Ragan Communications is a very strange company, and lest you think I might get in trouble for saying so, Mark Ragan is constantly after me to write a New Yorker story about the company and all the characters that have worked for it, and all the nutty things they've—we've—done. (I wish Mark would get after the New Yorker, too!)
The best and the worst thing about Ragan Communications is that there are no boundaries between our "work" selves and our "regular" selves. To read about how that plays out in weird and occasionally insane ways, you'll have to pick up The New Yorker.
But in the office Wednesday afternoon I was reminded of the vast beauty of working for a company like this:
Conference director Rebecca Anderson is sort of halfway back from maternity leave, coming in for a few hours a few days a week. She brought her baby girl with her on Wednesday.
As Rebecca was on and off the phone, in and out of meetings and conference calls, other women in the office—yes, it was all women—passed the baby back and forth. The marketing director, the CEO's administrative assistant, a writer ... each took a turn holding the baby, rocking the baby, pushing the baby from desk to desk for goo-gooing and tickling. The baby-passing went on quietly for several hours.
It wasn't their willingness to take care of the baby during the workday that moved me. It was the effortlessness of it, the liquidity with which it happened, the taken-for-granted trust, the sheer relaxed naturalness.
And Rebecca's own serenity reminded me of how good I feel when my own daughter comes to a large family get-together and I don't see her for two hours and I simply know she's being happily taken care of and loved by people who I trust to take care of and love her.
I suppose someone might object to such a situation as a productivity killer, fret about the dangerous precedent being set. But nobody at Ragan Communications would. For better or for worse, Ragan does not believe productivity is the highest human value. And as for dangerous precedents, they try to set a new one every day.
Comments (3)
David, this is right on target with something I've been thinking about lately: that "productivity" as the world defines it and "good communication" as communicators visualize it simply can't fit into the same basket.
If you're being super-productive, you're probably not communicating well--especially if the communication involves writing. (For me, the optimum writing situation is one that has a TINY BIT of pressure, but no more.)
And if you're communicating well, you're doing all sorts of things that don't fit into the definition of "productivity"--things that involve the time-slowing messiness of human contact.
How cool that you all get to work in a place where what I just said goes without saying.
Posted by Jane Greer | August 31, 2007 9:19 AM
Posted on August 31, 2007 09:19
David, this is only remotely related to this blog. One doesn't often see the words "ode to" as you used them in your head, and so my first reaction was, "Oh no, is something bad happening to Ragan?" And then I thought about what the word really means, and I came back to earth.
However, it reminded me of one of my favorite songs, "Ode to my Car," by Adam Sandler. You'll never hear that one on the radio, it being profane and all, but if you ever get a chance to listen to it I'm sure you'll appreciate the artful way in which Mr. Sandler sings about his "piece of shit" car to a reggae beat.
Will
Posted by Will Daniel | August 31, 2007 9:23 AM
Posted on August 31, 2007 09:23
Jane, well-put. People complain—and trillions of words have been written—about "too many meetings." No doubt we all have wasted hours of our lives in dumb meetings; and I get an incredible amount of writing done, for Ragan and for others, because I work at home and mostly avoid meetings.
But people should keep in mind that meetings, when they happen in organizations that aren't fundamentally, deeply sick, indirectly accomplish things. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a meeting at Ragan, planning the Corporate Communicators Conference. The meeting was filled with laughter, jokes, good-natured insults, people's ideas being flushed down the toilet (we created a "Garbage Track" at the conference, just to hold the dumbest session ideas suggested.
In the meeting—which could have no doubt been much shorter without all the yucks—new employees learned how we evaluate session ideas and speakers. Veterans learned how the new kids could take a joke—and that they had a lot of good ideas. Everybody learned (or relearned) a lot of things about everybody else—everybody they'd be working with for nine months between now and the conference.
And at the end, we had a greaseboard filled with session ideas, assignments made and deadlines set.
So it took 90 minutes when we could have done it in 45. That, as you point out, Jane, is not the point.
Posted by David Murray | August 31, 2007 9:52 AM
Posted on August 31, 2007 09:52