In My Journey through Life, I will:Make a U-Turn when needed: Change directions to get back on a safe route.
An Icelandic proverb says, “A wise man changes his mind, a Fool never will.” During my formative years as a manager, I had a supervisor who criticized me for being wishy-washy, for too-easily changing my mind when I had made a decision. I never forgot that conversation, mostly because it made me decide who NOT to emulate in my Journey through Life. In her business persona, she was rigid and autocratic, and I vowed never to convey that message to the people I led. If someone had a better idea, a better approach, I accepted the change in direction for the sake of the team. I also vowed not to live or work in an environment that was rigid and autocratic.
George Bernard Shaw said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” I have learned an important life lesson about being a change agent: if I was going to create progress in my life or in my organization, I was going to have to evaluate and implement change.
I have had to make significant U-Turns when my life seemed to be out of balance. When I drive using a GPS and I miss a turn, one of the messages I hear is, “Make a legal U-turn when it is safe to do so.” That instruction contains two important components: the U-turn must be legal, and I need to execute the change safely. That is, I have to follow the rules (either society’s rules or the rules of my own inner compass), and I have to be sure not to knowingly hurt myself or anyone else when I make the change.
One of my U-turns took place in 1981. The winter of 1981 was brutally cold in the Baltimore-Washington area where I lived and worked. That winter, there were more than 20 days with at least an inch of snow, as well as ice storms. I came down with pneumonia in December and had to cancel my Christmas trip home. For almost all of the month of January 1982, the high temperature was in the twenties, with wind chill below zero. On January 13, 1982 Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, DC. President Ronald Reagan had taken office that year and, as a federal worker, we implemented yet another sweeping reorganization that accented the four presidential transitions that I had worked through (Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan). This one was marked with a reduction-in-force; as a senior-level human resources employee, I had to sign off on many of the RIF actions, usually the lower-paid workers. I also had to sign the hiring papers for the political appointees. My compass was going haywire; I could not reconcile laying someone off with one pen stroke, and satisfying a political commitment with the next. It was time to go home, I decided, and I left a lucrative career. Make a legal U-turn when it is safe to do so.
Changing directions to get back on a safe route carries with it the responsibility of choice. Several of my important U-turns required days, weeks, or sometimes months of research, contemplation, and prayer before I chose among the alternatives. I asked the nagging “What if…” questions. What if I fail? What if he/she/they don’t like me? What if it hurts? What if I run out of [insert thing here] before I finish? What if I can’t find another job?
What if I succeed? What if they love me? What if I’m happy again?
What if today is my last day?
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