On that persistent question of work and family.
I’ve been a startup CEO, run eight- and nine-figure budgets at F1000 companies, and managed large teams. And I’ve been the art lady, and taught French before school to third graders. I’ve spoken to conferences of 1,000s, of thought leaders. And I’ve taught yoga to a dozen people in a small studio in Sonoma. Oh, and yeah, I’ve raised 6 kids. In short, I love work, but work is decidedly not life.
I tried the dominant paradigm of career and succeeded, yet I found it in the end a big charade. At some point, I looked around and made a judgment call: I didn’t want that life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get ahead or “win” in these cultures, but rather that I thought they were bad cultures, with upside down values. I didn’t want win at the things they thought mattered. The prizes they offered were not worth their astronomical and obvious price: The sacrifice of a full experience of life on this planet and in this body, with its variety and richness.
Take parenting. I chose to create life. I grew it in my body and then in partnership, nurtured it to adulthood. That job is an important job — because I opted to take it on and it directly impacts the well being of other rather helpless beings. It’s more important than, say, any of the ones I’ve been paid to do. That means showing up for parenthood in full. Not just giving my family quality care in shifts, but being there as well for the accidental connections of snow days and sick days and creative inspirations. It means attachment parenting. It means being there to augment every failure of the school system, subsidizing it with parent hours.
And my commitment to a full life beyond the office isn’t just about parenting. It means creating community. It means being there when the people I love are grieving. Being there to feel it when I’m grieving. Having a spiritual practice, a community I love and can lean on. It means deep friendships, singing and listening deeply and cultivating a strong supple body that can be used for intense work or agile play. It means cultivating a home: a place where people can come in and rest, take sanctuary.
What I have fundamentally discovered, as first a CMO, then CEO, then founder, is that I just do not like the dominant values in most of the organizations that (yes, mostly men) have created, founded and led. They slash entire departments for pennies of margin. They don’t question external social impact of their actions in the interest of quarterly gain. They have swallowed some Calvinist pill. Look, the world the men have built, by inherited traditions of competition and warfare, involves investing huge amounts of money to figure out better ways to kill each other’s sons and daughters. Granted, that’s armed conflict, but sometimes it seems like corporate culture isn’t that far off.
These structures were designed for lifelong linear progressions, adrenaline rushes, and entire days and weeks without being in the physical presence of their families. I do not buy the definition of “success” in that world.
A lot of men don’t either.
The question of IS-ness, or business, the question of being fully human, goes far beyond gender equity and bias.
In the future world of work that I envision, we will rewrite new possibilities for communal creation.
This culture includes people working together, creating together, having each other’s backs so each person can have a full life, and not just satisfy their work and money needs. This results in true security, as we stop striving to best our colleagues, certain that in cooperation there will be more than enough wealth and security to go around.
I want to create a feminine, or let’s say more balanced, culture of success — with other women and men who want to do the same — because it’s healthier for all participants, and it’s a lot more fun.
Today my time and resources go to my company, my friends and family, to personal projects, to small investments, and to important causes and the dreams of those I love. I choose to be an agent of change by living a nonconventional, contributory, and successful life in accordance with my deeper values, along with many many men and women who’ve seen through the veil.
So, to the people coming up, I want to say this: screw the dominant model.
MAKE THE WORK CULTURE YOU WANT TO LIVE AND LOVE IN.
*Design anything. Including your life.*
