Thoughts in Transit

I’m en route to Oklahoma City for my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary. Should be a trip. A hundred relatives from Oklahoma and Texas will be there, many of whom I’ve never met. I really am looking forward to it.

The Detroit airport has this incredible fountain around gate A40 or so. It’s on this round black platform that’s about forty feet in diameter and is lifted about three feet off the ground. Scattered concentrically around the platform are jets that project cords of water. When I say cords, I mean each jet projects a water stream that is so concentrated, it’s as if each stream is directed by one-inch-wide clear tubing. Each jet shoots a stream of water anywhere from three- to eight-feet high through the air toward the center of the platform. When all the jets are flowing, it looks like a sculpture of numerous glass tubes that arch in and through and between one another toward the center. Though the cords do not touch one another, they come impossibly close, so the whole thing looks as if it couldn’t be, yet it is. Normally not all the jets are flowing. They’re timed to create a dancing effect: A cord of water shoots from here and another shoots from there. Then the same thing happens but with several cords of water at the same time. The jets toward the outside of the platform shoot, then the ones closer in, and on and on. It reminded me of dolphins leaping out of the ocean, circuitry, and glass sculpture all at the same time. It is a visual symphony.

On my way to the Grand Rapids airport I listened to a BBC interview with the author of a book called Three Ways to Get Things Done. I only caught about 20 minutes of the interview, but the author was talking about moving away from hierarchy within companies toward what he called heterarchy, I think, which was a way of organizing that dispersed authority. The idea was not that there would be no leaders (leaders are essential, he said) but rather a system where each individual had the opportunity to be a leader due to one’s own skills and talents. The interviewer said something very important at one point. He said the trick in business has always been to release employees’ energy by somehow aligning their own personal goals with those of the company. The author was quick to agree with that point and then added a note of realism by saying we probably will never succeed in achieving this sort of utopian ideal, but he does think perhaps all companies can get a good deal closer to it than they are.

I like the idea of questioning what is most usually taken as an inherent tension between the goals of any given individual and the goals of a company. What if when a person was hired her superior(s) said to her, “Here’s the deal. This company has a lot of resources by virtue of the fact that a lot of smart and talented people work here and because we are engaged in work that is important to human civilization. You have been hired, obviously, because we think the resources you bring to this company are important and will fill a void that we had before you came. Now, what I/we want to know is what gaps or voids do you have that you think we as a collective of smart and talented people might be able to help you with? The reason we ask is because we actually think it’s best for everyone concerned—you, me, our colleagues, our associates, and our customers—for each employee to be working toward the fulfillment of his or her own goals. So tell us, what are your goals? They can be personal, professional, whatever. What are they? And if you don’t know right now, that’s okay. Think about it, and I’ll ask again at the beginning of next week.”

If someone had talked to me that way, I imagine I would have said something about wanting to contribute great books to the reading public, wanting to help authors meet their potential, wanting to help shape ideas in the church and beyond. No matter how my superior had responded, as long as he took me seriously and did what he could to help me meet these goals, the most significant difference this kind of conversation would have in companies is that it would change the way employees think about their jobs. All of a sudden I am not working for my company—not carrying out duties my company has assignmed—as much as I would be working for myself, trying to accomplish what I think is important.

Do we have to assume that a company’s goals diverge from a person’s goals. Surely we don’t always assume this; otherwise we’d never hire anybody. The problem is that sometimes the degree of “goal overlap” is limited to something like, “I need money to live. This company needs my services. So I will give them my services, and they will give me their money.” That’s a start, I guess, though it seems a bit exploitative from both ends: the company is exploiting the employee, and the employee is exploiting the company.

Again, what if we started with the assumption that there was far more overlap between personal and company goal sets. There may well be some genuine divergences, but what if we started with the assumption that these would be few and far between—that the company and its employees can help each other in just about every area of life? What if companies did not think of employees as service units as much as a generative community, doing work together to make the world a better place? What if employees did not think their company as a paycheck provider but as a clinic for world improvement? What if every day I woke up and drove to work, I thought of myself as going to my very own laboratory for making the world a better place for eight hours? What if I did not think of my work life as a category within my life as much as a seamlessly integrated essence within my life, along with several other essences (like home life and husband life)?