In early 2006, riding home on the subway, as the train passed over the Brooklyn Bridge and the sky shone in, I cried a little.

I’d just finished a two-week project.  It was the first time I’d led teambuilding, business storytelling and project management at a traditional company.  The feeling was far greater than any satisfaction I’d gotten from producing theater, which I’d previously thought was the ultimate work experience for me.  Why so fulfilling?  All of us involved on the team had done or gotten something we hadn’t thought was possible.

Everyone else on the team had thought it wasn’t possible to meet a deadline at this company, or work without being micromanaged.  But we’d done both.  I’d started to feel it wasn’t possible for the developer on the project to appreciate meeting a deadline and collaborating intensely with a web designer and copywriter.  But he had expressed his appreciation.  Everyone had, in their own way, whether saying this way of doing things was “magic” or “the only way we should do things in the future” or “a good experience.”  And that meant a lot to me, especially since there was such resistance before we’d started working together.

* * *

That was a big moment for me.  It was my first big hint that working in business might be more satisfying to me than working in theatrical events, whether variety shows or potlucks.

Between then and a few months ago, I continued to want to produce potluck dinners where people make things in teams.  And I did.  But at the fifth potluck on May 20, when people looked to me to do project management, I realized I prefer working in companies, not events.  Companies where people have a commitment already in place to be there, doing something.  In contrast to these potlucks, where I wanted people to start new projects.

It’s become real clear to me that my passion is not leads, but conversion.  In other words, I’m not passionate about getting people to a new website or to an event or to work at a company or commit to a new project.  But once people are at that website or event, or working at that company, or want to be part of a project, I like finding how they can have a better experience.  Especially a better experience interacting with one another.

So those were two big hints, in early 2006 and on May 20, 2007, that I want to work in business, not theatrical or potluck dinner events.

Eight days later, on Memorial Day, a strange thing happened.

Now, ever since fifth grade, I remember wanting to bring people together.  To talk about their interests, to share what they’re working on and passionate about.  The bigger, the better.  And ever since I started producing events in college when I was 17, this desire to bring people together had driven me.

Memorial Day Weekend was the second year in a row that I and a bunch of friends had gone up to the Poconos.  A big house by the lake, with s’mores around a fire, cooking, swimming, bowling, sunbathing, hiking, ice cream, talking, just being together, relaxing.  

Anyway, this time, on the third day, sunbathing on the dock, I felt totally peaceful.  I thought, “I don’t need to do anything.”  And that was an odd thought.  “I don’t need to do anything!”

Then the next thought, “So what do I do?”

Obviously, whatever I want to do.  But along with that thought, “I don’t need to do anything,” disappeared my need to produce big events.  (As I’m writing this, I’m getting a little itchy, like, “Really?  Really?  Am I sure?”  No, I’m not totally sure.)  But it doesn’t feel like what’s driving me anymore. 

Actually, I don’t feel driven any more at all.  I don’t know if that’s bad — if I’m not a dreamer — but there are things I definitely want to do.  Lots of things, and I’ve prioritized a few I want to do the most.  Plus, after going through awhile of wanting to work as little as possible, and being happy when I could live off of working an hour a day, now I want to work, a lot.  And in the last couple of months, I’ve been wanting to really commit to something, ideally with a company (working with a team or teams of people who have a similar interest in how people interact and make choices and learn).

Because something else I’ve known for a while but not listened to — I don’t like being the first-in-command.  I like being the third-in-command.  I work best when my role is third-in-command with a focus on operations (either as a theatrical producer fulfilling the vision of a director and playwright, or a planning & marketing director fulfilling the vision of a President and his right-hand sales manager).  And I bring my own vision, for sure, but my kinds of visions are about interacting, about choices, about decisions, about processes, about people being listened to and involved in what they care about, not about sales goals.  I’m an intrapreneur, not an entrepreneur.

Why the long review?  It’s been hard for me to shift from viewing myself as a theatrical producer to a potluck dinner facilitator where people make things in teams, and even harder to shift from viewing myself as an entrepreneur and first-in-command to an intrapreneur and third-in-command, even though I really, when I thought about it, knew that all along.  So these moments help me figure out what the heck is going on, so I stay flexible and move forward.

I was watching an early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer today.  Giles, Buffy’s mentor, describes why he doesn’t like computers:  “the smell.”  But computers don’t have a smell, he’s told.  Giles compares computers to the musty books he loves, which smell like old flowers or smoke or experience, then says: 

“The knowledge gained from a computer has no texture, no context.  It’s there and then it’s gone.  If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible, it should be smelly.”

This is from an interview I did with a CEO: 

‘When I was 26, I negotiated a $55 million deal. 

My boss asked me, “Get me $125,000.” 

I thought, “This is going to be difficult.  A 2.5% advance cut.” 

I got him $250,000.  Double what he’d asked for. 

What do you think I got?  Nothing.  Not a percentage, no recognition, no yellow ribbon, nothing. 

My boss called me in and he told me, “You’re an employee.  You don’t get anything to do your job.”‘

The CEO told me this with a lot of bitterness in his voice. 

He doesn’t know how to treat his co-workers.  They’re always in crisis mode.  Goals aren’t being met.  He wants them to take risks and benefit from doing well.  But he felt stepped on when he was an employee.  So what does he do now?

Email me at alex@questionswebsite.com to be interviewed about your great or life-changing work experiences.

When we buy and sell companies, what are we talking about?  

Charles Handy: ‘It seems to me rather obvious that the current system of capitalism is not going to be sustained, and let me explain why. The assumption, in the Anglo-American context — and it’s different in continental Europe, different in Japan, in China — is that the company is a piece of property, owned by the people who buy shares of it. They therefore have the right to sell that property. But what is this property? It increasingly is a collection of people. The tangible, fixed assets of these corporations are worth considerably less than their market value. If you take the pure knowledge organizations — advertising agencies, banks, software companies — the market value may be 20, 30, 40 times the fixed assets. I think the rhetoric of the stock market is concealing from us the fact that what we’re actually talking about is owning other people.

Now when we think about it, this is both strange and in the end unworkable, because organizations, as we know, are whittling down to the core. Outsourcing everything they can. They are going to employ a relatively small proportion of all the people they need. Those core people, therefore, are going to be rather competent. And they are going to resent being owned by other people. They’re going to say, “No, you can’t just sell us over our heads or dictate our strategy. Furthermore, if you don’t like it, we will leave.” So what is the point of saying that you own something when actually that something can walk out the door?’

Can a company be more like a town? 

David Ellerman: ‘”A democratic firm is a company “owned” and con­trolled by all the people working in it—just as a democratic government at the city, state, or national level is controlled by all of its citizens.  In each case, those who manage or govern are ultimately responsible not to some absentee or outside parties but to the people being managed or governed.  Those who are governed vote to directly or indirectly elect those who govern. 

In an economic democracy, there would be private property, free markets, and entrepreneurship—but “employment” would be replaced by democratic membership in the firm where one works.’

Charles Handy: ‘You begin to see it in….the citizen company. The inhabitants, if you like, are citizens. They have rights. They have the right of free speech, to express their preferences. They have the right of residence.’

David Ellerman quotes from: The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm. 1990, London: Unwin Hyman Limited - HarperCollins Academic. (out of print) Revised and published in Chinese as The Democratic Corporation 1997, Xinhua Publishing House, Beijing.

Download the full text from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellerman

Charles Handy quotes from: http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/L2L/summer97/handy.html

This post is what it sounds like, so I figured I’d better look up what the prefix “ob-” means: 

obvious and obviate have the root via meaning “road” or “path”; something is obvious when it is right there in your path; to obviate a difficulty is to find a way across or around it;

observant has the root serve or “to keep”, “to guard”, “to watch”, and so to be observant is to “watch over”.

* * *

This past weekend, K– pointed out that my notes on the actions of the people I was observing weren’t clear.  Basically, imagine you’re in a drugstore, and a couple walks in.  They shop.  The man has an infant strapped to his chest.  Is that relevant?  They walk around the store, and the only product the man looks at is sleeping pills.  Is that relevant?  And some other stuff happens too.  I write it down.

I wondered whether to write down that the infant was there.  But then when I saw the man looking at the sleeping pills, it was easy for me to make an assumption about the story:  the man can’t sleep because his infant is keeping him up at night.  I didn’t write this assumption down on the notes, though, and K–’s comment got me thinking about why.

* * *

Senior year of high school, I took Mrs. Williams’ Child Development class.  We had a nursery school for kids ages 3-4 next door to the classroom.  Half our time was spent in class, and half in the nursery school. 

As teacher’s assistants, we were instructed to play with the kids what the kids wanted to play.  If they wanted to play house or blocks or draw, and they wanted us there, we would play with them.  We balanced their leading the play with our leading/introducing elements of the play which would guide their growth.  (At the Brooklyn Free School, I saw kids build railroad tracks in the hallway.  When one kid started dropping cars off of an unfinished bridge, the facilitator suggested, “I know you can find a ramp to roll the cars from the bridge to the floor.”  And the kid was inspired to find a ramp and fit it onto the bridge.)  This leadership balance is the embodiment of my definition of “care” — respect for the individual each on their own terms.

In addition to learning how to care, I learned how to observe.  One wall of the nursery school had a one-way mirror.  The kids knew it was there, because sometimes they played in our psychology classroom (they once staged a puppet show there) and talked about seeing their nursery school room through the glass.  As students, occassionally we sat in the dark behind the mirror and observed the kids and adults interacting.  We also observed and were aware of what was going on when we were playing in the classroom.

At the end of the semester, we wrote reports on some of the kids.  We were instructed only to write actions (what actually happened), not assumptions (why we thought it happened).  And this emphasis on actions over explanations has been how, ever since (and possibly before), I’ve preferred to write.

As you can see in the post immediately preceding this one, it’s just dialogue.  No interpretation.  You interpret it yourself, and if you don’t get why I find it amusing, or if you don’t recreate the emotions of the speakers, then I’d rather not say.

But sometimes I need to say.  And I have a habit of preferring to say it in a way that either makes it seem obvious, or where you think of it yourself in a way where you say, “Of course! — why didn’t I think of that before!” or more usually, “Of course! I knew that before but now I’m really hearing it.”

And that’s some of what I really love.  I love to observe when there’s something obvious, right there in your path, and then you care for yourself by recognizing and acting on and playing with what’s obvious to you.

I’m gonna step back behind the mirror now.