Are we falling or flying …

Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion is often paraphrased as “For every force there is an equal, but opposite, force.”

Wow.  Newton’s third law of motion is also a paraphrase for life and death; and for good versus evil.

Somehow this past year has acquired a Wizard of Oz theme in an attempt to make light of the eternal battles of good versus evil.

About a year ago, my then team mate Karyn and I joked we needed the help of Glynda the Good Witch to overcome several Wicked Witches who were wreaking havoc over parts of the company (which for us at that time meant the Roaster).

Then, last summer and post-Roaster, there was sudden shift in leadership at my current company. 

My first week there, the VP of my org abruptly announced she was leaving the company at the end of that week.

The second week, several recruiters decided to follow her.

The third week, there was a new face in the office, who introduced himself as our new VP.  

During the following months, people continued to trickle out of the org, most by choice.  I and my immmediate teammates  became an island on the far side of the floor, ever wary of the junior staffing manager who was always on the prowl to expand his empire, whether or not it needed to be expanded.

And yet - we still had fun.  I was friends with several of my teammates before I joined the team - and became friends with the rest after I joined.  More than one of them nicknamed the junior staffing manager “the flying monkey;” and other current and former org members acquired monikers, also based on characters from the Wizard of Oz.

Throughout the months of turmoil and churn, the lines between good and evil seemed very clear. Sadly, my friends/teammates one by one left for new adventures, while I stayed on, working hard and hoping harder things would eventually improve.  And slowly, eventually, things did.  Good began to triumph over evil. The junior staffing manager “self selected” out of the company; as apparently did Splat!

Lately however, I’ve realized sometimes the lines between the two can become obscured.  Good and evil are not as separate or pure as I would like to believe, and often people - and their actions - are not as they first appear.  (”Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” said the Wizard of Oz…)

People can do good acts while being motivated by their own self interest; and others do horrible things under the banner of “being right.”  Symbolic imagery is everywhere: yin and yang; dark and light;  the Evil Empire and the Rebel Alliance.   

My fondest memories from the Roaster are of my friends and fellow warriors within the Alliance.  But now I know when it is the Alliance members who migrate out first, they hand an easy victory to those they despise.   And - as we already know, it’s been a hard year for the Roaster…

Newton’s first law of motion is a physical body will remain at rest, or continue to move at a constant, unless a force acts upon it - as exemplified by me lounging on my couch while I write this post.

Tonight begins my experiment based on Newton’s third law of motion: I’m going to counteract every bad force with an equal good force. And - I will meet each good force with an equal good force.

That way, maybe I will finally be able to move things in the right direction.

“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within us out into the world, miracles happen”  -  Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Even while in grade school, I was aware my thought process was different than those of my friends, for whom A + B + C + D almost always = E.

I, on the other hand, often reached a conclusion where A + B + C +  D + x + y = Z.

I wasn’t always aware of how I reached Z; and yet Z was still a solid, and sometimes even great, solution.  But for much of my life I have been aware my reasoning process is very different from many people I know.

My friend Susan was genetically preprogrammed to be an amazing technology program manager; and her thought processes are very logical and very very organized.  She was convinced there was a logical process behind how I think, although it often seemed to her I made several illogical jumps between the input and my final output. 

After several years of study to understand how I think, one day she said “You are a systems thinker,” and suggested I read Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline.”

After a pause, she said “That is supposed to be the Holy Grail” for problem solving. 

Wow.  Who knew?

Not only was my previously unfollowable method of reasoning finally identified, it is also considered good, too.

Although - one of my former teammates in a past life, a top kernel level developers/architect had told me that as well.  At that time, I thought “hmmm, that’s interesting,” but didn’t think much more about it.

Since Susan referenced a specific book, I ran out and bought it; then very slooooowly worked my way though it.  Finally this past Christmas I brought it with me while on vacation visiting my family in south Florida.  The often unpredictable December weather turned out gorgeous and I spent six happy days at the beach, barrelling my way through that book.

Wow.  You should read it, too.

The Cliff Notes version is The Laws of the Fifth Discipline:

• 1) Today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions.”
• 2) The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
• 3) Behavior will grow worse before it grows better.
• 4) The easy way out usually leads back in.
• 5) The cure can be worse than the disease.
• 6) Faster is slower.
• 7) Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
• 8) Small changes can produce big results…but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
• 9) You can have your cake and eat it too -but not all at once.
• 10) Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
• 11) There is no blame.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am .  - Albert Einstein

Maybe four weeks ago, a beloved member of what was our team gave our now former manager (now known as Splat) notice she was leaving the company to work for a manager who was willing to talk with her, among other reasons.

The next day, Splat called her and said “Since I have to replace you, what exactly do you do?”

(hmmm - if you’ve worked in staffing for 12 years, and don’t know what a recruiting coordinator does … I don’t think we need to bring up the fact she’s been your direct report since OCTOBER 1.)

More ironically - each of us on the team had wondered the same about him these past months.

“I’ve had a wonderful time, but this wasn’t it.”  - Groucho Marx

There are many reasons I really like the company I work for; but this week what I most appreciate is while things sometimes move more slowly than I would like, things here tend to move slightly faster than at other companies - or, a little closer to internet time.

For the past five months, I and my teammates suffered from a micromanaging, not very competent manager who rarely read his email or listened to our answers over the phone; and very successfully antagonized at least several of our stakeholders and internal customers, as well as myself and most of my teammates.

One morning this week, way before I got into the office that day, my manager was there - and then he was gone.  As in GONE.  He packed up his desk and then left without saying a word to anyone, and never emailed our team a goodby. 

Out of curiousity, on Friday I looked up his new and improved profile/resume on Linkedin, and discovered he’s actually a very talented  writer who is able to write about his work these past months in a way which may be technically accurate, but is also highly misleading:

“Manage, motivate and develop a team of up to 18 recruiters, recruiting coordinators and sourcing specialists…”

1) There was *one* “sourcing specialist” but he quit after a month.

2) He managed, motivated, and developed over half the team of 18 to walk out the door, never to return - so as not to report to him.

Douglas Adams wrote it best:

“It’s not the fall the kills you.  It’s the sudden stop at the end.”