The Karens of the World

Karen and I met in 2005 on a consulting project in Olympia, Washington. She was fresh out of engineering school at Illinois. I was seven years out of my own engineering degree at Wisconsin. We were both far from home, which is the whole deal with management consulting. Fly a bunch of young professionals to some random city, house them together for months, and see what happens.

What happened was a lot of fun. Back then, projects had budgets for team bonding. Chili cookoffs. BBQ competitions. Karen, as a first-year analyst, was often asked to create these events, handed a company credit card, and set loose in Costco. She did not disappoint.

She was also excellent at her actual job… like really, really good. She also understood something I wouldn’t figure out for years: time freedom matters. Here’s an excerpt from an email she sent our team in July 2006, shortly after leaving the project:

“I left Chicago about a week and 1/2 ago to go traveling for a while. Right now I’m in Utila, Honduras and am planning to leave here in about a month or so to head over to Africa! We’re still not sure exactly how we’ll get there, but once we do, we’ll start off in South Africa and travel around from there probably until we run out of money :-P”

(It’s wild what you find in your Gmail archives.)

After that, we lost touch. For fifteen years. She consulted a bit longer, then became a high school math teacher in Portland. I bounced through Point B, UCSF Health, and eventually started my own consulting firm. Then out of the blue, Karen reached out on LinkedIn.

The stars aligned, and I hired her.

That was five years ago. She started in a supporting role that was frankly beneath her abilities. She knew it, and she did it anyway, because that’s the kind of person she is. Within a year she was managing my project. Then she recruited another consultant to join us. Then she led new projects to launch. Then she took over the most visible work we had. Now she manages most of my company’s revenue and has placed two more consultants.

All with grace, kindness, and humility. She’s a rockstar. (I tried hard to find the right word. Rockstar is it.)

Here’s the thing about building a team: you can go fast or you can go right. My consulting firm has four incredible consultants, hired over eight years. One person every two years. That’s not a failure to scale. That’s patience. It’s waiting for the Karens of the world to come back into your orbit.

Thank you, Karen. And thank you Erika, Lee, and Christina. I’m lucky to have all of you.

I wrote recently about having time to build great friendships later in life. Karen is more proof that it’s possible. Associate yourself with people you utterly respect, give those relationships time to grow, and see what happens.

Who knows what the next twenty years hold. But I know Karen will be part of it.