By Benjamin Bradley
Benjamin is a co-founder of Polycot Associates (now Resolana CoLaboratory), member-owner, and senior developer.
I kept coming back to the thought that if I needed to start a new business, who better to do it with than the people I’ve already been working with for years? We had all come together with desires to work in a more human-centric environment, free from the corporate tech-bro posturing of Silicon Valley. We know each others’ strengths and weaknesses, and we have established a level of trust with each other that has been hard-won through challenges and difficult conversations. We have been developing a very real social capital that is not easily replaced. Was there a way to move forward together?
The thought emerged: we need structure. Changing our business was not enough. We wanted to fundamentally rebuild the company’s fabric from the ground up, shedding the vestiges of the old. Knowing that people would default to thinking about how they wanted to change the existing business, we need a way to psychically/mentally/emotionally let go of the old business, and create space, so that something new could come into being. From that empty space of possibility, what would each of us want to create? If we each shared our visions of what we wanted, and found there was no overlap, that would be a clear indication that we were heading in different directions, and there was no future for the company.
We needed ritual structure. I thought about what my NLP coach would say if we wanted to shift the group’s mental state from uncertainty & frustration to something more inspired and productive. I remembered the Ritual Design Toolkit that another friend had helped develop and proposed a ridiculous idea: let’s have a funeral for the company. It’s not working anymore. We need to let it go. Let’s do the thing that people do, and bury it.
No, we didn’t literally bury our company in the dirt. But we did hold a funeral.
The five of us each read our eulogies for the company that was. We ordered food and had a virtual wake. We shared stories, jokes, and mentally said goodbye.
And then we took time to grieve. Each of us processed it differently, as we do. Some, more overtly than others. But this business, which had been a source of income, challenge, victory, and camaraderie, would never be the same. And we took the time to let that settle in….
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