What a question!
My personal sense of purpose is to discover, express, and explore my own
inherent greatness and to help others do the same.
I do that through my work, social activities, and family life. But that is
_not_ the primary motivation for my work.
My job is to design, implement, and maintain messaging systems (groupware,
e-mail, document management, workflow, imaging, etc.). I am not a manager.
I have very little social interaction with the other consultants in my
office. In fact, I'm closer to my clients then my colleagues.
What drives me is the satisfaction of seeing new patterns of interaction
emerge from the availability of new communication mediums. I may be a
techno-geek, but I get the pleasure of watching organizations evolve,
transform, improve, break-down, screw-up, and fix themselves as they learn
to effectively communicate with new tools.
Once a messaging system is designed and implemented people go nuts.
Informal groups of people begin collaborating, sharing information, and
exploring new possibilities without the knowledge of approval of
management; the ability to coordinate action, to move quickly in unison,
and to dig down deep and solve a complex problem is greatly enhanced.
Indeed a new form of corporate democracy emerges when new methods of
communication are introduced. Command-and-control structures can only
survive and thrive when those who are being "commanded" and "controlled"
are ignorant or uninformed. My job is to build the infrastructure for an
information-rich environment. Inevitably new organizational forms follow
my work, maybe not in a formal way but at least in an informal and
practical way. And I love it. . .
-- Benjamin Compton DWS -- "The GroupWise Integration Specialists" A Novell Platinum Partner bcompton@dws.net http://www.emailsolutions.ocmLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>