So what do we call it?

I don’t remember too many staff members referring to our organizations as “family.” But I knew most of my people very well, and they knew each other even better. Face it. We spend more time with fellow employees than we do with our spouses and children. This became clear yet again in the new Star Trek movie.

A bunch of kids, ages seventeen to twenty-five, take the U.S.S. Enterprise out on a rescue mission. Youngsters are in charge of the most advanced piece of technology ever conceived on the planet: a starship. Along the way, Kirk jumps off a mile-high platform to save Sulu, Uhura and Spock carry on a love affair, Bones the Doctor is in his chronically dyspeptic state and complains bitterly to anyone who’ll listen, Chekhov the Helmsman saves lots of people-as does Scottie the Engineer- and various people punch and strangle Kirk. At one point Spock is driven to administer the Vulcan Death Grip on the aspiring Captain. They save the planet and at the end if they’re not a family, then what do we call them?

We at the Noetic Board know exactly what they are, and what they’ve become. It was the dream of Gene Roddenberry, who populated the ship’s Bridge with a Yankee, a Southerner, a Scot, a Vulcan, an African, an Asian and a Russian, blue guys, green guys, fish people and Klingons. The individuals go together to make a powerful One. It’s a more powerful One because of its diversity. Represented on the Bridge are a dozen different “takes” on the universe, unique perspectives shaped by genes, early environment and subsequent experience. Together, they’re unbeatable.

You call this Noetic. It’s not my team, my family, or my company that will rise above all others. It’s My Noetic. Naomi and I have a Noetic in our home. As a Noetic, we’ve seen James finish an Honors College and go on to law school, David press on to his last year in that Honors College in philosophy, Michael place third in the Nation in Science on two competitions, and Isabella show a precocity that suggests the same arc.

Noetic Is As Noetic Does

And what do we have in common? All six of us serve, and at the drop of a hat are ready to lead. There is no discontinuity, no hesitation. We don’t have to pull anything up from deep recesses in an unexplored psyche. It’s all there, made available by the way we interact. Even as a 9th grader, Mike could be seen quietly observing the work of fellow students and giving them positive feedback on their direction. He let them know he was with them, and that he was there for them. He did it effortlessly and without forethought. He shifted from immersion in rocks, fossils, ecology, and experimental design to social facilitation without a break in consciousness. That’s Noetic.

It’s no error our oldest son’s name is James. When I asked Naomi if it was all right, I had James Tiberius Kirk in mind, and James fulfilled his promise, as Editor of Stony Brook’s Statesman, IT man for dozens of the computers on campus, trumpet on the Philharmonic, and A student. And he’s just picking up steam. Why James T. Kirk? Because he brings the brainy Spock and emotional Bones together. He’s the center. He has in him a reflection of everyone on his Bridge. He’s not afraid of differences-he intrigued by them, attracted to them and more than occasionally infatuated with them.

What’s Noetic? I regularly get my clock cleaned by these children. That’s what Noetic is. They beat me in Latin, Calculus, they beat me in scholarship, they beat me in Science, they beat me in Psychology, they beat me in the Arts and Music, and they beat me in skill. I love it! Keep cleaning my clock! I invite you who consult to companies to come and get the juice. Show your clients that a company is not a family perhaps, but it’s a Noetic, ready to be realized. Show your companies how to do some clock-cleaning.