Thanksgiving can be a lot of work. However, when it is all over, and after the last sleeping child is buckled snugly into his or her car seat and the last pats are given, last hair is tousled, last hugs, kisses and handshakes are given, watching the minivans taillights shrinking in the distance – I cannot hardly wait for next year to do it again.
While experiencing these strong nostalgic feeling again, it occurred to me how to approach this month’s post topic.
This topic being: The capability of fellow membership-website owners to work together, to co-create better products and services, for the benefit of themselves and their collective communities, and what success in these circumstances, really means.
You see, around here, Thanksgiving is a time when our extended families gather together to spend a day, or two, or three, living in an almost communal or kibbutz, lifestyle, under one roof.
In recent years, the privilege of hosting this pilgrimage has been given to our house, and with some of our family flying into town a few days early, our house fills up quickly, and is slow to return to normal.
Through the years, employment opportunities, education, marriages, and sadly even divorces have all played a role in scattering my extended family across the world. I myself, as you may recall, spent many years in Japan.
While it is often impossible to get our entire extended family under one roof, many of us still get together for Thanksgiving.
What never ceases to amaze me is how well our family dynamics play out.
I don’t think that my family has ever been described as a confrontational or volatile family, and yet even I often wonder how the slightest differences seem to get set aside during the holiday, and peace prevails.
Everyone works together, everyone has their jobs, for some, it is to cook, other lug in wood for the fireplace and tend it, others watch over and entrain the small children, others arrange and rearrange and then rearrange again the furniture to fit the gathering.
Every job is equally respected as essential, for making the event a heartwarming, collaborative success.
For instance, in years gone by it was my grandfather’s sacred role, to arrange the rabbit ears for the “big-game”. In much the same “spirit”, this legacy has been passed onto me, with among other my other chores; I was challenged with getting everyone WIFI access and setting the TEVO to record (The rabbit ears of a new century).
Everyone just sees what needs to be done, and just starts pitching in, if not, it wouldn’t have been possible.
With so many people in my house, I find it almost miraculous that each morning there was hot coffee brewing in the kitchen when I stumbled down stairs and clean folded towels on the rack every time I took a shower.
Nevertheless, miracles happen when people work together!
This leads us back again to this week’s membership topic, because when approached in the right frame of mind, and in the right spirit, and with the right group of people, synergistic miracles can happen.
Your partnership or joint venture may last a weekend or a lifetime. That doesn’t matter.
What matters, is what you accomplish together, and what you learn from the experience.
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