Yesterday I wrote about tearing down systems we don’t like in favor of building systems we’re proud to be a part of. That lesson hit home in a big way while I was on vacation.
Change is Unavoidable
I spend my weekdays at a company that needs transformative change. It’s a lot to ask – the company has been around for over a century and is in the financial services space. There are a lot of very well-intentioned people there who are extremely intelligent and talented. The trouble is that those people either A) don’t want to rock the boat or B) have a hard time cutting through the bureaucracy of a siloed, hierarchical organization. The even larger trouble is that movers and shakers are not rewarded at this company; at best, they’re given titles that have words like “special projects” in them and at worst, they’re made so frustrated by the system that they leave for greener, or at least flatter, pastures.
Day Job Status
I think I’m in group B and I might be in the frustrated camp, too. (Yes, yogis get frustrated, too, and I think it’s a healthy emotion that should be aired in order to get through it. Some at my company disagree.) As I was out walking Phin yesterday, I started to think about all of the companies that I interact with regularly and greatly admire – Google, Apple, Netflix, Disney / Pixar, Amazon, media outlets that were founded as network television and newspapers. I realized all of them had a glaring commonality: their new lines of business were in great opposition to their existing lines of business. Courageous individuals within these companies saw the future of their industries, wanted to play a key role in that future, and so they championed new ideas, even if those ideas seemed contradictory to the ideas these companies were founded upon.
Frustration Takes a Holiday
With that insight, my frustration with my day job melted. I realized that I just won’t be there that much longer unless some hefty cultural changes quickly make their way through the chain. As Brian always tells me, “Christa, you don’t get to decide when you’re done. One day you wake up and you have to make a change in that instant.”
Can You Change Fast Enough?
Change is a constant hum under all of our daily activities. There’s no escaping it, personally or professionally. The best we can do is be out ahead of it and be able to roll with it once it arrives. There are companies that do that; there are individuals who do that. It’s not easy work, but they are the ones who survive and thrive in the long-run. While I work for someone else as Compass Yoga gets off the ground, I’d like to be with a company that understands that our demise is imminent. It’s just a question of whether that demise happens to us, or with us.
Christa Avampato 