Reformulation of Current Work Using the Project Write-Up

This is a true story told by Paul LaFontaine, a graduate of the Eight Day Radical Honesty Workshop. It is an example of how, by reformulating what he was doing at work—through writing up his project according to his vision—Paul changed his life at work. A review of Paul's project proves that the future is not destined to be a replication of the past, and actually makes us excited about the possibilities of our own lives. His reformulation of what he was about at work, through writing up his

projects according to his vision, changed a disgruntled employee (with a recent moderately poor performance review) to a recognized significant player in the design for the future growth of his company. He also got a

$2,000 raise. Here is Paul's story in his own words:

How Work Becomes Play by

Paul LaFontaine

The chair was uncomfortable as I sat down. My boss had called me into his office for my annual performance review. When the company had hired me a

year before, they said they needed me to examine process efficiency in the facility. Instead, they wanted me to sit and write memos. Whenever a piece of furniture was purchased or moved, they had me doing the paperwork, after which they bitched at me for not completing the forms to their satisfaction. It was boring work and it had me trapped because I needed the paycheck.

"Really, I wrote a better review," my boss said. "They changed it. There's nothing I can do."

"They're always doing things like this," I replied. "Can I write a rebuttal?"

"Yeah, but be careful," he said, handing me the review.

They deserved a rebuttal. They wrote that I had failed to document

purchases satisfactorily. Of the many purchases I had made that year, only once had they caught me short of paperwork. My rebuttal would hammer this point and embarrass them with their lack of information. From my small chair in a cubicle amidst a sea of cubicles, a clever rebuttal took shape. Once it was completed and in the mail I prepared for a vacation.

My vacation was the Radical Honesty Eight Day Workshop. Brad Blanton spoke about stories, language, and personal power. He spoke of a life of play.

He showed us how to meditate. He showed us movies. He talked about how we are the creators of our own experience. He put me in a chair and listened to me talk, coaching me to notice what I was experiencing. After several days, I noticed that in my mind I was blaming other people, "them," for my dissatisfactions. I learned. I learned about fear, responsibility, and telling the truth. I learned how to notice what came up for me emotionally. Most importantly, I learned about

myself. As the workshop neared completion, I listened to Brad describe a technique useful in being a powerful creator. I heard him describe the writing of projects.

I was excited by his description. I organized furniture orders for the company into projects, but a project of my own was different. I could create my own life in my projects. After some instruction, I wrote my projects. In one, I recreated my work by writing a clear vision and measures of success with timelines. I would transform my work into play. I was going to expand on my furniture purchasing and become a creator of work environments that would transform the company from a sea of cubicles to an open space where teams would flourish. I called this project "Work Environment Creator." I would be unstoppable.

Project in hand, I returned to the company and began talking about work environments. I got out of my small chair, left my cubicle, and began walking around the building asking people what they needed to improve their workspace.

I drew diagrams and talked about creating an open space where teams would flourish. I was excited by my vision and couldn't stop talking about it.

Prior to leaving for the workshop, I had been given the task to "coordinate and document company departmental involvement" on a $5 million office

refurbishment. I didn't know what this meant, so I checked my Work Environment Creator project and decided that I had a better plan. I took charge.

I gathered the architect, consultants, and contractors together around a table and looked at each of them as I leaned forward in a large, comfortable chair. After a moment of complete silence, I spoke.

"This project is the first step in recreating this building as an open

environment that supports teams," I said. "We will complete it and have our people move in on July 8th."

"OK," said the architect.

"Let's get to work," said a consultant.

I then said this to the management of the company and the people who would move into the space. I said it to my friends, strangers, and anyone who would listen. When quick decisions were needed, I was consulted and I said it again. When people rolled their eyes in meetings and expressed doubts as to whether a project this size could be finished on time, I said it yet again. I said it in the cafeteria. I said it in the restroom. I said it in my sleep.

On July 8th, our people moved in.

I listened as people told me what a good job I had done. I reviewed my project and was ready for more. I had a vision of the entire building being an open space that supported teams, so I set to work. Using learning from another project I had created and my experience at the Radical Honesty Workshop, I created a workshop where departmental managers for the company could develop a team-based work environment for their people. I visited the vice president of the facility.

"I am going to work with each department and develop a plan for creating for them an open, team-based work environment," I said. "I'll have these plans ready for future growth."

"OK," he replied.

I started giving the workshop. I was excited as I told the department managers about the advantages of an open environment. I had fun. I drew pictures for them from which they began modifying their workspace on their own.

I applauded them. I talked about a team-based facility. I drew more pictures. I was slowly and steadily bringing my vision into being.

The executives decided they were going to build a new office building. I was assigned the project. I reviewed my project and prepared to create a work environment for the executive group. I met with them and talked about an open space in which teams could flourish. I talked about how I was creating this in each department. The group who had been "they" to me months before sat and nodded their heads. "You are the example for the rest of the facility."

I concluded, "Your new space will be a team-based space."

"OK," said a vice president.

"Good idea," said a director.

"Can't disagree with that," said another vice president.

I was making my project with its vision a reality. I was creating work environments. I was having fun. I walked past an abandoned rows of cubicles that I was having disassembled and went on to my new office. I was comfortable as I sat in my large chair. I felt free. I smiled as I spoke to myself. I was playing.

How to Make Hell Fun

Paul transformed his relationship to work at his company by making a paradigm shift, a change in perspective that allowed him to recreate everything at work from a different perspective. He did what Robert Fritz, the brilliant author of the books The Path of Least Resistance, Creating, and Corporate Tides, calls a shift from the reacting orientation to the creating orientation. As a result of doing the workshop, Paul began to come from some place other than reacting to

circumstances imposed upon him by his job.

An Individual Project that Changed the World

In 1993, a man named Sam, who had years of experience as a hotel and resort manager, decided, with the help of The Advanced Course

conducted by Landmark Education, to become a conscious creator of his life rather than a set of reactions. He decided that he wanted to use his skills as a hotelier to increase the possibility of communication between the Eastern Bloc countries and the West to bring about peace in the world. He wanted to create a meeting place in Moscow. His vision was to create a meeting place for the Iron Curtain countries and the West to maximize the possibility of communication among the leaders and

businesspeople of those nations. He wrote up his project and got funding on a joint venture with people he knew involving two major hotel chains in America, went to Moscow, bought a hotel, gutted it, and rebuilt it with meeting rooms and all the most modern electronic equipment and communications support available at the time. He put audio visual equipment, satellite communications, computerized media presentation devices, and facilities into a very modern and comfortable setting.

Sam was in Moscow in his renovated hotel in 1995 when the military coup was attempted. President Gorbachev was under house arrest and

confined to his quarters at a vacation resort in the South. Boris Yeltsin was in the main legislative building which was surrounded by tanks. All television, radio, and switchboards were turned off, blocked out, or in the control of the army. The generals announced that they were in charge and that the government was under military command. The coup was

accomplished.

Sam, the hotel man, put on a trench coat, stepped out into the rain, walked two blocks to the ring of tanks, walked between the tanks, and into the parliament building. He walked right up to Boris Yeltsin. He said, "I thought you might find this useful," and handed him a cellular telephone, which operated by satellite through a dish mounted atop his hotel two blocks away. Boris Yeltsin took the phone, thanked him, and stayed on the telephone all that night. The next day the coup failed. No one knows how many or which people Boris Yeltsin talked to that night; just that he was on the phone for six hours straight and the coup collapsed the next day.

Sam spoke and listened a project into being, intending to have an impact on the Cold War, and he did. He helped create a new and different world for all of us. He was at the right place at the right time and with the right listening for the opportunity to make a difference in a direction he had chosen consciously in advance. He used the skills he developed before he became a conscious

creator to aid in bringing about a future he envisioned and he brought it about.

Creating: Using the Medium of Project Design and Communication I have been formulating my life into projects, consciously designed, for fifteen years now. For fifteen years I have designed my life a year at a time, and revised it every six months, using the reactive equipment for service commonly known as Brad Blanton. Absolutely everything I do in my life now was once only a figment of my imagination, which became a project design. There is not a waking minute I spend on whatever work or play I do that is not intimately related

to a conscious act of creation of my own. My daughter who is fourteen years old now was written up as a project before we got pregnant. So was my six year old son. So was our marriage. So was the house I built we now live in, the book, Radical Honesty, this book you are reading, the workshops, and the business called Radical Honesty Enterprises. It is not that all occurrences are anticipated, just that they show up in a context of opportunity that was created before they happened. When unexpected events occur in the world, they are in relation to projects of my design. Lots of unforeseen things occur as they do in anyone's life, but they occur within the contexts I have consciously created and it makes a big difference.

This kind of living never looks like you thought it would. As Werner Erhard once said, "You can have anything you want as long as it doesn't have to look like you thought it would." A life of conscious design is, however, a lot more in the direction you intended than the normal chances of life would take you. I will share with you the outline for my current writeup of my recent projected life in the following chapter on the Umbrella Project. This way you can see how I do it. You can do this for your life if you want to.

I hope this will inspire you to create your own life projects consciously as an artist and by design as an individual and that you will join me in teaching others by example. This is the secret to the good life. Your grandmother could have told you. It's so simple it's hardly worth mentioning. Maybe that's why she forgot to tell you.