A good friend of mine is an HR specialist and is considering going to work for a startup that just received a large round of funding.  The company plans huge growth in the coming months and they'd like to have an HR person help them preserve their startup culture as they grow.  Unfortunately, I don't think this is possible. 

As companies grow, they change.  Any culture that existed at the beginning must adapt to the changing environment.  It can't remain the same.  If it did, the company would stagnate.  So ultimately, the goal must be to help the culture evolve.

In looking at the problem, the first question is: what is this company's culture?  After all, you can't preserve or evolve something unless you know what it is. 

Most of the time, 'culture' is just a feeling.  With any luck, a startup feels exciting.  The team feels committed.  The management and the team feel connected - there is open communication among everyone.  Everyone feels they're pulling together for a common goal.  People feel they can work hard and still have fun.  They feel rewarded through recognition, and perhaps through compensation.   But is this the culture?  Or are these feelings the result of the culture? 

Related to the culture of a company are its customs.  Maybe it's a custom to celebrate a new contract, project completions, birthdays.  Perhaps it's a custom for the CEO to hold weekly all-hands meetings with open discussion allowing questions and suggestions from anyone.  Or maybe one of the company's customs is to share in the company's financial success through bonuses or a company-wide adventure.

The reality is that once a company grows, particularly if it grows quickly, and even more so if outside investors become involved, the customs will have to change and many of those good feelings may change as a result.  Celebrating every birthday with everyone in the company will likely become impractical.  So too with new contracts and project completions.  Even the all-hands meetings will have to change.  There's only a finite amount of time available and if there are lots of questions and suggestions, it's unlikely everyone will be heard.

And then there's the money aspect.  Outside investors are going to be looking closely at financial results.  They will likely argue for more reinvestment into the company, its marketing, product development, and expansion, and may want to reduce those bonuses or company-wide adventures.  They may even want to cut back on the toys, free drinks, and meals that made it easy to work ridiculous hours.

What's the result?  People are going to feel less connected.  Then they'll feel less committed.  They won't work as well together, and it won't be as much fun. 

So how do we preserve the culture?  We don't.  We protect the roots of the culture.  These are the company's values.  They need to be identified, codified, and regularly reiterated to the entire team.  Years ago at IBM, it started with 'Respect for the Individual'.  It was simple, but went much deeper into the company than might seem obvious.  This was followed by the reminder on most everyone's desk: THINK!  IBM grew consistently and maintained the culture of Big Blue. 
But let's come back to those feelings that constituted our startup culture:

• Excitement
• Team Commitment
• Open communication 
• Pulling together for a common goal
• Work hard, and have fun
• Individual and team recognition

It seems to me that these can become company goals and values.  Different companies will approach them in different ways based on the CEO's philosophy.  As a company grows, the customs that support them will have to change but the core values don't have to.  Birthdays, project completions or new contracts might be celebrated in the responsible groups.  The CEO might conduct smaller group/team meetings to get more personal feedback than can be realized in an all-hands meeting.   Working hard and having fun may mean offering more flexible time or telecommuting.  Continue to recognize accomplishments and you  will motivate  individuals and teams.   

Above all, the CEO must foresee impending changes to the culture and customs, discuss them with the team, solicit feedback, and explain the realities of the changing environment.  S/he  must continually reiterate the goals and direction of the company and show how current tactics are going to help achieve them. 

Company culture can evolve if core values are protected and if the team understands the reasons for change.  Knowledge leads to understanding.

I had a long conversation with a family member yesterday.  She's entering a graduate program that will keep her far away from home for a few years and she feels guilty.  Her mother is mentally ill.

Guilt seems to haunt many of the family members of those with psychological disorders.  We feel guilty for not giving up more of our time to help care for them.  We feel guilty for not being able to solve their problems.  And worse, we often feel guilty, thinking we  contributed to the problems to begin with. 

In this particular case, the young woman's mother had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder while in her 20s.  For years it was managed well with Lithium, then later with a cocktail of several drugs.  While there were periodic episodes of depression and extreme manic behavior when she convinced herself that she was cured and didn't need her medication, for the most part, she was able to raise her children and thrive at a job she loved. 

One day, after deciding she could stop taking her meds, she went manic again.  This time, she took her daughter out of school and hit the road.  Not long into the trip she abandoned her young daughter in a motel and continued on her manic binge until she was ultimately arrested by the police and placed in a psychiatric institution.  Fortunately, a very wise psychiatrist explained to her that her condition was physical, a chemical imbalance in the brain, and that she would have to be on medication for the rest of her life.  There was no cure but the condition could be managed.  Family members and social services made it clear to her that she would lose custody of her daughter if such an incident ever occurred again and this resonated for her.  Over the next several years, she stayed on her medication and worked tirelessly towards doing the best job she could to raise her daughter. 

But life is change and her daughter grew up.  Her daughter started spending more and more time with friends as teenagers are wont to do.  Unbeknownst to her daughter and family members, she quit going to work.  She pretended to, fooling everyone.  As graduation approached, she had a complete psychotic break, losing all touch with reality.  This was no longer Bipolar Disorder. 

She was hospitalized for several months and then moved into a care home, a place where trained nursing staff could ensure that she took her medications and could recognize signs of impending crises.  Her daughter went to college nearby but then took an internship on the other side of the country, promising to return to care for her mother and feeling both guilty and relieved that she could get away from the situation. 

So back to yesterday's conversation:  it started off about the unique opportunities of the particular graduate program she's chosen, then quickly moved to guilt about not being there for her mother.  She believed that if she could be there, perhaps she could make a difference. 

We discussed the fact that her mother experiences a different reality, and our ideas of logic don't make sense to her.  She hears voices, is convinced that she's responsible for all the problems in the world.  She'll see a television program on tainted water and will ask to be arrested because she's at fault.  She doesn't believe that her daughter is living far away, even when shown the documentation.  And yet, the daughter believes that she could make a difference if she were there. 

We talked about the fact that like the Bipolar Disorder, the psychosis her mother suffers from is incurable with current psychiatric techniques/medications.  It's somewhat manageable, but the medication and therapies don't bring her a normal life.  Her daughter's presence won't change the incurable physical aspect of her disease. 

And then it came out.  She believes she caused her mother's mental illness.  Because she grew up and graduated from High School, her mother lost her reason to remain sane.  It's her fault that her mother had the psychotic break and is now in the state she's in. 

And maybe it is her fault. 

But was there anything she could have done to avoid it?  No.  

The reality is that she had to grow up.  She didn't have a choice in that.  Whether her growing up was a fault or not, time and genetics guaranteed that the break would have occurred at some point. 

It's a terrible thing that her mother suffers from this debilitating mental illness.  But it's just as terrible that her daughter suffers from such guilt.  You and I know that it's not her fault.  Blame it on genetics.

If you don't have much experience with people who are severely mentally ill, it's easy to think that cures are possible.  The right medication, the right therapies, there's got to be a way. 

But after you've lived with it for a while, after you've outgrown the arrogance that makes you think that you have the power to fix it, you come to realize that people in this state don't think like we do.  Their perception of reality is completely different.  Their logic is not a logic we can understand.  Their brains are wired differently. 

Maybe someday, science will invent a machine that can scan the brain and see these broken or mis-wired circuits.  Maybe someday, they'll figure out how to fix them.  In the meantime, we need to understand our limitations and understand that as family members or friends, we can help manage, but we, ourselves, can't fix something that's this badly broken. 

All we can do is the best we can.  We need to live our lives too.   And, we shouldn't feel guilty that we can't do more.

As I mentioned in my last post on Mental Health, I just finished the first draft of The Shadow of God and have sent it out for review.  It's easy to think you're done writing when you've finished your first draft.  You've put several months into  getting three or four hundred pages down which you hope present a cohesive story.  Of course, there's a good chance you've put too much into it and that it's not very tight. Revisions and Rewrites are probably coming.

In The Silicon Lathe, my first novel, I threw everything into the story.  It's got lots of high risk sports, sleazy and altruistic characters, technology, how to run a company, murder, and of course, personal relationships.  I probably should have cut a lot of that out; maybe turned it into two or three books.  But after revising it several times over the course of a couple of years, I actually like the way it turned out.  It is what I wanted it to be.

So now, I'm looking at the prospect of revising The Shadow of God as well.  Hopefully it won't take me years to get that done. 

As I'm waiting for feedback from my initial reviewers, I need to fill my time with something else.  I'm not quite ready to start another book given that this one really isn't finished.  So, I picked up Ethics, my second novel, and read it again.  I finished writing it over a year ago and knew at the time that it was the best thing I've ever written and may be the best thing I'll ever write.  Back then, I also knew that if I published it, I'd likely put myself at major personal risk, so I decided to put it on the shelf and leave it.  Perhaps it could be published after my death.  After rereading it, I've decided that I'm going to try to revise it in a way that distances real-life people from my characters in hopes that I can make it publishable now.

When I finished The Silicon Lathe, I met with an attorney who specializes in defamation lawsuits.  He convinced me to change the names of companies, the descriptions of characters, and to hide certain technologies and events.  Surprisingly, that was easy to do.  I think I completed all his proposed revisions in less than a day. 

But as I look at changing Ethics, and then at revising The Shadow of God, I realize that this could be quite difficult.  While The Silicon Lathe was linear, in Ethics and The Shadow of God, I embedded clues to future events right from the beginning.     Something I wrote on page 20 might have a major impact on a person or event on page 220.  I put in countless misdirections, purposely trying to mislead the reader. 

Writing this way isn't always conscious.  You get an idea of where you want the story to go and you make sure that the foundations are in place before you go for the big surprises.  The intricacies of the story get weaved into the people, places, and events.  There are hints of what's to come in the style, in the ways people talk, and even in the ways that places and situations are described.  

So, now I need to do revisions.  I need to change characters, how they look, what they do for a living, and how they express themselves.  I need to change places and events,  eliminating some altogether.  I need to tamper with the foundations of my stories, somehow keeping the hints intact.  Fine threads need to survive major surgeries. 

I'm confident I can be successful with this process for The Shadow of God. The characters in the original story don't have a lot of real-life counterparts.  My changes there will be to improve flow, readability, eliminate distractions, and tighten up the story.   But I'm still worried about Ethics.  I knew the characters the story is based on. This familiarity is built into how they act, react, and talk.  I am afraid that altering their fundamental characteristics will jeopardize the foundation I've crafted and that what I think of as my very best work will be diminished.  But I'm going to give it a try. I'm going to burn bridges back to the original people and make it a different book.  If I do it well, these people won't recognize themselves, but I can preserve their essences.  The story will remain the same. 

I've backed up the original, so if the revisions don't work out, Ethics can always be published after I'm gone.  In the meantime, stay tuned for progress on The Shadow of God.  I received final cover art from Lanny Markasky today.  Hopefully, publication is only weeks away (after revisions and some professional reviews - these usually take 3-5 weeks by themselves).

Wish me luck!

I've been called crazy many times, usually because of my extreme sports.  People who don't understand that risk sports are about learning the skills necessary to control the risks think that since they would have to be crazy to try these things, I must be too.  And maybe I am.

I just finished my first draft of The Shadow of God and I sent it out for review.  The story has characters who suffer from mental illnesses and as I raced to the conclusion, I began thinking about the people in my life who suffered from mental illnesses.

I think the first that I recognized was my High School Civics teacher.  I had always been a science and math geek and Civics, Sociology, Psychology, and similar subjects seemed a little 'soft' to me.  But my Civics teacher brought life to what had previously been a boring subject. 

Over the course of the school year, we had lively debates about history, politics, and the future.  I have to say that he actually became a friend.  That hadn't happened before either. 

I did notice that he smoked a lot after class and that his hands shook, but the day it was announced that he'd committed suicide after being on medication for years was the day that I learned that mental illness was all around us, but often hidden from view - or that you needed to look closer to see the signs.

Over the course of my relatively long life, I have encountered mental illness often.  Sure, we see the people on the streets who really should be in institutions.  But beyond them, I have family members, best friends, employees, and even an ex-wife who suffered from mental illnesses. 

I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill depression either.  I think that for most of us, depression is real, but it's transitory and often situational.  A period of medication and/or daily moderate exercise (as several prominent psychiatrists have recently published), will help people get past situational depression.  

No, I've seen much worse: chronic depression, schizophrenia, various forms of psychoses, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and even dissociative identity disorder.  In many cases, these illnesses have led to suicides and other violent deaths. 

And yet, if you met any of these people at a wedding or other social function, you would never have sensed that something was wrong. 

What I've discovered is that virtually all of the people I've known who suffered from mental illnesses had learned to mask their problems when in public, or even with friends and family. 

As tolerant people, we tend to accept slightly aberrant behavior.  We may find people charmingly eccentric.  The boundaries of 'acceptable behavior' are broad.  

In other words, people you know and admire may suffer from a debilitating psychological disorder that you just don't see.  Several studies claim that ten percent of the population suffers from significant psychological disorders.  I find that number high, but it's believable.

Many of these people have illnesses with genetic roots.  The potential for schizophrenia, for example can lie dormant for years until triggered by a major life event, or by drug use.  I've had the misfortune to know several teenagers who started experimenting and inadvertently triggered schizophrenia.  It doesn't happen to most, but it does happen to some.

Still, the single greatest cause of mental illness is childhood abuse - sexual, emotional, and/or physical.  But most of these victims, too, learn to adapt and do what's necessary to get along in our society and to fit within the bounds of 'normal' - until something pushes them over the edge and tragedy results.

So why did I write this blog?  Like I said, I just finished writing a book about the subject.  It brought back my desire to help these people.  In my youth, I think I believed that I could help them myself.  In my old age, I think I finally recognize that in most cases, I would have been more helpful by encouraging them to seek professional care at the first real signs of a problem.  

So I ask you to look around you at your friends and loved ones.  I'm not suggesting you should become a grand inquisitor, but do look around.  If you see the signs, don't ignore them.  You might help save someone's life.
 

I love rainy days.  Even more than just watching the rain, listening to the drops slap the windows, or hearing the wind whistling by, I love to write on rainy days.  Somehow being inside, protected from the elements, I can focus better on what's in front of me.  I can retreat from the storm deeper into my stories.  Writing is an introspective pursuit.  Rainy days encourage introspection while sunny ones often lead to procrastination.

Unfortunately, since January 2013, we've had very few rainy days here in Santa Cruz and I must admit, my writing has suffered.  It's too easy to go out for a second three-hour surf session, go play another round of disc golf, or just head out on a bike ride.  

With the return of the rains a few weeks ago, my productivity returned.  I was once again intrigued with my latest novel and at a point where I found it hard not to write.  I seemed to be able to crank out a page or two whenever I had a few minutes available at my laptop.   My characters were screaming to express themselves, even if only for a few lines at a time.

Then, two weeks ago Karen and I went to Costa Rica for my stepson's destination wedding.  While most people would be ecstatic at the prospect of warm weather, endless beaches and fine surf, I was expecting the worst.  I hate being warm.  Costa Rica is warm.  I hate being tied up with family obligations that prevent me from doing what I want or need to do.  Costa Rica looked like a disaster in the making for the novel that was back on track.  I wanted to stay in Santa Cruz, experiencing the sorely missed rain and reveling in the recovered pace of my writing.  But I had to go.

Surprise, surprise.  The experience in Costa Rica was not the disaster I anticipated.  I never imagined that I could be productive sitting on a covered patio next to a jungle waterfall, a light breeze carrying the scent of exotic flowers.  But the sound of the cascading water once again allowed me to escape into my story. 

Of course, family members, seeing me hammering away in this serene setting, just couldn't help themselves and had to interrupt to ask what I was writing or to talk about the beauty of the place.  But I admit that even with the interruptions, it was almost better than being at home.

After a spectacular wedding, certainly the most beautiful I'd been to, we left the Waterfall Villas and moved to a beach resort.  Our beach bungalow was separated from the sand by a strip of lawn with palm and coconut trees providing all-day shade.  At precisely eight thirty each morning, onshore winds would begin to blow from the ocean.  I'd exit the surf, grab a quick breakfast, and find a spot in the shade.  Once again, the tranquility of the lush green grass, wind rustling the palm fronds, and the ocean in the background provided an ideal environment to write.  Of course there were interruptions, required trips to nearby towns to explore and shop, but I still managed to eke out productive time.

We returned to several days of rain in Santa Cruz and I've been immersed in The Shadow of God.  I recently sent out most of the first draft for review and I'm in the final stretch.  I have the last chapter to write before the serious editing and rewrites begin.  

Oddly, I find myself wondering how both tropical breezes and cold Santa Cruz rainstorms inspire me to write. They seem so different.  And maybe that's it. 

With only a hundred non-sunny days in Santa Cruz each normal rain-year (and we haven't had one of those in a while), rainy days are exceptional.  They challenge the routines I've developed on the sunny ones - routines that make it easy to procrastinate.  Similarly, the change of scene in Costa Rica challenged my routines.  There were a lot of expectations on my time and those rare moments of solitude, whether next to the waterfall or in the shade of the swaying palms, made me urgently want to take advantage of that special time to lose myself in my writing.   

The forecasts are calling for more rain over the next week followed by a dry spell of at least a week.  If I don't finish The Shadow of God by then, I think I'll find a change of scene to keep my writing on track.