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Career Crossroads, When You Get Offered To Leave

You have a nice, steady role in a great company. You have been there forever it seems, rotating through different organizations, learning the way the company works, meeting new people, growing your institutional knowledge.  You have skilled up; learned the business, made great work friends and even more important, corporate partnership throughout.  You see many come and go, met plenty of consultants.  It feels great to be a company veteran in a solid company.

The House of Cards Starts to Tumble (Or Does It?)

Your company makes a few moves which seem inconsequential to you, or so you believe. They sell a building, they divest in a certain industry, there is a leadership change (or several).  This is what companies do, they move with the times, much like you have throughout your career there.

Then the unthinkable happens.  It starts with the organization (or company wide) listen-only conference call in the early morning.  Everyone you know is on the call listening attentively as your executive is laying out a plan to downsize, streamline and re-energize the organization. A deaf silence proceeds and the call is over.

Anxiously you reach out to your friends, colleagues, previous bosses to discuss the overall impact. You start to think, “Am I affected by these actions?”   You might start to wonder, maybe even second guess your career choices.  You do not stress things as you are working on a strategic company wide initiative.  You are in a business line that brings in revenue for the organization.  Your confidence swells, you see this as an opportunity.  The question is, what type of opportunity is it?

Opportunity Awaits (If You Can Identify It)

Soon enough, that company wide email goes out to the employees whom are both eligible and have been selected to take a voluntary package to separate.  If you land on this list, quite a few feelings rush through your body: anger, deceit, denial, disbelief, disloyalty, fear, joy.  You start to ask yourself, “should I take the deal or stay?”

Here is where you need to be true to yourself.  You have to take into account the relationship you have with the company, your history and reputation, your skills and how they play in this job market.  Now is the time you count the chips you have built for career:

  1. How many projects have I worked on which made significant organizational impact?
  2. Are you viewed as a subject matter expert in either technology, industry / business process?
  3. Have you established yourself as a collaborator, solution facilitator / provider.
  4. Are your skills transferable between teams, projects, organizations, industries?

Opportunities are very objective.  You have to be able to see far past the opportunity in of itself and strategize how you can maximize and convert an opportunity into your opportunity.  When looking internally, thinking about the long game is vitally important.  Conversely, this can be just the opportunity to leave (with a bag in hand) to trust your instincts, knowledge, experience and education and be the writer of your next chapter.

Jump At The Opportunity To Grow

Self growth is usually at the center of your professional career.  Money of course is important but you can only make more money as you skill up and provide additional value to the organization.  Although receiving the option for a package does not mean the company does not value you, it does give you an indication that the company is moving in a different / new direction.   As a person that is not afraid of change (I actually welcome it), confident in my abilities and always learning, I have always cherished transparency and having the choice to be part of change within the organization as well as the  ability to leave and pursue my own change (and getting paid for it).

Anytime a company goes through something like this, there is a paradigm shift.  This is a great way to set a new norm in the organization.  As this is happening within the organization, this is your time to think about what is your next growth spurt.  Are you aligned within your organization to continue your prosperity or is it time to cash out?  Now is a great time to think about what you desire out of your career.

There are no right answer whether to stay or to leave.  This is not a decision you can outsource.  This is a very personal decision, much as it is to get a new job, change careers or taking a package.  You can take it personal or you can take it objectively and strategize knowing the information you have on hand.  At the end, this is now your opportunity to make one of the bigger decisions in your career, maximize it.

The Casualization of Friendship

I’m old school. I believe that a man’s word is his bond. I firmly believe in chivalry and equality at all levels. It is pretty easy to be a good person. Lastly, the word and term of ‘friend’ has vastly changed in the last 20 years. The casualization of friendship is the new normal and that change is as drastic as the platforms and technology which has hyper-enabled this phenomenon.

Friendship, unfiltered

Casualization refers to transformation of a workforce/labor from permanent or fixed contracts to shorter term or casual work. Our social media platforms have enabled every user on these platforms to start, build and terminate these casual friendships with a click of the mouse. We now have platform-specific ‘friends’ which are there to serve a specific purpose whether it be sharing pictures (Instagram) or career advice/outlook (LinkedIn) to just overall people connecting and social networking (Facebook). It seems there is a ‘friendship’ landing zone for whatever suits you. In many respects, one would take this as a good thing (and it is, somewhat).

How Social Media Has Changed Friendship, Trust and Communication

Nowadays, friendships are formed, cultivated, expressed, grown and even terminated on these platforms. These platforms and the capability of easier communication means that we can now have friends all over the world. We now have friends we have never physically met. We now have friends which are matched via algorithm. We now have the ability to have group chats and video calls on our phones to put name, face and voice together. We have a plethora of applications now meant just to find new friends (and even different types of friends/relationships).

We inherently trust these platforms, both the people and the information put on them. This is why we ‘friend’ a person on Facebook when we see that they know one of our friends or you both mutually liked a few pictures. People use these platform to share their lives. Some will send a tweet several times an hour, others will Snapchat away, creating little video’s for the world to see. For some, a thought equals a tweet. This sharing (or some would call it over-sharing) is both a blessing and a curse and it has great affect on any friendship. With every friendship, you tend to share what is happening in your life and what you share tends to be quite personal. It takes time to post, time to review and read all of what people think about your post. It has caused an environment where now you may question who is actually your friend and who is not solely based on the interactions online.

An interconnected world, one screen at a time

These platforms have also changed how we behave with each other in real life. With communication being so fluid now and everyone connected, we want instant or near instant gratification. Our expectations have drastically changed and our patience level and need for feedback on everything has become insatiable. Remember, we would wait for days for a letter in the mail (well maybe not you but definitely your parents) and now some get upset at an unreturned text message or a picture which was not liked or someone did not follow you. All of this need for information and feedback from our ‘friends’ is making many people sick, stressed and really changing the way people are interacting with each other. Online friendships is affecting real life friendships in more ways than one.

What Happened to that Friendship Bond?

It has become easier to hide behind these screens and within these platforms. New terms have been created because of our online friendships. We now have ‘friends’, ‘followers’, ‘connections.’ We now can be ‘ghosted’, ‘breadcrumbed’, ‘zombied’ and so on. There is much more narcissistic behavior on these platforms by our friends. One trying to one up the other based on the number of likes for that sundae you are about to eat on South Beach. The subtle shade given to a person you do not like or the ever present ‘humble brag’ to keep up with The Jones. All of these things have drastically changed who we call a friend and how friendships work overall.

Friends come in all shapes and color and usually human

Most people would agree that they would NOT behave this way with their friends in real life. We would never actively ignore someone, if anything we would just tell them if things go awry. What ever happened to just ‘talking things out?’ Although I am sure that many online friends have actually connected in real life, I wonder how many of the 500+ friends on Facebook (I am off social media platforms) I have actually met and actually know me. These platforms in part have made friendship, well casual. Social media has allow us to have these casual, short term, limited and focused friendships. We have learned to behave and treat online ‘friends’ differently than those in real life. Many of us have unlearned how to interact with our real life friends. How many times have you see two friends stand next to each other and text? How many people have you seen looking at a concert through their phone WHILE at the concert? All done to share with our online friends.

That friendship bond we had with our friends is much different (and definitely difficult) now. I believe there is something lost with these online friendships. Context is mostly gone and misinterpretation happens on a daily basis. I have lost count of how many conversations have gone sideways due to having a conversation via these chat technologies made available by many companies. One cannot get context with words on a screen. Intensity nor compassion comes though yet we share our most intimate thoughts, our struggles and pain on these platforms for the world to see. What we used to seek from our real life friends (compassion, congratulations, a pick me up, a pep talk), we seek likes, follows and thumbs up on these platforms to help us get through the day.

Friendship, a human connection

This casualization of friendship really boils down to the lack of that human connection, that bond that we have (if we are lucky enough) with our real life friends. Those friends when you need advice or a shoulder to cry on, that seems to have been lost (at least in the context of online friendship).

Maybe I feel this way because I am old school. My kids clearly do not have an issue with having ‘friends’ they have never met nor do they have an issue not being ‘friends’ with someone after they have been removed (or if they removed) from their list of friends.

Friendship runs deep, trust is earned not given or assumed by default. I hold my friends accountable for what they say and how they act. Friendship is much deeper than a name on a list and a few things in common. Social media has done great things and has made the world smaller and connected all of us. Too bad we are all looking at our screens; the human element of friendship has suffered.

How My Autistic Son Taught Me About Life

Bryce is the youngest of my four sons. He is like many young boys; he plays with his toys, likes to watch movies, plays and fights with his older brothers. He is also autistic.

I dislike when people say that autistic people are disabled. Although I understand why people say that and by definition it is Autism Spectrum Disorder. I however take a different view with my son.

He is able to see and interact with the world (and the people in it) very differently, very simply.

Bryce sees the world differently than you and I. My life is better because he is in it

There is a beauty in that. I have learned so much by appreciating that fact. He doesn’t see how callus the world can be, how mean and unhappy people can be and are. His heart is still pure to that. He has not learned hatred, malintentions. He only knows to see the good in people even when those people do not reciprocate. He does not complain about how many friends he has, the popularity he has garnered. He can care less about social media. He likes to be around the people he knows care about him, teach and educate him, make him a better person. He makes being happy look easy in its simplicity.

My life like many working adults is not quite as simple. We do not have the luxury of being carefree due to the responsibilities we have on a daily basis. The stresses we have are constant while ever changing. When I see him sitting and shuffling his playing cards (which he uses to keep himself calm), I remind myself that we all need to decompress and appreciate the people around you. The ones that you help and help you. Sometimes, I lose sight of that.

He grounds me, helps me keep things in perspective. Helps me focus on what’s really important.

He teaches me to just live my life. Have a short and long memory for people. Keep life as simple as you can. Happiness starts and is maintained from within. Others only add (and subtract) color from your happiness. We allow this in order to have interactions with the very people who can literally suck the happiness from you. As people we allow this. Bryce on the other hand, doesn’t know that concept. He just wants everyone around him to be happy and will do what he can to facilitate that.

Having fun at the pier in Lugano, Switzerland

He shows me that there is not a lot needed to be happy. It being clear on what your actual needs are to be happy. He makes it look quite simple. He reminds me that being happy is both a decision you first have to make. Not everything is important and if you focus in on the most important things in your life, happiness usually follows.

He reminds me how subtly cruel and unaccomodating the world is around him.

He reminds me what compassion and empathy really is. What it really means to give without reciprocity. He has such a kind heart because he doesn’t understand hate, racism, bigotry nor none of the ills society has today. This blissful ignorance has a purity to it, a purity I hope does not change nor fade away as he becomes older. The reality is that I have and continue to teach him that not all people are nice.

People will take advantage of his kindness. When he does not get invited to school parties from his classmates, he does not get angry nor sad. He just thinks about what else can he do to entertain himself and be happy. He doesn’t know what popularity is, Facebook ‘likes’ and ‘friends.’ He is not concerned with those things unlike many others. Although I see the exclusion of him from many activities, he never focuses on what he cannot do or not participate in. He is always happy to participate in any way and is happy with any role. He is happy to ‘be’ and does not feel the need to ‘be what you want me to be.’ He’s no actor nor hypocrite. For me, this was a harder lesson.

We can find inspiration and knowledge from just about anywhere if we look close enough. It’s easy to think about all of the things I have done and provided for Bryce but the reality is, he has done so much more for me. He reminds me that all of the happiness you need can be found within. He’s living proof.