Musings at Altitude

When I was in the Air Force, the one thing you could certainly count on was change.  Assignments would range from 1 year for school assignments, to 2 years for command assignments, to 3 or 4 years for your more routine assignments, and up to 5 or 6 years for certain special assignment.  Within those longer assignments, you could typically count on changing jobs or changing primary responsibilities within a job at least once or twice during the assignment.  I was in heaven regarding my desperate desire to constantly be changing, and even though in some cases I didn’t have a big say in the responsibilities I had, I certainly knew that the time I had to live with that job was limited and that at some point I’d be saved by the assignment office sending me orders and shipping me off to some knew location (fortunately, one that I preferred or facilitated the path towards).

When I left the active Air Force in 1997, that desperate desire to focus hard, achieve as much as possible in a short period of time, and then move on continued with me, many times from my own chosing and then a time or two from mutually agreed upon chosing between me and a boss or partner.  Since 1997, I have rarely had any single role for more than 2 years – in fact, with the exception of my reserve duty in Los Angeles, I’ve had no single role for more than 2 years. 

After my first couple of job changes (post military), I remember my Dad asking me if it was time for me to settle down and be stable for a while.  I laughed and said, “it’s not me”, and I still feel that way today.  I embrace change.  I need change.  In some cases, I so desperately desire change that I set the wheels in motion and start a slippery slope towards change that can rarely be stopped once the path down that slope has started.  I keep thinking that one day I’ll realize I’m not a young man anymore and the desire for change will go away, but I’m in my late 40’s now and in some ways I have a greater desire for more rapid change now than I’ve ever had in my life.  I’m not sure why the desire for change seems to be accelerating, but I have some theories:

(1) Age.  Since I am getting older, I realize that the opportunities for me to take on the really daring jobs with the most extreme challenges may be fleeting.  My entire life I’ve jumped at jobs or at projects where people said “you must be nuts!”  I just grinned and charged on and in every one of those jobs or projects I learned valuable lessons about myself, some with great success and others with much less than success.  Even in the failures I learned so much, and in fact, I probably learned more from those challenges that did not deliver the results that were originally expected.  As time goes by, I fully realize that the opportunities will diminish and the will to rapidly change everything will slowly fade away – but it hasn’t yet - and the desire to take on extreme challenge and create dramatic results still exists today.

(2) Stagnation.  Stagnation is defined as “to stop developing, growing, progressing or advancing” (www.dictionary.com).  Each of us has a point of stagnation, let’s call it a stagnation quotient – that point in our involvement in a company where our unique talents, at a unique time, in a unique situation end up driving a predictable outcome, which could be predictably up, predictably flat, or predictably falling.  When the outcome becomes too predictable, then it’s time for change, whether the outcome is predictably up, flat, or down.   I’m not sure what that point of stagnation is, and it probably varies with every unique team, at a unique time, in a unique situation.  But it almost certainly does occur.  For me, it seems like the point of stagnation is every 2 years, sometimes earlier, but never later.

(3) Rejuvenation.  I get excited with new challenges, new teams, and new scenarios.  In fact, I get rejuvenated when I sense a new challenge on the horizon and I begin engaging in that challenge long before any actual transition has occurred.  One of my great flaws/weaknesses though is that I “drop and run” when I get the hint of that new job and begin to focus almost exclusively on that new adventure, turning over the last adventure to others that desire (or maybe not) to stay on that journey that I’d be leaving.  But rejuvenation is critical to me and my ability to stay focused on the mission at hand is almost entirely based on the excitement I feel and the extreme challenge that exists.

Regardless of reason, change is good…change is needed…change is expected…and change is merited.  I’ve often times wondered how much better we could have done in past jobs if we’d changed earlier, before the roll offs had occurred.  I’m convinced that human nature encourages us to be comfortable with success and to ride those that allowed us to achieve for far to long, thus almost assuring some periods of less success till we take action that we probably should have taken long before the action was needed. 

I like doing my part in facilitating change long before the change may have been required.  It’s in my blood.  It’s who I am.  It rejuvenates me.