principles might make all the difference? Where do you see yourself swimming in all this?
Here's to you and your awesome future.
Until then, keep your feet on the board and keep riding your wave!
Robert J. Khoury
CEO Agile Rainmakers