I have a friend who early in his career was a cop. A good cop, and, in that time, an unorthodox cop. If he was a cop now he would be an expert on "community policing," but since he was ahead of this time he was just a different kind of cop. So, as he told his wife, despite the fact that he liked being a cop, he was going to have to quit. He was tired of being different. They had a long conversation about that one night and went to bed decided that he would begin looking for a job in corporate America.

That night he dreamt he was a caterpillar. A brown, woolly, chubby caterpillar. A caterpillar amongst caterpillars climbing and chewing on a huge elm tree. At first, he was pretty much alone on whatever leaf he chose to chomp, but as he ran out of lower level forage and moved up the tree there was less supply for the steady demand, and other caterpillars shared his leaves, and then began to push him off leaves, and then began to climb over him seeking fresh food, until he was scrambling for air, struggling for the top of the tree, fighting to stay aboard, drowning, drowning in a mass of brown, chubby, woolly, struggling caterpillars.

He woke in the morning and told his wife that he still planned to leave the force, but he really did not think corporate life was for him.

When I entered corporate life in 1969, I think one fair analogy might well have been that we were all brown, chubby caterpillars chewing comfortably on the huge elm tree called Honeywell. We did O.K. work. Some of us better than others. Some of us worse. Off and on we would hold a marginal employee program to weed out the worst of us, but it usually did not succeed because we did not need to kick anyone out of the tree. There was enough room for everyone. We went home at quitting time. Heck, we personnel types went home ten minutes ahead of quitting time so that we could beat the rush out of the parking lot.

Now I see most corporate employees struggling in systems where there is not enough for all, many panic stricken at their potential fate, and creating panic as they try to hold together their careers and their paychecks. Even air is hard to come by. Some of the younger take this blithely, confident in their talents, secure in their strength. They have not found out yet that talent and industriousness have little to do with what comes next. If you happen to be on the edge when the teeming mass becomes wider than the tree, you are the one who will be pushed over. In many corporations today, panic is perfectly reasonable.

But something else is happening.

I have often wondered what it is that makes a caterpillar decide to become a butterfly. Does he decide he is bored with being a caterpillar and will move on? I doubt that. Is it not that the conditions are in place, it is the time of year, the type of forage has changed, the sun is hotter? I mean I don't know what it is, but don't tell me that five thousand caterpillars make individual decisions to become butterflies all on the same or similar dates.

"Yes, I decided to become a Monarch butterfly on the twentieth of June. Distraught over the conditions I faced I spent three days in consultation with my career advisor and decided to take the unlikely step of becoming a butterfly."

"The heck you say! Well what a coincidence! I too on the twentieth of June after visiting an Ashram for three days of meditation decided to become a butterfly."

Even back in the old days we used to say that there was nothing like a heart attack on the floor to get the boys reexamining the relationship between career and life. A lot more golf got played the next month.

I see many people who are becoming butterflies. My friend, the ex-cop, for one, a butterfly par excellence . He did try corporate life and liked it as little as he thought he might. Now he does some consulting, publishes a narrow niche informational newsletter and composes music on the side. The digital keyboard is across the office from his desktop publishing computer. He makes a living. Smiles frequently. And at odd times organs and trumpets can be heard pulsing from his second floor.

Not everyone drops out as radically. Some, like myself, live on the edge of the corporation, consulting for some of the time, and doing other things with the rest of the time. Shorts and "T" shirt today, blue suit tomorrow. And some do not leave at all, but shift their attitude. No longer interested in climbing the tree they do their jobs quite well, perhaps even better than the crawlers and climbers, but their jobs are only something that they do. Their jobs are not what they are.

As one division manager of a substantially profitable organization responded when I inquired about the source of his extraordinary power within the corporation, "I could be just as happy owning a hardware store. My indifference to being here makes me invincible."

But a butterfly is not just a caterpillar with wings. I am not at all sure I myself deserve the title of "butterfly." I lurched out of the tree because I had to, and I have not quite attained the metamorphosis I see in some of my friends. They fly without anxiety. I have the aerodynamic qualities of a bumble bee and fly because I have to. Failing to fly would be a greater disaster. No, I do not quite make it as a full fledged butterfly.

A butterfly has a different soul. It seems to me that the present state of the corporation is such that many caterpillars are deciding, as we all think we "decide," to reexamine, indeed discover, their souls. (Is that what caterpillars do while in the cocoon? Find their souls?) When the soul is discovered, the wings have to follow.

Perhaps the next stage of the corporation moves beyond the nightmare of crawling caterpillars, to the dream of a cluster of butterflies. The management literature is producing a spate of books on chaos theory and how to organize to live in an unpredictable world.

Perhaps all of us must become darting butterflies to live happily in the next stage of corporate America. Perhaps these "decisions" that are beginning to happen are not simply signs that the last stage has become confining, but also signs that we are about to enter a new age, the season of the butterfly.

A lovely dream. The corporation as a palace of grace. I suspect that dream will inevitably be realized. The signs are fluttering in the air.

The author of this essay is John Cowan. He has written two books of similar essays: Small Decencies and The Common Table Each is approximately 160 pages in paperback. To purchase either book by mail send a check for $10 per book to him at 1498 Goodrich, St. Paul, MN 55105. Price will be negotiated for any order over 20 books. If you wish to discuss consulting or speaking engagements or attendance at a workshop he may be reached by e-mail. His address is Johnedie@aol.com

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