Management Team dinner.  We went to Sibling Rivalry in Boston.  This was a planned get together for us as a complete group, which we hadn’t done since the investment in December.  The team all gets along quite well, so these events are pretty fun.

Decide to spring the idea to the entire team.  Spend about 30 minutes debating and deciding about how to set parameters.  How to make this work or not work – whether people will care or just find it boring.

Lots of different perspectives, and while it’s clear that I’ve built up a good base of trust from the team,  there’s still a few who have questions and deep hesitations.

The discussion really centered on the impact this might have on employees.  There’s no doubt that this will have an impact, just what exactly it is we’re not sure.  Certainly the BeeLog has caused some of it’s own internal questions/issues/distractions.  My perspective, however, is that those have productive in some ways – keeping the air clear, ensuring people are communicating.  While not always pain-free, always interesting and beneficial in the long run.

On Thursday we have a team meeting, so we’re going to add a good half hour to discuss the process and idea.  We’ll try to get all the questions out on the table.  There’s no doubt that this will cause concern in some folks – but I’m hoping most see the bigger picture and understand the value to our brand and to the outside world.  The concept of the open corporation is immensely powerful – and I’m as fascinated at how the external world will react as I am at the behavior of the internal staff during the process.  One big fishbowl of social psychology…

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