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Part One of ThreeCASE STUDY
In my other life, as a hospital and psychiatric community program consultant and leader of an operational excellence consulting firm, I was certainly known as The One who could get done what no one else seemed to be able to get done and with velocity. I got it done and used my favorite phrase often....work it out. I am thankful that that there are several large systems of care that are thriving today because of my contribution.
Ponce, Puerto Rico, October 2009I really got my contribution to those processes but it began to occur to me as pressured and, I found out later, that my work left some people feeling bullied and put upon. I have never been committed to having people feel that way at all - so it caused me to take pause. The pause was really a question.
My organizational clients LOVED the work that I did because my operations team and I trimmed fat, contained cost and promoted revenue generation - but at what cost? I got my answer to that question during my work with a former key client in Detroit, Michigan. I worked with a group of executives and one was nick named CBOO (c-boo). Sounds cute but it was actually a function of business operations. I, in fact, helped the organization’s CEO come up with the title and job functions.
The job functions and the organizational needs should have been a match made in heaven but it turned out to be, in my direct experience, an absolute nightmare. The organization needed a compassionate, loving, focused and sensible operations person to lead it from Good to Great (Jim Collins) but what I saw was a hard, tyrannical, unreasonable, imbalanced expression of the job functions. It truly was CBOO like the kind of “Boo!” that children think of when they are startled and become afraid.
I remembered the intensity in which this leader took on an issue that minimally impacted the total operation of the organization. I knew that because I knew their operation, inside and out, because I had been with them for about ten years. I remember the look on the faces of the dedicated team members and staff that received the brunt of this tyrant’s imbalanced response. I remember my feeling. That was the exact moment I knew that I did not want to be any part of that organization nor that kind of “leadership.”
So I recounted that experience not to gossip or belittle the executive “leader” but to say that sometimes there are moments in your work life, whether you own the business and serve partner organizations or you are an employee working for an organization, when you just get - in a moment, like a discovery. You discover, I don’t want to be a part of this. This is not what I am committed to nor is it an expression of who I am.
Moments like those occur to me as moments of serendipity. The moments that you have an accidental discovery of something that you, literally, had no idea was in the air -
ser·en·dip·i·ty/ˌsɛserendipity
–noun
1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.
serendipity. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved July 27, 2010, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/serendipity
This is like and amazing wake up call and in that moment you discover freedom. Freedom to choose TO make a new choice in your life.
Now there’s also another description of serendipity that we all had the opportunity to see in the movie of the same title - the fun description. The kind that, if you were an observer, you would describe as an exciting anticipation that FINALLY, it’s going to happen. You’ve seen it coming, or you didn’t see it coming but you know it should be coming. Like watching two intended business partners passing each other at a convention or business meeting.
As an observer at the meeting and as someone who has been to the mountain top of success. You notice two people that would be well suited for future success if only they would get together. If they only would spend a moment in real conversation - they too would know. They would know that their dreams and wishes are so similar. They would know that, together, they could accomplish so many great things.
I’ve had that kind of experience as I’ve been invited to the table of leadership and as I have taken on the responsibility of leadership with others. It’s been a chance statement by someone - like Jen, one of the newest members of the Freedom Fighters, said at the close of our Self Expression and Leadership Program (SELP) -
I want it all and I am ready!
Jen Smith, Freedom Fighter 2010
I was lucky to be in the room and to feel how that statement resonated with everyone in the room, all of us. I discovered someone that would be a new partner for having it all. We had passed each other in the room and exchanged some great conversations but it was not until that moment that I got it!
I thank God for giving me the aptitude to make desirable discoveries by accident - or perhaps I should thank God for giving me the ability to recognize the miracles that are in front of me all of the time.
Today, right now, I thank God for all that I am and all that I have. Today, I thank God that I was able to snap the picture at the perfect moment to capture the beauty to share with everyone else - in that moment, now.
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