teresa

The last few weeks have been rather interesting. The day before leaving for our 1 year anniversary weekend I said out loud to my Vistage group what I had been working to internalize for awhile. And when I said it they looked at me like I was crazy. Why wasn’t I doing more to find answers, to take corrective action, to ensure the future of my job and even bigger the company? I have lots of reasons (maybe excuses) as to why and at this point those don’t matter.

I tried not to think much about it over the weekend although I did. And Elliott and I talked about what would happen if we lost our jobs. Or if one of us lost our job.  When we returned I eventually found out from my usual source that the straw holding the whole thing together was broken. At that point I understood that drastic measures would have to be taken, although at that time I still couldn’t understand how drastic.

It was not until the next week until we started to understand how drastic and even at that point the information we got was spotty and vague at best. I didn’t fight for a chance to stay and ‘they’ were not inspired to go out of their way to find a way for either of us to stay. I am still not sure why although I believe as many have told me already, it was just meant to be this way.

Elliott and I feel like we went out of our way to leave things as tidy as we could. We undid 2 years in about 3 days. We purged, recycled and organized. It may not have looked that organized although good luck finding someone else to work so hard to be let go without ever even really being told they were being let go. Unfortunately it was my source who provided the most honest, helpful and timely information, a list of “the survivors” via email on Tuesday (I think), Thursday would be the day. It turns out Wednesday should have been the day although hindsight is always better.  The news spread differently than ‘they’ had planned.

We unfortunately missed the farewell speech, which meant we were missing some closure. Although I think we also missed the tears. I think having information trickle in gave us the opportunity to absorb the idea. Not everyone else had that chance. One coworker who was also let go called crying to say goodbye. I joked later with one of “lucky” ones to stay to tell everyone else to please not call crying, she didn’t think it was funny. We have not yet hit a phase that has been sad enough to cry about the situation… at least about our situation. The saddest part is the number of people that were effected, and also the unraveling of years of work by the founders and others to build something they and we believed in, to have it come undone and so quickly.

I think the way to process with and deal with something like this is to look for the lessons learned. So far I have these. Involving families with business complicates everything. When times are good, it may not be an issue. Although when times are tough it may keep you from being flexible. Elliott and I hope not to work together when the next doors open, although there is chance we may not heed our own advice, who knows. For our family specifically I think we need a little more redundancy. Also I think the entanglement of the business owners and their personal finances significantly complicated the matter and I think made the company less nimble.  Also, don’t count on credit, in life or in business. Metrics are key, track leading indicators, have a strong grasp of the trends and respond accordingly. Have a nest egg to cover expenses when times are slow, so that you can stay in business comfortably and position yourself to be around for the upturn.  Those are the biggies for now.

So now I am working on my resume and my tan.  Working my network and looking for the answer to what I want to be when I grow up, or at least for the next chapter.  I don’t know if I ever would have left that company, although now given the chance to look for something new I chose to be grateful for the chance to relax, reevaluate, regroup.