I’ve heard a lot of descriptions from my colleagues about our fast-paced work. I’ve heard Girls Inc. described as:

• A nonprofit on steroids
• Flying the plane while we build it
• Controlled chaos 

Surprisingly, none of these things scared me coming into the agency. No one else seemed scared.  Massive growth, push to improve, and drive to achieve more are part of our culture. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs passed away that I realized what was going on. I’ve been working in a Girls Inc. Reality Distortion Field. 

There is a lot of debate over Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field. According to Wikipedia, the concept was said to distort an audience's sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and made them believe that the task at hand was possible. Good or bad, I interpret the term to describe a company or leader who can convince their employees to become passionately committed to projects despite how unachievable the goals may be, and driving workers to do what they never thought they could. 

Since we made the change from clubs to full service outreach, our staff has had laser focus. Everyone from our programming staff to our administrative team has pushed the limits on everything we do, and failure has never been an option. 

I’ve never seen a group of more committed (and maybe a little exhausted) women. We will happily live in our Girls Inc. Reality Distortion Field, because the girls in Indianapolis need us to. Besides, who wants to work someplace that achieves only what is expected? Not Girls Inc.