It was December… the needle on my gas gauge had dropped below empty an hour back… at night… in a blinding wet snow… in a front-wheel-drive sports car, every station on the way closed. I did the math I am trained to do as an engineer… I should already be in the ditch.
I have called it a “God” moment ever since… Earlier that day I had driven to IBM headquarters in Armonk, to brief our Vice-Chairman on a project that was quietly coming apart. I left in such a hurry I did not grab a coat. Somewhere in that room it settled on me, calm and cold, that this was not going to end well. Not the meeting. The whole thing… IBM was going into the ditch…
Not long before, my kids had celebrated a promotion with homemade newspaper hats and a hand-colored CONGRATULATIONS banner. Advisory Engineer. Then an Outstanding Achievement Award. Then Senior Engineer… the title I had chased for 13 years. Real titles, real work, and I was proud of every one…
…Which is where Tony Bennett meets this story. In the 1970s, he was broke, dropped by his label, written off… in the ditch… He did not wait to be picked back up. He began again, and he made his signature song, “The Best Is Yet to Come,” a plan instead of a wish, setting his course for another 50 years… Unplugged, The Duets, Lady Gaga – all because…
But that drive showed me what to do: building my way out while I was still in, one foot in IBM and one foot in what was next. I left in March of 1992, before IBM did the thing it swore it never would… let about 60,000 people go. The titles I climbed for were never really mine to keep. The paper hats were…
As a busy leader, you cut renew/Sunday first. Exhausted from the climbing and winning… are you quietly in the ditch? Are you investing in yourself the way you invest in your business? Because the org chart can change overnight. The person you are becoming is the only thing you actually get to keep.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: name 1 thing you are building that is yours and not your employer’s… a skill, a relationship, a body of work that leaves with you if the cliff ever comes. Then put 30 minutes on this week’s calendar to feed it. This is the work I do now, walking alongside leaders. Schedule time with me here. Also send this to a peer you see in the same ditch. Same man – but know the way out of the ditch 😉
The titles went back to IBM. The car is a different VW 😉 The kids in the paper hats, and the man who kept driving through the storm, those stayed… and “The Best is Yet To Come”
