I'm sitting here, this morning, looking at the sun dawn across the front range of the Rocky Mountains. The air is crisp, and outside my window is a ponderosa forest, which will be fragrant in warming afternoon. I have been all consumed with houses, construction, handy people, dogs, furniture, moving and packing boxes since spring.
Priorities feel they are shifting. My desire to be at tech conferences is fizzling. Part of this is the string of backstabbers I've held leadership roles with the past couple years. Who can I trust? After almost 30 years in the business, it finally dawned on me that I suck at politics. That is my fatal work flaw. But why do people accept such toxic behavior? Just last week I was talking to someone about a situation where a company bought another company and as soon as it legally went through fired the CEO who lead the org up to that point. No notice. Out the same day. Elon Musk style. I mean, what is it that makes someone think this kind of ruthless inhuman behavior is acceptable. That's not the world I want to live in. I'm definitely happy to not have to deal with some of the people in my previous situations - but what disappoints me, is there was so much more I could have done to help those orgs. And the people who stayed - let's just say they are not (IMO) delivering.
Which is the rub. People, companies, don't want excellence. They don't want to be efficient, or think things through or make the best decision for them to get what they want. They want to make their own decision, others perspective be damned. Toxic individualism. It's a thing I've been watching for some time now. This is one concept Asia has the benefit over the US - a collective world view.
So what is next? What do I want to do next?
I want to work with nice people, who have some level of self-awareness, want to make a positive impact, can consider and are not threatened by other potentially conflicting viewpoints, who are not full of themselves, whose motivation includes curiosity, openness, hard work, transparency, emotional maturity. It probably doesn't exist, but maybe I can dream it into.
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