Believing part 4 - Moving on...

Discussing the concept of believing over the past few weeks has been very motivational for me and hopefully for you as well. It is inspiring to think of achievements and success stories and it is exciting to imagine untold possibilities. However, I would be very remiss if I didn’t go back to finish my thought of two weeks ago. I was recounting the story of a presentation and an audience member who had fallen into the trap of negativity. I wrote that “clearly the audience member lost faith in the organization and its audience. He refused to believe that any effort was a good effort and instead thought that whatever the organization tried was a waste of time.” This story was to serve as the baseline for the flip side of believing – it is the ability to understand when it is no longer realistic to believe.

Tough stuff! When do you draw the line? As employees, how many of us have left for work in the morning thinking “I can’t stand my job” and wishing for a way out? Whether it is a supervisor that we perceive as being difficult, a job function that doesn’t inspire us or a company that has different values from our own, there are many different reasons why most of us, at one time or another, have “hated” our jobs. If you are in that “mental/emotional” place, it is nearly impossible to turn off that negativity so as to believe. This also applies to other areas in business besides being an employee. As leaders, have we ever done a task because we didn’t believe our employees could handle it? Do we assign tasks not because we believe it will add value to the organization but because it was assigned within the chain of command? As members of our various business communities, are there people within our communities that have lost faith and openly express their negativity? These situations are more prevalent than we either realize or that we want to admit. To do so would force us to face the stark reality of deciding to move on.

Moving on - it is a complex and powerful thought. When is the appropriate time to cut the ties? For the sake of clarity I am going to try to offer examples of moving on in the following three paragraphs:

In the situation of my presentation, it is pretty clear to me that it is time for that member to leave the organization. Not because he is a bad person – he’s not. Not because he disagrees with one issue –it is bigger than that. He needs to move on because he has gone as far as he can with the organization. He doesn’t believe. To thrive, organizations need people to believe as much as people need a place where they can believe and therefore thrive. It is a circle that has points along the arc. If a point is broken, the circle is not complete.

In my own career, I have been in the broken circles. I lost faith in an organization that I had a successful career in. I was staying because I believed I had to – I owed it to the company that had done so much to get me started. One of the hardest situations I have ever faced was acknowledging that there was no going back – the organization had changed in a way that conflicted with my own values. I couldn’t believe in it so therefore I couldn’t stay there anymore. In these situations it is very easy to second guess yourself. Maybe it will get better. We start to ask: What if I try to change my attitude? Should I just put up with it and not care? Where would I go? How do I begin again? Looking back, if I had stayed another year or 10 years, the end result would have been the same. I was sinking into misery and negativity. It was a fast and hard downward spiral. My only regret is that I didn’t leave a year earlier than I did. The signs were clearly there – I had to move on.

Finally from a leadership perspective we owe it to ourselves, our organizations and to our employees to carefully consider whether or not it is time move on. Moving on at this level might include cutting product lines, taking a different management strategy or simply letting a non-believing employee go. These might be among the hardest topics within the concept of “moving on” because our decisions to improve situations might actually seem like we are harming some people in the process. However, if it is done ethically and with honest intent hopefully it will lead to a better future for all who are involved.

This leads to my conclusion: part of the decision process of moving on is the determination to believe in a better future. Moving on is the commitment to take action that will bring more value to ourselves and our organizations so that we may be as successful as possible. As daunting as it may seem, it can and should be done. If being successful means believing, then we owe it to ourselves and the people around us to believe and to be prepared when it is time to move on.