One of the reasons I moved to WordPress is that it is awkward to write about many topics I find interesting and wish to share.  I haven’t worked for Lewis Cirne for many years now.  He is the chief of what some (not all) of my co-workers would call a competitor.  Still, I’ve written a lot now about people and events that were major milestones in my life, and Lew qualifies so completely that I must speak up.

First, Lew gave me one of my greatest career gifts.  When I met him in 1998, he had just quit his day job to develop the product that would become Wily Introscope.  I missed a chance to be his intern the following summer, but I wasn’t sad because I saw him click with another great mind, Dan Scholnick.  When I finally started full time work for Lew in August of 2000, I was nervous as hell that someone was going to find me out.  I thought it would rapidly be apparent that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was just wasn’t all that valuable.

Lew brought what must be called a party atmosphere to many encounters, one-on-one and company-wide.  There was a disco ball in our conference room.  He had new employees bang a gong as they were introduced.  He always had a smile, always a way to make you relax, always a positive attitude.  I’ve met plenty of positive people in my life, but nobody quite like Lew.

When I think back about my first work experiences, I realize now that he shaped how I think about work and how I want to be when I’m at work.  In my meetings today, I sometimes realize I’m “channeling” Lew when I toss a pun into the conversation, tease someone, or gently self-deprecate.  I read recently that Lew has a philosophy of keeping his meetings to six people or fewer (I love the picture with this article better; it’s so him).  We didn’t have this rule in the Wily Technology days, but mostly because we didn’t need to have one; we were a small company already.  This policy makes me think that Lew hasn’t changed.  He still wants us all to feel empowered, listened to, and have fun while we do it.

Sadly, you learn the value of what you’ve got when you lose it.  In some of the professional environments I inhabited post-Lew, the attitude towards meetings and business was bland to the point of being stifling.  Professionals were like those pictures that always show up in web sites or in television commercials:  well-dressed people stalking around offices and looking very serious in meetings, nary a grin.  My hunch is that company founders set the tone for how business will be conducted, but they aren’t solely responsible.  The criticism I heard when we did have fun in these places was that we were “wasting time”, “off task”, and “unfocused”.  People who criticize the bonding that is taking place while these moments pass should think about what John Wooden meant when he said, “Never confuse activity with achievement.”

But Lew prepared me well for those patches of my career in which I had to struggle. I remember wearing a shirt that I got from a friend and former co-worker, John Bley.  It said “GEEK” in big letters. Over it, I dutifully wore a plain, business-casual button-down shirt to my serious customer-facing meeting, but at the right moment I let everyone know that “I’m not who you think I am…”, and unbuttoned my shirt superman-style to reveal my true identity.  It made the meeting memorable, took moments to accomplish, and only served to increase the closeness between the people present.

A ship is its crew, and not just its captain.  If the crew is grimly determined to reach a goal, that’s wonderful.  But grim determination isn’t a state that lasts forever, except for maybe Captain Ahab.  All of us want to love coming to work, and having fun is key.

I’ll end my little paean to Lew by telling a story.  Those that know me at all, know that I have a mercurial temperament.  In Wily, I moved from engineering into sales engineering, and being in the field gradually took a toll on my mood.  One day, I came to Lew upset about this or the other thing (can’t remember exactly what).  Lew said, “Come with me.”

He took me out to the parking lot and showed me his brand new, shiny car.  It was a green Porsche Boxster — gotta be green for the alma mater — and it was a thing of beauty.  I thought he was just trying to change the subject.  But then he told me to hop in.  He took me down the road from Wily’s humble Burlingame HQ, and slammed on the brakes a bunch of times to show me how awesome they were.  We tore around 380 to 280, all the way down to San Mateo and back, talking the whole time.  If you know Lew, you probably don’t need the extra information that it was a convertible.

By the time we got back, and Lew had had a chance to cheer me up with his words too, I was feeling much better, wondering why I had been so upset in the first place.

I had to choose from my Lew stories because there are so many good ones.  If you read this, thanks Lew!  I like your style, dig it?