Last August, one of companies I worked with was sold. I was offered a position in the new company, but the role didn’t involve my core interests with online communities and remote collaboration. To make things more difficult, the position paid a very reasonable salary. So I had to choose between a stable, good paying j-o-b or go looking for new opportunities that aligned more with my core interests. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in my career (a shout out to my network for being awesome supporters).
With all the extra time I had from not being able to sleep, I scoured the internetz for opportunities and ideas. One morning, I read Jurgen Appelo’s blog post looking for entrepreneurs and leaders for a new project he was starting called Happy Melly.
Happy Melly is a business that improves the lives of knowledge workers through inspiring books, courseware, conferences, podcasts, workshops, games, and apps. The goal of Happy Melly is to turn work into a great and gratifying experience.
Most businesses are usually formed using a hierarchical design, with directors, departments, superiors, and subordinates. But Happy Melly is experimenting with something different… it’s a business network with distributed governance where management is implemented with a Constitution.
Immediately, I recognized this project as something special – and the more I learned, the more excited I got. A bunch of emails and Skype calls later, I was asked to join the team to help coordinate marketing efforts and design training courses around collaboration. I did little victory dances and let out random happiness yips for a week.
Not only is the work perfectly aligned with my core interests, but it’s also a thrill to work with the people crazy enough to bring such an audacious idea to life! <yip!> And the best part is, it’s not the only opportunity that came my way (I’ll be writing about that next).
This experience has reinforced for me the need to constantly look at what I know, what I like, where my talents lie, and think “If I were to push the edge of what’s possible, and get really lucky doing it, what could I do?”
Do you dare to join us?
