On the Wondrous Madness and Merits of Confronting Failure

The possibility of writing about some subjects is exciting enough to keep me motivated until the end of thing.  Failure is not one of those subjects.  I did not want to write this post, but the universe, or perhaps its God, would not let me forget about it. 

From past experience, I’ve learned that it is best not to fight these things.  In Vegas, the odds favor the dealer; in the cosmos the odds favor the guiding will of Providence, whether you like it or not.  I don’t always like it, but it is presumptuous of me, is it not, to assume that the universe should unfold exactly as I expect.

Yes, there is more metaphysical talk ahead.  Consider yourself warned.  In case you haven’t figured this out by now, I don’t write for everyone, and perhaps you would be better served by watching Entertainment Tonight or by reading Seven Secret Steps Toward Infinite Profitability or something along those lines.  You could always just read another article on the amazing marketing potential of Twitter, if you prefer.  

For those of you still around, thank you for staying. Now onward to more metaphysics.  I am not one of those people who proclaims that success or failure is entirely up to fate.  Our future is in many ways what we make it, and yet the turtle can work as hard he wishes, he can watch all the inspirational videos in the world, and read all the textbooks, but he will never fly with the same gracefulness of an eagle.  Like our friend the turtle, we cannot necessarily become anything we want to be, but we can live up to or fall short of the potential we’ve been given. In other words, fate and free will both have a hand in our successes and failures.  

"Faded glory" from flickr.com/jamesjordan

 Let me elaborate.  Sometimes repeated failure can be a good clue that tells us to put our energies elsewhere.  In other cases, it’s just a sign that we aren’t trying hard enough.  Fail enough times at something and you’ll discover that it can be tricky to distinguish between these two categories.   When you get to that point, maybe it’ll help if you take note of the circumstances that have or have not worked out in your favor.  

Have you ever gotten assistance in your endeavors, where something worked out unexpectedly at just the right moment?  That could be God whispering in your ear to persevere.  On the other hand if the doors you keep fighting to open swing shut with uncanny consistency, perhaps you should rethink your endeavors.  Or maybe not.  You have to make that call for yourself.  

The idea for this post first came when I saw this commercial from Honda about failing.  I was intrigued that a car company took such a strong position on the subject. The Honda employees being interviewed not only mentioned specific failures that Honda experienced, but they also gave fairly recent examples, as late as 1994.  It’s a bold move; someone could say to themselves, well if Honda made engines that had problems at one point, then I don’t want to buy from them ever again.  But, that person would be a fool. 

Everyone who does anything worth doing makes mistakes at some point, so wouldn’t you rather buy from a company that publicly acknowledges those mistakes and then works to correct them?  I would.  But all too often our success-worshipping world strives to sanitize failure out of our awareness. That’s one reason why it’s politically more appealing to shield others from the consequences of their failures.  Unfortunately, that kind of thing just keeps the AIG fat cats of the world healthy enough to be rapacious.  

In our haste to protect others from tragedy we sometimes forget that allowing others to confront their own failures can be the most considerate course of action. Enough unsheltered failure can cause others to re-evaluate their pursuits and to redirect their energies toward areas where they can better succeed.

Not sold on failure yet? Well here’s something else to consider: A free society is one in which its citizens can openly discuss the perceived failures of themselves and their leaders.  It is by no means historically inevitable that a person can choose the kind of work that he or she does. With the freedom to choose your work comes the freedom to evaluate whether your occupation provides the best rewards for your abilities and whether you’ve fully developed those abilities.  Slaves do not have the luxury of considering such things.  

"oasis" from flickr.com/photos/jonnelson

Do you think that former President Bush was an unconditional failure? (I don’t.) Because we are still a free people in the United States, you can, if you wish, declare that he was the world’s biggest failure and a Nazi,  and you could do so in the most juvenile way imaginable without fearing for your life.   How odd that the citizens of Nazi Germany did not have such freedoms. But since we’re speaking of dictators, when was the last time you heard Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chávez talk about the failures of their countries?  It’s been a while, I think.  In comparison, both President Bush and President Obama have, in the past few months, acknowledged that their country and even their respective administrations could have made better decisions about some things. 

All of these points that I’ve made about failure are not the reasons I was dreading this subject.  Here’s the thing, the topic of failure actually hits a little too close to home.  As I write, a short video project I’ve been developing for a few weeks now stands a good chance of crumbling into nothingness, due to factors outside of my control.  If that happens then the project will become one more resident in the expanding graveyard of my unsuccessful endeavors.  

I recall those failed creative projects and think, “I had such high hopes for that little guy, and I saw so much of myself in you, and you, you had so much potential that I’d smile when thinking of you.”  I imagine that’s not too different from what parents feel when they lose a child prematurely.  And yet, I am determined to persevere through another failure if a failure it becomes.  I must.  It’s already hard enough to keep my self-destructive tendencies in check, and giving up on my creative aspirations would only fuel the flames.  

My work is not the only aspect of my life where failure resonates.  Too many of my relationships have whithered away in a similar manner.  You see, I’m not easy person to get to know. I long for deep, meaningful relationships and a sense of community, and yet I do everything I can to keep people at a comfortable distance.  Shallow jokes are good for that sort of thing.  So too are metaphysical rhetoric and political commentary.

For those of you keeping score, I used all those tricks in this post.  It was the only way I could persuade myself to write this.  I take comfort in knowing that most readers will not get this far.  But the possibility that even a few of you will read this is a little unnerving. How can I possibly keep a safe distance now that I’ve revealed so many of my secrets?    

 

"A gift of golden light" from flickr.com/photosan0

There is the beauty of it, though.  As transparency grows, it becomes harder to avoid the difficult subjects, the very things that stand in the way of real progress.  For me, less wiggle room might mean that I eventually learn to form more sincere, more radiant relationships as I move closer to wholeness.  But to play the devil’s advocate for a moment, because even the devil should have his day in court, there is also the possibility that such openness could leave me vulnerable to more heartache, the very thing that could drive me to despair and toward a purposeless, dissolute life governed by booze and whores.  I do not favor such an outcome, but I don’t think it is an entirely impossible scenario.  

That kind of life would be the ultimate failure, and I want to do what I can to defend myself against it.  It helps when I can find God’s presence in the quiet beauty of the moment.  In those all too rare moments, I discover a sense of harmony and purpose that has been otherwise absent from my life.  It is a kind of self-correcting presence; In those moments, I do what I should just because of that presence reaching out through time with love.  And yet, most of the time that presence is hard for me to see. My perception is distorted by the ugly stains of lust, anger, and anguish in me and by the stupid, banal and vicious aspects of our material world.  

My dad helped to shape one of the more contorted stains.  We got mad at each other for some inconsequential reason that I can’t even remember, and in a moment of anger he called me a failure. He did not mean that had I failed at a recent endeavor but that failure was a defining quality of who I was. The words did not sting as much as the raw honesty they conveyed.  We were celebrating my birthday that day, and he told me that right before we were going to bring out the cake.  Nice timing Dad.  My response was to tell him that he was going to die soon, and that I wouldn’t cry at his funeral. 

He didn’t live to see my next birthday. He died two years ago from this week.   I did cry, but at the funeral, I was more restrained.  Still I did cry even then, in spite of what I told him.  We had talked a few more times after that big argument, but he never convinced me that he didn’t mean what he said, even though he apologized, as did I.  

His words haunted me for a while.  Last year, around this time, I did something I’m now ashamed of doing, partly out of anger at him, at the world, and at God, mostly at God.  At that point in my life, though, I was willing to do anything to prove to myself and to him that I wasn’t a failure, even if that meant doing something self-destructive.  That’s what a sense of failure can do if you don’t confront it.  

"Marsden" from flickr.com/sovietuk

I have (mostly) forgiven my Dad for what he said.  I’ve said my share of hurtful things too, and he was a well-intentioned, but not an entirely good man, who dedicated his life to helping others battle cancer.  That’s admirable enough.  As is often the case with me, he did not intend the harm that he caused, and he said what he did  in part because he couldn’t quite come to terms with his own personal frustrations.  

I could never have written this last year, but God is good (at least that’s what I believe most of the time). He’s brought me little moments that helped to get me to this point.  Here’s an example:on Monday afternoon, when I first started writing this post, I discovered that the May 2009 edition of Reader’s Digest had arrived in the mailbox.   It featured a story about several people who bouncing back from failure in an inspiring way.  One of the people profiled was a lady in Norfolk, Virginia who failed to save someone’s life in the past, but that experience helped her save someone’s life a few years later.  

The naval base in Norfolk, Virginia was the reason my family first came to Virginia, so the story about the Norfolk lady had a special significance to me.  I’ll be honest, I thought about deleting this post a few times, but the Reader’s Digest story was one of the reasons that I didn’t.  It made me think that maybe one day something good could also come from my devastating failures and heartaches.  Wishful thinking perhaps, but it made an impact at the time.  

It’s an interesting coincidence that the magazine would come on the day that I was preparing to write this and that it would have a moving story from a lady in Norfolk and that  I unintentionally ended up writing this post on the week of my Dad’s death.  As it turns out, tomorrow is also the first day of Passover, and again that wasn’t something I planned.  Maybe there is some deeper significance to those coincidences, maybe not.  

In any case, it’s encouraging that I am now at a point where I can write about something that was once so hard for me to acknowledge even to myself, namely that I sometimes assume that my value as a person is defined entirely by my professional accomplishments or the lack thereof.   With that kind of thinking, it is tough not to conclude that I don’t matter when my world is overflowing with failure.  But anyone who is loved does matter, and I do believe we are all at least loved by God.  

My faith takes for granted that everyone will fail at some point and that those failures can’t truly be set right without God’s involvement.  That involvement is not always what I expect or want, but it is there, as best as I can tell.

 

"Singapore White" from flickr.com/dinesh_valke

 

I’d like to end this messy, meandering post with a quote that caught my attention from the Reader’s Digest story that I’ve been referencing: “You might never fail on the scale I did.  But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”  The author of the quote: J.K. Rawling.  Here’s to facing failure and to living life with a little less caution.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter everyone!

Being Less Corporate is Good for Your Business, Your City, and Your Soul

In this new year in a tumultuous world, why should you care about being less corporate? For one thing being less corporate can lead to more sales, as I’ve explained before.   But really, most of us don’t do things just for the sake of earning more money.  We pretend we do sometimes, though. That way we don’t have to talk about what really drives us: a desire to belong, to be useful, to be loved, to matter.

At The Moulin Rouge by Toulouse Lautrec

Talking about that stuff leaves us vulnerable, and that’s not an easy thing to do.  Instead, it is much easier to discuss things that can be measured, a paycheck, material possessions, and other quantifiable signs of status. What’s wrong with that, you ask?  I answer by calling your attention to the bizarre human ritual known to sociologists and common folks alike as the dinner party.

It is an unstated rule that every good guest at any self-respecting dinner party must acknowledge how great things are going for himself (or herself, the dinner part is a undiscriminating taskmaster, after all).  That is why you will hear witty variations of the following dialogue at almost any dinner party you attend:  ”Yeah, I’m doing great.  The job, wow, really great.  The kids … really, truly great. The new house and the car, you’re not going to believe this, but they’re so unbelievably great that I can’t even describe how great they are.” Fantastic stuff, is it not?  

This is not to say that only great things are discussed at dinner parties.  Of course this is not so.  The weather is an acceptable topic that can safety deviate from greatness. Also it is perfectly acceptable, according to the dictates of dinner party etiquette, to point out how other people fail to live up to the essence of greatness, namely the greatness that any given speaker so magnificently exhibits.  

Let’s be honest: do any of you enjoy that kind of thing when you are stuck reading it and not enforcing it?  Probably not. (If you’re one of the few people who does enjoy hearing that sort of thing, you should probably stop reading this blog and look for a more dinner-party friendly blog, perhaps something like FabulousDinnerPartyBanalities.blogspot.com.)  

At our core, we know that people are more complex than they let on, but we’ve been conditioned to hide our struggles and our shortcomings in the name of pursuing the success that comes from that coveted, perfect image.  And so, the truth of a person is often valued less than the image he forges  in our crazed, perception-driven world, and that’s a sad and corporate thing. 

(To be fair, dinner parties, like anything else in this world can be enjoyable if done with the right intentions.   There is something to be said about sharing a nice meal with friendly, but sincere, companions, and getting to know others in a relaxed and unpretentious setting. )

As long as people avoid addressing problems for the sake of maintaining appearances, they’ll never get the support they need to get better or to fix things. A Microsoft executive could have the smoothest sales presentation in the world with the slickest tech demo, but I would not believe a word he said if he tried to convince me that Vista was a great, problem-free, operating system. However, if he or she acknowledged the problems that users have experienced while explaining steps that Microsoft was taking to correct those problems, then he might earn my interest and possibly regain my trust.  

The picture above is from 192 Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements, a post that justcreativedesign.com did a few weeks ago.  There are some clever, unconventional ads on display there, so check it out if you’re curious, but be warned: some of the ads are a little vulgar.  Anyway, this picture shows a nice variation of the campaign that Cingular did about dropped calls.

First of all, the campaign focuses attention on a problem that cell phones sometimes have. Here, no one is trying to tell you that cell phones work great all the time. Nor did Cingular claim t0 avoid dropped calls entirely. Rather, their ad says that Cingular has “the fewest dropped calls.”  In other words, they face the problem too, but unlike their competitors, they name the problem and in so doing, focus  attention on correcting it. 

I’ve expressed my disagreements with Obama before, but I do admire his ability to inspire people and his enthusiasm for change.  If Obama refused to acknowledge problems and insisted that everything was it should be, then he’d definitely have far fewer followers. John McCain’s unfortunate quote about the fundamentals of our economy being sound, became for some an indication that McCain would not acknowledge the challenges that reality was serving us. Remember McCain at the next dinner party you attend when you are tempted to sing odes to your own problem-free existence. 

Working at Canon, I’ve learned that it can make a big difference when we acknowledge the concerns of our customers. We don’t have to agree with every accusation that someone brings up, but we get more favorable customer responses when we explain that we are looking into an issue instead of claiming that no such issue can exist under any conceivable circumstance. If we do our jobs well, then our customers will come to trust that if there is a problem with a camera model, then Canon will take steps to correct it, through a firmware update or a service notice as we’ve done in the past. 

Everyone makes mistakes, whether it is a company, an employee, a spouse, a religious leader, or a politician. Learning from mistakes and correcting them are better goals than avoiding mistakes entirely;  Afterall, the only ones who don’t make mistakes are the ones who don’t challenge themselves or try something new. Uncorporate honesty can help with both learning and correcting. 

So many dumb things happen because no one wants to question the boss or the popular one. We tell ourselves that we’re being nice, but we’re really being corporate, spreading banality and failure throughout the world with our unwillingness to speak up. And if you’re not honest enough to ever let others see when they’ve hurt you, then you are robbing them of an opportunity to see the consequences of their actions. 

I don’t believe it is appropriate to bring up every problem to everyone. Some matters are better handled in a private context, but too often people and organizations are hesitant to acknowledge problems even to each other, and that is a problem.  Relationships can fall apart simply because two people fail to sufficiently name and honestly address the points of frustration with each other. Businesses lose clients and damage their reputations simply by sticking to PR half truths for as long as possible instead of acknowledging problems for what they are and fixing them. 

Christ fought for good, but he did not hide the suffering he faced or the problems he experienced. It’s an admirable but very difficult thing to do sometimes. Our instinct is to put more and more armor on, not to take it off, piece by piece. Some days I come close to terror when I remember the things I’ve said and done in the spirit of honesty; By acknowledging my own struggles, vulnerabilities and shortcomings, I’ve given my enemies enough ammunition to do serious damage, but then my honesty has helped me inch closer to wholeness, and that is worth the risk to me. 

I thought long and hard about writing this article. You see, I have to believe what I’m writing or it is almost impossible for me to write anything. Could I really recommend the less corporate path, with my life the way it is? I was set to become a good, if not great, lawyer after high school. I won the debate tournaments in my district, and my advisers and relatives all thought that law school would be ideal for me. I even got to tour one of the big DC law firms, and some of the lawyers involved expressed interest in staying in touch.

I have a great deal of respect for lawyers. The good ones are eloquent and they fight for right and for civility, justice, and order. But that was not me. I cared too much about winning with whatever argument I could craft. I don’t know for certain, but I’m fairly confident that if I went to law school then I’d be making much more money now, although I would probably also be a less authentic version of myself.

Still, far less humor would probably come at my expense during those fabulous dinner parties (yes that’s one reason why I’m not such a fan), and people would actually return my calls. I would be doing something with much more measurable results, and I wouldn’t have to watch one heart-felt creative endeavor after another get trampled upon by indifferent or bureaucratic recipients.

Knowing all those things, could I in good conscience recommend a less corporate life to others? Yes. It’s not the easier way, but I’m a better person for listening to my heart. I’m not perfect, but I’m closer to a sense of harmony than I was before. I may never fix everything that aches or find the success that would make it all OK, but I am not the corporate monstrosity that I could have been. That has to count for something. If you disagree, then take solace in knowing that somewhere out there, a charmingly sinister dinner party is summoning you.

Why the World Needs Corporate Thinking

Here’s a choice for you to consider: The first option involves doing something because it is the right thing to do. It will benefit you and the people around you somehow, and you’ll be able to delight in the truth that for at least once in your life you did the right thing.

Then, there’s the second option. Choose this, and I’ll pay you five million dollars to do something and to do it well. Now this thing I’ll ask of you may or may not be a decent thing to do, but who cares; I’ll be paying you a lot of money to get it done.  Obviously, you’ll have to sign a contract, and if you don’t do it exactly as I tell you, I’ll take you to court.  If I still don’t get the results I want, I’ll ask the militia I control to resolve the matter with force.

image from flickr.com/thomashawk

You can make this decision in private.  No one else will know.  So, which one would you choose?

Let me state the obvious: I’m a writer, at least on occasion, so of course I don’t have five million dollars … yet.  But also, most people would, I believe, admire the idealism of the first choice but acquiesce to the seductive second one, in spite of the potentially corporate or ugly consequences.

I’m not even sure how I would respond to such an offer.  I’d like to think that I’d go with the first option, but then doing the right thing can involve uncertainty and risk.  There’s no guarantee that the journey will be easy, and doing the right thing is hard to quantify.

I mean, how could I use my attempts at doing the right thing to establish status and superiority over others?  Besides, doing the right thing involves trusting others for support. Good luck trying to  stand up against injustice for a prolonged time period without the financial, moral, or physical help of others.

Now that I think about it, I don’t like having to depend on other people because almost everyone has let me down at some point, and five million dollars could sure buy a lot of compliance.  With that kind of money, I could compel others to do my bidding with bribes or coercion.   Wait a minute … I don’t want to be that person, but I could see myself, in a moment of weakness, making the choices that lead me there.

Perhaps though, money doesn’t sway you.  You’re too bohemian to care about that stuff, right?  Well then, what if it came down to doing the right thing or building up indie-rock street cred? For example, you could help a struggling friend start a business, something no respectable indie-rocker would celebrate, or you could jam out for weeks at a time, get awesome reviews from all the right publications, and sip indie-friendly Sunny Delight cocktails while ignoring your friend’s calls.

What if it was a choice between the right thing and respectability? That poor black fellow does look lonely sitting in the church pew all by himself, but really what would the other church ladies think if you sat next to him?  Or, what about a choice between doing the right thing and being surrounded by friends?  For someone like me that could be the hardest choice, since meaningful friendships sometimes feels like the scarcest of resources in my world, and the things most scarce to a person often morph into the roots of temptation. The Devil offered food and power to Christ when he was famished and weary not by accident.

Our society has learned the hard way that people can’t always be trusted to do the right thing, and so we write banal laws and vapid corporate policies, put fences around things, and gravitate toward impersonal interactions throughout the day. A wife nags her husband because she doubts that he’ll do what needs to be done on his own or when asked in a reasonable way.  Some teachers prefer to read their lessons word-by-word from a book so that they can avoid real interaction with kids who might respond with thoughtlessness or cruelty.  Companies stuff their quality control departments with bureaucratic and sometimes nonsensical procedures, because  they’ve learned that employees won’t always do what they’re supposed to do if they aren’t monitored carefully.

All of these examples develop from our reasonable doubts that others will do the right thing or from our own apprehensions about doing right.  But then, we often associate the right thing with the boring thing, at least I do.  And yet … it isn’t, not when it’s done properly in harmony with the present moment.  Think about a favorite movie of yours.  Do you cheer with everything you have in yourself when villainy or goodness prevails?

If your heart’s in the right place and you listen to the moment, or more precisely to God’s whispers in that moment, then you’ll know what you should do without having to depend on a list of rules. I get that kind of thing right less than half of the time, but I know from experience that it’s the well from which true playfulness, joy, and love will sprout.

Heaven is, I suspect, the one place where everyone does the right thing without obligation or pressure.  Until then, we have our vices and our struggles and our corporate ways of doing things, but what’s wrong with trying to bring a little bit of heaven here on earth?

If you reward others with respect, sincerity, excellence, gratitude, and affection instead of offering all the corporate trimmings, then maybe you’ll persuade a few more people to do the right thing rather than the corporate thing. Often enough, that kind of thing even translates into financial benefits from the opportunities that cherished and respected individuals offer you, so maybe you can have your turkey and eat it too.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and God bless.

Organized Lovelessness

In The Perennial Philosophy Aldous Huxley describes contemporary institutions as “organized lovelessness.”  What a poignant phrase, and it’s a much better definition of being corporate than anything I could articulate even with hundreds of words.   (In fact, maybe you would be better off reading his book instead of this post.  If that’s what you’re thinking and if you have the time to read more than 200 pages of metaphysical commentary, then you can find the book here, provided online by Google Books.)

When I protest against being corporate,  I’m not talking about the ever-growing complexity of  specialization or organization that have developed to accommodate our modern society.   After all, highly specialized, organized people have made it possible for me to write this blog post at no cost, within the comfort of my home, on a computer I can take anywhere.   What’s not to like about that?  No when I’m making a case for being less corporate, I’m talking about the organized lovelessness that can show its ugly head in our business, political, and religious interactions if we’re not vigilant.

"Child in a Harsh World" (a sketch I did)

How awful it is to be treated like a thing and not like a beloved person. But, that’s what happens when a mission statement becomes more important than the people whom the mission statement is supposed to serve. It’s why company policies meant to help serve customers can become bureaucratic nightmares and why a noble political system dedicated to preserving individual freedom can devolve into pressured conformity.

Even churches or other religious institutions are not immune from this plague of organized lovelessness.  This is indeed a disheartening thing, since places of worship, at their best, are built on the belief that God loves his creatures enough to care about their development.  From this foundation,  dignity for human life and decency within a civilization can develop.   And yet, perhaps you’ve been to a loveless, dogmatic-driven church that left you feeling so cold and unconnected to others that you were driven faster into the seductive (but still loveless) arms of vice.  I know I have.   Not every place of worship is like that, but unfortunately, too many of them are.

To help me illustrate these ideas, let’s try a little thought experiment.  Suppose, for a moment, that I am not a lowly writer, but a powerful bestower of wishes.  (Tragically this is untrue, but let us suspend disbelief together for the sake of this example.)  Close your eyes and imagine that I will present you with a package that contains your heart’s desire.   Now open it.

There are many things you might have imagined, but I am willing to bet that you did not imagine a corporate poster featuring bar graphs, pie charts, or banal graphics.   ( Perhaps some day I will find the man who affectionately decorates his home with productivity graphs, and then I’ll have to eat my words, but for now I’m safe, I think.)  And yet, businesses continue to decorate their workplaces with these ugly things.  Why?  Probably because these companies are more committed to their mission statements then to caring enough about their employees to wonder what they would enjoy seeing.

Nothing wrong with reminding the people who work for you about your organizational goals.  There is something enriching in holding someone up to high standards. And besides, you don’t really love people unless you want them to become and remain the very best versions of themselves. But don’t good families have admirable goals as well?  Of course, but you don’t see these families decorating their walls with awful corporate-looking stuff, just to remind each other about those goals.    Why not?  They care about each other too much.

So take another look at even the small things you do in your business, organization, or even your personal life.   Do the posters you put up, the jokes you tell, the ways you interact with people increase someone’s sense of organized lovelessness?  Or do you fight organized lovelessness by putting more importance on caring about people than on achieving goals, looking cool, and growing profit? The second choice is hard to do, I know, but it’s still worth fighting for, don’t you think?

How Being Less Corporate Can Lead to More Money

The stuff that I aim to celebrate in this blog, things like simplicity, honesty, and authentic community, are abstract concepts that are harder to measure than things like profit and productivity.  Maybe you think those words are nice but irrelevant to what you do.  My goal is to convince you otherwise, because being less corporate doesn’t just make the world a better place;  It can also be good for business.

But then I’m just a kid so how much can I really know about business, right?  Fair enough.  I don’t know a lot of things, and I’m not afraid to admit that, but I do know what gets me excited as a consumer, and I suspect I’m not the only one who thinks like I do.  So with that said, here are three examples of companies who earned my money and my loyalty by being less corporate:

1.   Seagate
I bought the Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500 GB hard drive shortly after reading an article about Seagate’s renewed commitment to their community.  (I wish I could remember where I found the article.)  The executive used straightforward and honest language, and that made an impression.

When I needed a hard drive, I researched the leading brands out there and discovered that Western Digital and Seagate were both well regarded.   In the stores I visited, the Western Digital drive was slightly cheaper, but the box design and the technical information on Seagate’s box was much less corporate.  The Western Digital box had language that sounded forced and weary,  the kind of industry-specific wording that lawyers and engineers force onto unsuspecting souls.    The language on the Seagate box sounded more like a friend telling me about a product he really liked and found useful.   That closed the deal.

Today, I’m still a Seagate fan, even though my Seagate hard drive crashed and I had to pay to get the data recovered.  (That’s what I get for thinking that I can edit anywhere with my laptop, even in places where fate is easily tempted to send the drive plummeting to its doom.)  The inviting style of the box and the playful nature of the technical documents that came with the drive sold me on the idea that Seagate isn’t run by a bunch of corporate guys who want to screw me out of my hard-earned money. Their presentation makes me think that they are earnest technology guys who want me to be happy with my hard drive.

2.  lynda.com
Since I’m trying to make a living doing stuff like motion graphics, computer animation, and photography, I spend a good bit of time going through tutorials in the hope of learning something useful.  (It doesn’t always happen.)  By far, the best tutorial site that I’ve seen is www.lynda.com.

On lynda.com you’ll find a vast range of tutorials on almost every high-end computer program out there.  Experts in their fields get you up to speed on programs like Maya, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop.  These tutorials vary by complexity and can be searched for by program, subject, or keyword, making it very easy to find the most relevant tutorial in a matter of seconds.

But the thing that makes lynda.com truly special in my mind is the sense of humor and playfulness found in their tutorials.   If you’re up for the challenge, go ahead and sample a few tutorials from one of their teachers at random.  I’m willing to bet that eventually something the instructor says in his instructional set will make you smile, even as you’re learning relevant technical information.  When you’re dealing with very technical information, sometimes an amusing moment is all it takes to keep you plowing forward, and there are plenty of amusing moments in the lynda.com tutorials.

Why don’t more training companies do this more often?  Is it because they believe their customers prefer a just-the-boring-facts corporate style of presentation?  Or is it just that they’ve sat through too many awful corporate meetings and lectures and, in the process, lost their sense of humor?  Some training companies are better than others at keeping their presentation style informative and fun.  From what I’ve seen, Lynda.com does this best, and that’s one reason why I go to them first for information.

3.  Pixar
Pixar would rather halt production on a movie and restart their efforts than pump out a mediocre product for the sake of meeting a deadline and maximizing profit.  That’s what they did with Toy Story 2.   The Pixar guys have been very vocal about their opposition to cranking out inferior-quality sequels just to squeeze more money from a brand they own.  (Yes, I’m talking to you, Disney! )

Sure, in the short-term that’s less money, but it buys Pixar long-term credibility, and that translates into more sales.  Right now, Pixar is the only studio out there who can get me to see a movie just because the company name is on it.  Not only that, but every book I’ve read from and about Pixar has been exceptional, and I feel the same way about every Pixar speaker I’ve ever heard.   Because Pixar has consistently demonstrated such a strong commitment to excellence and to admirable values with everything they do, they have earned my trust. As long as they do nothing to jeopardize that trust, I will see whatever movie they make for the rest of my life.    I can’t say that about Sony or about Disney or about a lot of other companies.   Might that kind of loyalty to a company affect its overall profit, from me and people like me, over time?  Yes, I think so.

Being less corporate for the sake of making more money is not what I’m getting at.  That kind of thinking is corporate thinking; you can’t put a price tag on everything good in this world.  But, being less corporate doesn’t have to mean being less successful.

What Corporateness Means and Why it’s Bad

If I’m going to write a blog about how to not be corporate, I should probably explain what I mean, right? For the record, I’m not talking about the business structures that allow people to organize themselves in complex ways and that reward personal achievement. Corporations, not Marxist collectives, have given us cars that most Americans can afford, computers and internet connections that empower individuals, and convenient access to a stable and abundant food supply. I, for one, am grateful for that.

Rather, what I wish to address in this blog is the social plague that turns interesting people with unique perspectives, ideas, and feelings into robot-like placeholders within the collective glob. That, I suspect, is what people really mean when they say, “that guy Cornelius Copymuffin is so corporate.” You know that guy. You hate that guy. Together let’s work on not being that guy whenever possible.

(picture from www.flickr.com/jonnelson)

I don’t know all of the reasons why people become or act corporate. There are moments when I too act corporate, and especially in the moment when it happens, I can’t always explain why. One of the goals for this blog is to get a better understanding of that and, in so doing, avoid future corporate moments.

With that said, I suspect corporateness happens when we care too much about other people’s opinions and don’t trust our own instincts more. Does anyone really enjoy listening to the discussions with nasty phrases like “maximizing resources” and “utilizing communication mediums?” There’s nothing wrong with making the best of what you’ve been given or using different tools to share ideas. The problems occur when people use words and phrase or do other life-stiffling things just to get others to think more highly of them.

What’s wrong with throwing in a few “utilize” curveballs into the presentation, you ask? It does make everything else sound more official, and that’s good for business right? Well, what if I asked to utilize your stapler or if I wanted to utilize your assistance in moving? Would you be more or less likely to help with each “utilize” I throw at you? Why then would that be different in a business context?

I can understand the impulse to rely on repeated business phrases in certain contexts. It helps to minimize the risk of personal rejection, for one thing, but that doesn’t mean depending on corporate language and behavior will produce the best business results.

But corporateness doesn’t just happen in the office. It shows it’s ugly head every time someone muffles their own inner clarity in deference to what others may think or expect. For example, everyone knows that if you’re a creative type then you have to support a certain political party or you’re not really a true artist. Whether or not you agree with everything the party supports is inconsequential. After all, being an artist just means doing everything possible to resemble one. Isn’t that so? And speaking of politics, one must never question any position that one’s own party advocates or other party members may question one’s loyalty. That’s corporateness at its worst ladies and gentlemen.

Corporateness makes the world worse by decorating it with blandness, buracratic speak, and dishonesty. It creates an environment that helps evil spread. Soon, I’ll explain why in more detail. But for now, this post has grown long enough.

Why I’ll Write (This Blog)

The world is a very busy and hectic place with everyone rushing around trying to achieve things and pay the bills, while finding ways to feel good about life. Nothing wrong with those things when handled properly, but in the rush, the things that make life special and meaningful, things like sincerity, community, and love, can get lost in the shuffle.

I’m tired of seeing so many relationships in my life stay on a strictly corporate level, you know, the kind of interaction where you see someone again and again and you say the same Styrofoam-like phrases to each other. And, it’s so discouraging to see our world’s failures at meaningful interactions turn into compulsions to consume things, to self-medicate, and to self-destruct.

Going beyond that takes effort. It means being honest about things, facing uncomfortable truths and finding the courage to believe in and fight for things bigger than ourselves. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t make an extra effort, I will end up keeping to myself and fortifying my defenses, so that it will become even harder for anyone to hurt me again.

Sure it’s comforting to know that pain is less likely under certain conditions, but that’s a questionable benefit if it means keeping everyone at a safe distance from the real you. That’s an awful way to live, and that’s a big reason why I’m writing this blog: it’s my way to fight against that kind of thing in me and in the world we inhabit.

Yes, I’d like to see this blog lead to new business possibilities as well. Working with creative, authentic individuals and groups to design meaningful things is something I care a lot about, and it would be great if I found like-minded business partners because of this blog. But, if this blog just leads to more thoughtful discussion about how we can make our world less corporate and more magical, then this blog will have served its purpose.