Special Places
I read a post by Doug Kaufman the other day, and it reminded me of one of the special places I’ve worked.
I’ve been working for over 40 years at around 15-20 employers. There are only a handful of employers, perhaps two or three, that I would characterize as truly special.
Doug spoke about TransLoc. Here’s a snippet from his post—
One of my fondest memories as a CEO is when one of my coworkers yelled “f*ck you!” at me over and over in the middle of the office. And no, I’m not kidding.
It was the middle of the day on a normal workday during a regular work week at TransLoc. I was having a conversation with a coworker who shall remain nameless (he can identify himself publicly if he wants. I’ll call him Bob for this post). We probably ~100 employees at the time and most were in the office that day.
I don’t recall what Bob and I were talking about but he said something that, in my opinion, warranted a good-humored snarky response from me. So I gave one.
It definitely landed because he responded by getting animated and screaming “Oh! F*ck You! F*ck You! F*ck You! F*ck You! F*ck You!”
That’s right 5 big F-bombs. And Bob has a booming voice so this was heard throughout the whole office.
In most companies, screaming F-you to the CEO in front of the whole company will likely get you fired (I don’t recommend testing this). At TransLoc it got Bob a laugh and hug.
Clearly, Doug (and Bob) felt TransLoc was special. As an aside, I visited TransLoc a few times while Doug was CEO and it was INDEED special.
One of my special places is iContact. As I reflect on my experience there, there were a few things that made it special—
Great leadership, I reported to one of my favorite bosses of all time, Ralph Kasuba.
Intentional culture, the leadership team was very intentional about the culture we were building.
Great people, we hired for diversity, curiosity, and attitude. See this post.
Safety, to Doug’s point, we worked incredibly hard to create and maintain a Psychologically Safe environment.
Joy, fun and joy emerged daily. I literally couldn’t wait to get to work.
The Point
The real point in my writing this post is to encourage all of you to reflect on your careers in those special places where you’ve worked.
To reflect on what made them special.
How did they make you feel?
And to appreciate them, as in my experience, they are rare indeed!
And if you haven’t worked in a special place yet, I wish that you find one. You deserve at least one in your career.
Doug, thanks for sharing and inspiring my reflection. I had a smile on my face as I wrote this piece!
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.
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