|
ONE day your company is up there with the stars, next
day you’re down in the pits. Another company gobbled you up. Your
income and profit are increasingly decreasing. A new product did not
take off. Your sales could barely cover your daily operating
expenses and, worst, your payroll. Something went awry with your
products and you have to recall them. Your building burned down. Oh,
as Mr. Murphy theorized, “anything could go wrong.”
On the personal level, you might
experience retirement, retrenchment, reassignment, resignation, even
promotion, anything that will take you away from your current work
or work station and tear you away from friends and current work
team.
On a more personal level, you
might lose a love one to another person or to death, lose your
treasured personal belongings, be parted with a love one to the lure
of challenges in a foreign land, and many other separation events.
What do you do? How do you cope
with calamity and loss? How do you let go? What and how do you take
the first step to the next level?
Author Terrence Deal writes,
“Celebration of victory and success comes fairly easy. But what
happens when things are on the wane? Such corporate calamities
don’t often receive our conscious attention or recognition.
Misfortunes are rarely officially acknowledged as part of our
everyday work world. Shriveling things are shunted to the side, left
to wither away without bothering anyone. Mistakes are covered up or
explained away. Yet everyone knows such glitches exist; there are
skeletons in every corporate closet. Our failure to acknowledge
demise and disaster in the same way we recognize new initiatives and
triumphs silently takes its toll.
“Even further outside our
conscious awareness is programs or practices that have died on the
vine. Every organization has its share of new starts that didn’t
pan out or old traditions that fell by the wayside having outlived
their usefulness, left behind in a parade of innovation and
technical progress. These often decay unburied in the corporate
graveyard, universally known but rarely acknowledged. Without any
collective ritual to help them grieve, let go, heal, and move on,
people often feel a deep sense of loss.
“Historically, human beings
have convened ritual and ceremony at life’s darkest, as well as
its brightest, moments. For individuals facing terminal illness,
hospice associations provide rituals of comfort and support. As we
lose loved ones or cherished possessions, society dictates
transition rites: wakes, funerals, mourning periods, and acts of
commemoration and remembrance.
“Yet disaster, demise and death
receive little official recognition in the workplace. Ritual and
ceremony are typically reserved for moments of victory or joyous
occasions. At such events, the human spirit soars to accentuate a
positive moment. But spirit is also a comforting and healing balm.
Especially in a world of rapid change, we need to pay as much
attention to loss as to gain, to demise as to growth, to disaster as
to triumph. Otherwise, people are deprived of the ceremonial support
of letting go, reaching closure, maintaining hope and moving on.”
I remember when I transferred
from the comptroller department to the PAL Development Center. I was
ready to simply leave quietly anyway it is still the same company
and I will be meeting these same colleagues a lot when they attend
my workshops. But I was pleasantly surprised by a lavish farewell
lunch tendered for me. Actually, it was their last chance to hear my
jokes and roll on the floor with laughter continuously for two
hours, nonstop. It was my pleasure to have such an appreciative
audience. To this day, I am out of Philippine Airlines, but I have
continued to nurture the tie that binds me to my friends who opted
to stay.
Letting go made easy with
effortless ritual and ceremony.
(Moje consults on business
excellence, corporate celebrations and talent management. Her e-mail
is moje@mydestiny.net)
|
