I keep a list of dates about the people I work with: birthdays, work anniversaries, wedding anniversaries, their kids’ birthdays. Whenever one comes up, I send them a short message.
I’d done this haphazardly for several years, but became much more intentional about it after reading David Burkus’ book Friend of a Friend. There’s a very practical reason for why I do this; it gives me a genuine excuse to reach out to someone I might not have talked to in months, without the conversation feeling like it’s building up to an ask. Most of the time, it turns into a real catch-up — what they’re working on now, what’s changed since we last spoke.
The tracking itself is nothing special, just some recurring reminders in my Outlook calendar. But this practice, repeated for years across dozens of people, is the mechanism behind what I’m going to share in this article, a system for staying in a lot of people’s lives a little bit, consistently, for a long time.
Why This Works
Two things happen every time I send one of those messages.
First, it keeps me current. When a site I’ve supported starts slipping back into old habits or a new problem crops up, the site leaders I periodically check in with think of me first. Those check-ins are part of why struggling sites keep referring me to other struggling sites, a pattern I’ve written about before.
Second, it builds goodwill that reads as genuine, because it is. I spent one week last November working alongside a specialized improvement team on a training project. Afterward, I kept in touch with the team’s lead the same way I keep in touch with everyone else on my list. Months later, when I discovered her team was teaching an outdated standard to sites network-wide, she was willing to actually hear that criticism and work with me to fix it, instead of getting defensive or shutting the conversation down. I’ve told the resolution part of that story before, the alignment channel, the forced choice, the six teams, in Building Influence Without Authority. But a key reason it worked as well as it did is because she already trusted me. That trust had been built up over months, long before I needed it.
Congratulating someone with nothing to ask for is exactly why it works. People remember who showed up when there was nothing in it for you.
The Art of Knowing People
None of this works if the dates are the whole relationship. A birthday message to someone you don’t actually know doesn’t do much good. But the tracking matters because it forces a small, repeated act of paying attention: what this person cares about, what’s been hard for them lately, what they’ve mentioned that’s worth remembering. A real relationship is built on specifics, not on the fact that you both happen to work at the same company. The dates give me a reason to show up regularly enough that I learn those specifics over time, instead of losing touch and having to rebuild the relationship from nothing whenever I need it.
I’ve written a full piece on the specific skill of connecting people and teams that wouldn’t otherwise cross paths — see Building Bridges for that. The short version relevant here is that the habit of staying in touch with people across your organization, not just your own department, is what makes you someone who can actually make those connections when they’re needed. You can’t bridge two groups you don’t know anyone in.
The Alumni Network
The people you work with now won’t all stay where they are. Some will move to other companies, other industries, other cities. Most people let those relationships fade the moment the shared workplace disappears, treating the connection as tied to the job rather than the person.
That’s a mistake you need to avoid. Colleagues who’ve moved on are often more useful to know later, not less. They can see your industry from a different vantage point, they’re no longer competing with you for the same opportunities, and they remember who you were to work with before you had anything to gain from staying in touch. I’ve kept several of these relationships going for years past the point where either of us had any organizational reason to. Most of them have been worth it at least once, often when I least expected it.
The same birthday and anniversary habit works here too. It doesn’t stop being relevant just because someone’s badge doesn’t have your company’s name on it anymore.
Summary
None of this is complicated, and that’s the point. If it weren’t simple, I wouldn’t have been able to keep it up as long as I have. A short list of dates and a few minutes a year per person is all it takes. The standards alignment with that improvement team, the string of site referrals, none of them happened because of one good conversation. They happened because the relationship was already there, months or years before the situation existed.
Last week I wrote more specifically about what this compounds into; how people you’ve helped start advocating for you without being asked. That doesn’t happen with people who disappeared from your life the moment you stopped needing anything from each other. The return doesn’t come from any one message. It comes from being the person who’s still there, years after most people would have let the relationship fade.
From Theory to Action
Start your own list this week. Five and their birthdays, work anniversaries, or whatever else you already know off the top of your head.
Set a recurring calendar reminder for each date, a few days early. Give yourself time to write something real instead of a rushed one-liner on the day itself.
When you reach out, ask a specific question about what they’re working on now. The message isn’t complete until there’s something for them to actually respond to.
Add one person you haven’t spoken to in over a year, ideally someone who’s since left your company. Reach out with no agenda beyond reconnecting.
Resist the urge to make an ask the first time you reconnect with someone. Let the relationship exist for its own sake before you need anything from it.
Every month review your list. Add more people and dates, and notice which relationships feel different than they did before you started.