Shapers. Jonas Altman
A WATERSHED MOMENT
Manny likes fish tacos. I mean, he really, really likes them. We plunk down in red folding chairs at opposite ends of a table at his favourite local taco stand, and Manny sets to work dressing a trio of mahi‐mahi tacos. A little onion. A sliver of avocado. A pinch of cilantro. A generous squeeze of fresh lime. With such meticulous, almost ritualistic care, it's a miracle he ever finishes prepping them. I'm already two bites into my second al pastor before, finally, Manny sports a wide‐ass grin and takes a bite.
Manny is a shaper, literally–this is what people who make surfboards by hand are called. His work is as precise as it is passionate, rooted in tradition and as innovative as hell, with every board a unique reflection of his personality. It's an unconventional career choice and, to Manny, it's more than a profession; it's his calling. Challenging. Meaningful. Infinitely fulfilling.
He's also a shaper in the way he shows up in his community, supports independent businesses, and leads environmental initiatives. The mindset of a shaper is about connecting your work with your self. As we'll come to understand, it requires self‐awareness, self‐belief, and continual growth.
I met Manny at the turn of the century while living in San Francisco. Years later, I heard he'd fallen off the face of the earth. So on a whim, I decided to pay him a visit to see if indeed he had. Turns out he was living in Leucadia, a seductive town north of San Diego. This curious human had created one hell of a colourful life for himself. His positive energy was contagious and I wanted what he was having.
Born Manuel Caro to Filipino parents, Manny and his family moved from Laos to southern California when he was two. As a kid, he'd spend his early mornings riding waves and the rest of the day playing the dutiful son, doing his chores and finishing his homework. But then Manny's dad up and left, and at just fourteen, the boy had to grow up fast. ‘I [learned] how to use a screwdriver and fix things because no one else was there to do it,' he explains, taking a swig of fizzy water.
He set his sights on becoming a marine biologist but soon found out how much he sucked at calculus. So he abandoned marine science and opted to study anthropology; humans would have to make do over sea‐life. With his mom and younger sister in tow, Manny's plan was to keep his head down, work hard, and follow a familiar script: study → college → job → success. However, life sometimes has other plans for us, and Manny's was no exception. None of it, he recounts between bites, went according to script.
As the dot‐com bubble burst and sent its devastating effects rippling throughout the country, Manny took a soul‐sapping retail job–anything to pay the bills–and shacked up in a shed in a rough part of Oakland, California. Things were pretty dismal, but Manny stuck to his (now slightly modified) plan: keep your head down, work hard, and find a way forward when you can. And in the meantime, he surfed.
Manny had gotten used to the looks he'd get from the other surfers. A vivacious Latin soul housed inside a geeky 5′5 Filipino body, Manny was a far cry from the typical beach‐blond dudes parked in the tiny beach lot in Pacifica, a town just south of San Francisco. His board stood out too. While the other guys rocked the popular three‐finned thrusters, Manny guarded a bizarre‐looking quad fish surfboard. As the name suggests, the quad fish has four fins and a tail that resembles a chirpy carp about to chow down on dinner. You could say the look was, well, whack, but it suited Manny just swimmingly. And besides, the heckling would usually stop as soon as he caught his first wave.
See, Manny's odd‐looking board had a big advantage in that it was super fast. And Manny was a crackerjack surfer. He gracefully carved his turns on the waves, turning the heads of every onlooker on the beach as he did. When it came time to pack it up and head back to the parking lot, Manny would invariably get stopped by a sea‐sprayed bro. ‘Hey, can I see that thing?' the onetime mocker now turned gawker would ask. Such interactions would prove formative in more ways than one.
‘It occurred to me at that moment that the rest of my life isn't going to be determined by other people's formulas,' Manny recalls of the experience. ‘I'm going to determine my own formula—because nothing else is really going to work.' Trusting his instincts, Manny became the steward to his gifts.
* * *
Alongside his boisterous laugh, that funny quad fish from the parking lot has become his signature design. Manny had tapped into the thing that he needed to be doing in this life. He didn't mind one bit that I was waiting (and salivating) while he calmly doctored up that taco. He had ceased conforming to what the world wanted him to be and began bopping to his own beat.
Shapers adhere to a craftsman‐like culture. If you're a shaper, you put your stamp on your work. You earn your stripes. You sync with a rhythm of life that lights you up. At times, work may be a frightening obstacle (and obsession), but shapers move through adversity with temperament and tenacity. A determination to continually improve and evolve. A willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes. To create on the fly. To work fluidly. To persevere and be patient in equal measure. To unwaveringly nourish the soul.
A shaper is someone who becomes energised by work. The way they work provides for the highest expression of self. They lead deeper and more fulfilling lives because what they do everyday serves them and the greater good.
If it sounds like I'm talking about more than handcrafting surfboards, I am. Now, more than ever, the professional working world needs a bit of the shaper shimmer.
I should know, after years of trying to run a business with the wrong partner, in the wrong industry and in the wrong way–I burned out. So I up and left and went back to school to study design and to figure out where I went wrong. Or perhaps why I went wrong. It turned out that my workaholism was a container for my fear of failure. Instead of working smart and with purpose, I just kept my head down and toiled away harder.
I discovered that my approach to work was crushing my spirit so I swapped it for one that helped me come alive. I began to see that my vitality would only come when I gave into my curiosity and creativity. I realised that I needed to rest and reassess so that I could show up for others as my best self. Over time I was able to earn a living by doing what fuels me–learning, teaching, and helping.
I know too that I'm no exception–because every day I work with people who use the strategies in this book to transform how they work and discover meaning. I've witnessed these approaches succeed time and again. Producing over posturing. Empowering over embittering. Asking over telling. Giving over taking. Leaning in rather than opting out.
It's no secret that we're facing an unprecedented crisis in work: Gallup polls regularly report that the majority of the working world is not engaged in what they do. The contributors to this crisis are a smorgasbord of realities, including the growing financial divide, a widening skills gap, unemployment, precarious work, diversity issues, and algorithms and automation that keep gobbling up jobs. Along with climate change, the crisis of work is one of the biggest challenges we face. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked. The good news is that there are people and companies already making work a whole lot better.
And so we find ourselves at a watershed moment. Now is an extraordinary time in which we can indulge the human spirit and our impulse to do the work that matters. Instead of clinging to age‐old attitudes, we have a ripe opportunity to reimagine work and our place in it. We have an unprecedented chance to renew ourselves in the work we do.
Margaret Mead was a shaper. So too was Alvin Toffler. Yvon Chouinard is a shaper as is Marie Forleo. And a tide of burgeoning shapers are rushing in. They're eager to find meaning in their work and reinvent our organisations. What's crucial now are the decisions we make going forward and whether we can let go of the structures, systems, and practices of a bygone era and come together to do the work our world needs.
The future of work is about the meaning you discover. It's about the shape that we collectively give it. That's what we're here to explore in this book. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, we'll apply anecdotes from CEOs, organisational designers, social psychologists, workplace strategists, marketing gurus, design ninjas, startup entrepreneurs, restless raconteurs,