Indulgences
Monday, August 27th, 2007In 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.”
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August 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Well said!