The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place by John Abrams
View ImageI think it was in researching employee ownership or growth that I first came across and read about Marthas’s Vineyard based The South Mountain Company. From an article SMC owner John Abrams wrote in the Journal of Light Construction entitled Taking the Pain Out of Growth I must have googled his company to learn more. On their website I read THE SMC STORY and felt there was lot in SMC I could model the company I would want to build after.
I don’t recall now how I stumbled across it but last week I found out that John Abrams had written a book on his company called The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place and I ordered it right away. During my coffee break earlier this morning I started the book and read the Forward and the first chapter entitled Cornerstones. While I’m going to make every effrot to read this book as fast as I can I think it’s going to take me a while. For me at least I think there is going to be a lot in the book to highlight, notate, and think about.
Right there at the start of the book was a passage that spoke to me:
“Along the way, as we have become a part of this place, we have come to sense that we are not only at the beginning, that our endeavors— and our company—may have, or can aspire to have, some of the enduring qualities of qualities of the buildings we fashion.”I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have built some very artistic and beautiful projects that I know will be there a hundred years from now but what has eluded me till know is being able to build “a company” that with that same kind of enduring quality.
A few passages later John Abrams goes on to write:
” ….We not only build houses, we build connections and bonds between people, between people and land, and between commerce and place. We are organized around the idea of maintaining and perpetuating an ongoing business community. We think we are crafting a company to keep.
I think that may be the key. It’s about building connections and bonds between people, land, their homes, and commerce.
John Abrams describing how he learned about and discovered the cornerstones of his business ideology:
” The stone mason sorts through a pile of material to find just the right stones for the base, the corners, the fillers, the stretcher that lock the wall together, and the capstones to finish it off. he discovers the wall as he builds it, as I found the cornerstones of our business”
About Growth:
” At South Mountain we favor certain kinds of growth, but not expansion for it’s own sake, which author Edward Abbey described as ‘the ideology or the cancer cell’…
….When we grow it is intention rather than in response to demand. We think about “enough” rather than “more” — enough profits to retain and share, enough compensation for all, enough health and well-being, enough time to give our work the attention it deserves, enough communication, enough to manage, enough to headaches”
All this from just the first chapter.
Ya know how every once in a while you crack open a book and in reading the first chapter you get real excited and start to think wow this is going to be great. Well I think this is one of them. I know there some people here who will really hate this book (maybe that’s why I like it so much) but I also can think of many more people here who I know who will really indentify and appreciate it.
There will be more on what I’m thinking and learning as I read on. Anyone else want to join in?
Edited 11/11/2005 1:05 pm ET by JerraldHayes
Replies
If I think I know what you are talking about, this relates to community developement...something I have been studying and hope to create as I develope a community on a 100 acres I own.
Check out http://www.newurbannews.com
Uhm, it was reviewed in FHB two issues ago. <G>
Very good book, very interesting author.
Andy Engel
Senior editor, Fine Woodworking magazine
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value. --Robert M. Pirsig
None of this matters in geological time.
You're kidding me. Ya mean I missed the review? How'd that happen. Now your gonna make me clean up the mess in my office looking for that issue. Geez.....
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Yeah, I'm afraid you did. John Abrams is an occasional contributor to FHB, and an all around nice guy.Andy Engel
Senior editor, Fine Woodworking magazine
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value. --Robert M. Pirsig
None of this matters in geological time.
AndyEngel - "John Abrams is an occasional contributor to FHB"
Yeah, I do know that and always enjoy and read all his stuff (at least I thought I did). He and Paul Eldrenkamp are two writers I consciously look for in the issues of JLC and FHB that I read.
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Finished the book a few months ago, excellent read.
I gave Paul Eldrenkamp's Last(?) article from JLC to my xboss to read along with his checklist, but he basically blew it off...
I particularly like Paul E's mantra: "We won't start a job until we're ready to finish it".
Imagine that, having all you ducks in a row at the beginning, instead of wading thru the pond trying to corral them towards the end!!
Mr. T. MOTOL
"They keep talking about drafting a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore."-- George Carlin
"I think natural selection must have greatly rewarded the ability to reassure oneself in a crisis with complete bull$hit."
I'm Swiss!
Jerrald,
Too bad I don't live closer to you...
I feel like you and I could have an excellent working relationship.
I read Jack Stack's "A Stake In the Outcome" because of your recc.
I gave it to my ex boss but the only thing he got out of it was some empty promises he could dangle in front of me.
Keep up the Good fight!!!
Thanx for all your sage wisdom!!
Mr. T. MOTOL
"They keep talking about drafting a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore."
-- George Carlin
"I think natural selection must have greatly rewarded the ability to reassure oneself in a crisis with complete bull$hit."
I'm Swiss!
MisterT - "I read Jack Stack's "A Stake In the Outcome" because of your recc.
I gave it to my ex boss but the only thing he got out of it was some empty promises he could dangle in front of me.
Keep up the Good fight!!!"
It is (unfortunatly) a fight. But it is very definitly the battle I want to be fighting.
"Thanx for all your sage wisdom!! "
I don't know about that. If I had all that wisdom I would have been John Abrams and written his book. I do however study and follow the examples and wisdom that other leaders out there have given me. That's perhaps why I really liked and indentified with Abrams description of the process:
A great use of metaphor.
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