Pick up the pieces of your shattered life

When I left you last, I’d just been offered a chance to take my ser­vices some­where else by my employer.    I’m work­ing through all the emotions…shock, denial, fear, anger, nego­ti­at­ing, and feel­ing sorry for myself and my family.

Bot­tom line is it was time for me to con­front my com­fort zone.   Let me explain.

In most orga­ni­za­tions, in today’s “world is flat” busi­ness cli­mate, there is a fair amount of change that takes place in your aver­age sales posi­tion, each year.

Think about it.

New prod­uct, prod­uct enhance­ment, acqui­si­tion of a direct com­peti­tor, acqui­si­tion of com­pa­nies that have com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts or ser­vices to your exist­ing port­fo­lio, reg­u­la­tion, com­pe­ti­tion, adjust­ment of com­pany sales/marketing strate­gies and tac­tics all play a part in how your job evolves year-over-year.   Not to men­tion the change in com­pen­sa­tion plan, which seems to hap­pen each year, thereby requir­ing sales­peo­ple to adjust so we can max­i­mize earnings.

So the aver­age sales posi­tion, changes by 15–20% each year.  Com­pounded over time, that’s a new job, every 4–5 years.

But change is not easy to accept.  Experts say that peo­ple hate change, more than they hate dis­as­ter, mean­ing many peo­ple will avoid change for so long, some­times lead­ing to dis­as­ter.   One of my cus­tomers, in a highly auto­mated, tech­nol­ogy inten­sive industry, has a favorite phrase “every­body wants progress, but nobody wants change”.

I like to think I embrace change, pretty well.   This phase of my career requires me to “rede­fine” myself.   After much soul search­ing, I think I’m in the “accep­tance” stage, as I look for my next career opportunity.

I’ve begun the career search process.   I haven’t inter­viewed for a job in over 10 years, so this is going to be interesting.

This past week I had a phone screen, and one face-to-face inter­view.   I’m pretty rusty.   But just like doing a demo the first sev­eral times on a new ver­sion of soft­ware, I’m con­fi­dent that with rep­e­ti­tion, I’ll get in down perfectly.

I like to think I embrace change.    We’re going to find out.

It’s time to pick up the pieces of my shat­tered life, and MOVE ON !

One Response to “ Pick up the pieces of your shattered life ”

1. Tuna says:

   October 28, 2009 at 4:52 pm

   We are war­riors on the front line of cap­i­tal­ism — - — fight on!