“Most people stumble across a great idea at some point in their lives, but they stand up, dust themselves off, and carry on as if nothing happened.”

“Never, never, never give up.”

“The most interesting things usually happen off-stage.”

* * * 

The first quote is by way of Michael Neill’s Daily Coaching Tip today entitled “Touchstones.”  Michael Neill’s tip changes each day.  This quote expresses the frustration that friends and I have had when:

- someone says something life-changing, but

- then seems to forget it a month later, and

- then a year later seems to think of it as if for the first time,

- sometimes cycling like this on and on.

The second quote is by way of those cute little quotations magnets that go on refrigerators, and the actual transcript is online at The Churchill Centre.  I feel strong and playful when I hear it, and powerfully silly when I say it. 

The third quote is from my high school acting teacher.  He said it in Acting I my freshman year. 

When he observes what actors do onstage and off, he said, the most interesting things usually happen off-stage when the actors aren’t performing or expecting to be watched.  They are just doing what they do naturally, for themselves. 

When I heard this I went, “Huh.”  Its meaning and importance have grown for me ever since.

I was exploring the sociology department at Harvard a couple of years ago when I overheard Martin King Whyte teaching a seminar.

Marxists and Communists in China, Whyte said, thought that abolishing ownership of property would solve society’s problems.  But ownership, we know now, isn’t the problem.

Centralized totalitarian planning in China gave control of property to a small group of people.  They may not have owned the property, but they made decisions about it.  They controlled it.

Nowadays, a few people in China decide that cities with millions of people will be relocated to make room for a new dam or rerouted river.  Whereas in democratic capitalist countries, it’s up to those millions of people to decide what they’re going to do, and act together.

Every time a big power plant isn’t placed in your neighborhood, or huge districts in your city aren’t rezoned from residential houses to highways, that’s because of the democratic process — people who live in a neighborhood and are close to the work going on, choose what happens.

It’s not about ownership. Ownership is only one way to control things. Marxism and Communism replaced democratic capitalism – ownership of property by some people – with totalitarianism — control of property by even fewer people.

It’s about choice.

Are you making choices about what you care about? Or do people you work with say about your workplace, “It is how it is,” or shrug, “Well what can you do.”

That’s what feeling controlled is.

* * *

[Coaching isn’t for everyone.  Obviously I don’t know your situation, because I’m writing this for anyone.  But this was useful to one person I coached yesterday, so I figure it might be inspiring.]

So what can you do?

You might start by saying, “I have certain defined responsibilities expected of me at work. But I also have influence which goes beyond my formal responsibilities.”

You might then ask yourself, “But what do I do? When will I have time to do it?”

“Instead of wasting time bullshitting or complaining with coworkers, which can take hours, I can ask myself, ‘If I could change one thing at work, what would it be?’ And then if that excites me, I can start reaching out within my circle of influence, expand my circle of influence, and make this thing I care about happen.”

With enough influence, you can even switch your company from command-and-control mode over to organizational democracy mode.

“Or, if changing things at work doesn’t excite me, I can spend the time I usually bullshit or complain, on something that does excite me, maybe a big exciting goal I’ve had for a long time.  If I could do one thing over the next year, or ten years, and didn’t have to work, what would it be?  I can start doing that in my spare time at work.”

[Credit: The “circle of influence” stuff is influenced by Stephen Covey’s books.  Covey writes about a small Circle of Responsibility inside a big Circle of Concern.  Bigger than our responsibilities but smaller than our concerns, we have a mid-sized Circle of Influence — what we can reach out and affect.]

I’ve been asked – “When someone starts a company, why do I expect they would ever give up a share of ownership and profit-making?”

So it is with delight that I forward this excerpt of an email to you.  Short story: two people started renovating a houseboat.  They put a lot of time and some money into it.  Their friends pitched in and helped out.  They got a third person to pay rent.  And now one of the founders is moving out.

You might expect the founders would be owners and make a profit from new people who move on board.  Instead,

“The good news is that R— and B— and I are keeping the boat and looking for a third person to move aboard.

We’ve decided to collectivize the boat, meaning that everyone here has equal investment and decision-making power, and that R— and I will pass on our shares if we ever move out (seems unlikely though, we’re happy as clams sitting here eating thanksgiving leftovers and typing away in front of the roaring fire).”

The founders actually care about this boat they founded.  They want it to build-out and improve over time.  Might even be great for them to set term limits on their residency and say, “After three years, we will move out so new people grow what we started in ways we never would have dreamed.”

[Photo is of another houseboat.  Maybe this houseboat will sometime get a photographer on board.]

San Francisco:

I want to tell you about the heron.

This girl and I went on a date Sunday night, down on Embarcadero. 

We walked.  There were gingerbread lights on the edges of the skyscrapers.  An ice skating rink was open and playing music.  We ice-skated for twenty minutes.  Then we got dinner. 

After dinner, we walked along the docks.  We saw a heron in the water.  We thought it would fly away.  Minutes passed.  “Fly away, bird!” we shouted together.  We watched. 

Then it dipped its beak into the water and pulled out a fish.  The heron tossed its head back.  The fish went into its beak, and you could see the fish go down its throat.

That was totally unexpected and I’d like to have more experiences like that, where being together is like expecting to fly and then fishing instead.