At The Commons · San Francisco
With Brian Oney. Same table, same mornings. No agenda, no group, and nothing to sign up for.
Tuesday · Wednesday · Thursday
8:00 to 10:00 in the morning
The Commons — 540 Laguna Street, San Francisco, in Hayes Valley at the Lower Haight edge. Look for the same table.
An event costs you a decision every single time it happens. Do I want to go, do I know anyone, is it worth the morning. A standing time costs one decision, once.
So there is no invitation to accept and no headcount to be part of. I am at that table those mornings. Come once. Come every week. Come late, sit down, say nothing for ten minutes. All of that is fine and none of it needs arranging.
Bring someone if you are bringing someone.
What actually happens
I hand you mine. If my son calls, tell me. Ignore everything else. Who do you want me to watch for? Both phones stay face-up, each in the other person's keeping. Nobody has to agree to a rule, and if the world needs one of us, it still gets through.
One question for the whole week, on a card. The same one Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — which means by Thursday I can tell you what someone said on Tuesday, and two people who never met are somehow in the same conversation.
Whatever you are taking with you. You keep your card; a copy goes in the box on the table. The box fills up. Some mornings we open it and read three lines from the week before.
Scheduled mentorship is heavy. It asks a younger person to declare a need and asks me to declare authority, and both declarations make the thing awkward before it has started.
A standing table dissolves that. Sit down three Thursdays running and we have a relationship, and neither of us had to ask for one. If you want to talk about work, or the thing you are building, or the decision you have been carrying around — that is a Thursday. No application.
Thirty-plus years across public administration, training and business strategy, and I am still more curious than certain. Bring the real question.
If you would rather know which mornings I am there this week before you make the trip, write and I will tell you.
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