It makes me sad, "yes, and" types of collaborating/improv comments read like AI now but I'll keep trying regardless. I don't think this sort of environment can thrive unless it is approached as you describe.

When folks have asked me why I’m moving from consulting to seeking a job, I’ve sometimes said “I want to be part of a bridge crew.” It’s my Trekkie way of saying I want to be part of a team with a common purpose.

So what’s my job in that team? You know it has to be “Spock.”

Every version of Star Trek has a mostly human crew plus a few key aliens. In the original series, this mostly was due to the limits of special effects, but also the limits of what viewers could handle. Leonard Nimoy’s genius was that with little guidance, he manifested an alien culture that was relentlessly logical yet also relatable. He wasn’t just making one of the most iconic TV roles of all time, but a new way of expressing the themes of a TV show by centering an alien persona.

Character development requires conflict, but Trek had to do it differently. Due to the famous “Roddenberry rules,” typical sources of interpersonal drama were not allowed. This was good because it turned the focus of the show to the pursuit of the unknown. The crew modeled how we might face it with science, diplomacy, optimism, and unity. The future it portrayed transcended the kind of differences we spend so much of our time negotiating: national, class, race, religion, gender. No more “othering,” just exploring.

But no disagreement makes for a boring show. One source for it was aliens like Spock, who pursued the crew’s common goals but with something other than normal motivations. Vulcans prize logic and science more than camaraderie or adventure. Yet Shatner and Nimoy played Kirk and Spock as authentic friends. Getting there required Spock to show the audience his motivations without outward emotions. Nimoy did it through Spock’s interest in the experiences of others. What he created implicitly, later writers made explicit: the half-human Spock chose Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy because of his deep desire to understand both sides of himself. This was what drew Kirk to say: “of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most human.”

I’m not a Chief Science Officer. I’m a strategist steeped in the humanities. I’m obsessed with the ways people come together to pursue a goal. I’ve seen how that happens in small companies and giant corporations, in hospitals and universities, in capital cities and in rural Africa. The secret: it’s all just human beings following human motivations. But I'm a bit of an alien because I don't see the world instrumentally. Others see the data, I see what it *means* to people. That focus has often helped me find a way forward when more narrow approaches have failed.

If I join your crew, you won’t need to ask me to do this work. It will just start happening. You won’t need to explain to me the problem with that board member or the impasse between the researchers and the marketers. I’ve already started working on the problem because that’s who I am. I started working on it the moment I said: “Fascinating.”