A refusal to succeed

Fittingly, it was an education story that got me thinking about this.  The piece by Sam Dillon in yesterday’s New York Times was about Arne Duncan,  the Obama administration’s education secretary, wanting to push the reset button on failing schools by closing them down and starting them over – a tactic he used as CEO of the Chicago municipal school system.

The story ends with a quote from Bryan Hassel, an education consultant:

“A lot of these school turnarounds are going to fail because the work is so difficult,” Mr. Hassel said. “But as a nation, we’ll never have the capacity to do this work successfully until we make the commitment.”

Hassel’s words struck me, because I had never chanced to think of change in these terms before – that commitment is the heart of deliberate change.

And that’s the reason why so many people fail to be creative, because creativity is the result of deliberate change and deliberate change means hard, determined, don’t-give-up work.

It’s so easy to be inert. And fatalistic. And hopeless. It doesn’t demand anything of you except to stay slumped at your desk or on your couch and do as you’re told. Being inert also gives you permission to crab about what’s wrong as much as you want without actually trying to solve any of the problems that bug you. And if you ever go so far as to attempt a little creative change, inertia allows you to give up easily and say you knew all along it wouldn’t work.

I live in a city and state where inertia is the perpetual Zeitgeist. There are plenty of creative and committed individuals here, trying in their one- or few-person ways to transform the place into the vital, prosperous, exciting region they see in their dreams, but the prevailing mood is one of defeat.  We are resigned, here, to our loserhood. In fact – heresy alert! – I think we enjoy it.

Because it means we don’t actually have to collectively get up off our large butts and do something. What would be the point? We’re losers and nothing we do will ever change that. Loserhood is our brand and we’re perversely proud of it. We don’t demand the best of our leaders or schools or communities because we don’t want to ask the best of ourselves – which is to make hard decisions, stick with them and labor ceaselessly until we get the right results.

I guess we’re too scared and lazy to do that. So, apparently, Duncan and Obama are going to have to reinvent America without us. Well, so what? Every sturdy, beautiful, redone house needs a basement drain. We’ll be happy to take that role so we never ever have to climb the stairs.

You might say we’re so convinced we’ll fail that we’re … committed to it.

Photo by Kat

Abandonment isn’t a creative solution

I knew I’d have to learn a lot of things when I started my business. But I never expected to learn that I couldn’t trust friends and colleagues to keep their word.

Since embarking on Geniocity.com two years ago, I’ve had my three most important teammates walk away from their commitments to my company at critical moments. I’ve also had two creative partners in an important, long-term, artistic effort drop it flat, had a significant vendor break his verbal commitment at the last minute and discovered that several friends who promised help or involvement were never going to follow through. None of them were my employees – they were creative collaborators and fellow entrepreneurs. Equals. 

I made every effort I could think of to give each of them space, encouragement, understanding, time, to assure them of my commitment to them and our mutual success and of my willingness to adjust to their current circumstances.             

It made no difference. Most of them, I’ve basically never heard from again. Two communicate once in a while, but the working relationships I had with them have died.

I guess the obvious thing to assume here is that something’s wrong with me.

And I’ve tried to figure out what. In nearly every case, these were people I cared about deeply. We’d either started as friends or become that way after working together and shared similar missions, tastes, senses of humor. I enjoyed their company and they seemed to enjoy mine. I thanked them, praised them, stood by them, apologized for any inconvenience I thought I caused them, asked about their health, listened to their many troubles, helped as much as I could, cut them slack, bought them coffee and worked furiously to make our mutual dreams come true. They gave every appearance of sharing my devotion to our projects and of liking to work with me.

Right up until they bailed out.

Those who gave reasons all had different ones – financial stress, an ill family member, pressing business of other kinds, depression, legal troubles. All legit, I guess. But the fact remains that when the start-up and artistic processes got tough, when obstacles arose, they quit.

That staggered me. I’ve had to pick up the responsibilities they dropped and try to carry them all myself . But what hurts most is not that they ignored their promises – even their contractual obligations, in some cases - but that they dumped our friendship along with our collaboration. Starting a business was supposed to be fun. I was going to work with some of the people I liked best in the world on something we really cared about.

Instead, I find myself on my own, grimmer and more determined than ever to make this business succeed, to give my artistic projects life and to resist distrusting others and my own judgment. None of it’s easy.

Was I naive? Am I wrongheaded, inept, offensive? Is my idea bad? Am I a poor judge of character? Simply unlucky?

I don’t know. Another longtime friend sent me a message last night, saying he might not be able to follow through on his part of our multiyear project that’s finally nearing completion. I hope I won’t have to hear that someone else I’ve loved and counted on will solve his problems by letting me down.