[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Then came a momentwhen it all made sense.After I talked to Alfred, I picked up a book of poems that a friendhad given me.I d had it for a while but hadn t gotten around toreading it.The very first poem is about leaving.I don t rememberthe exact words, but it says something like, You re leaving yourhouse, there s wind, there s darkness and you start hearing peo-ple s voices and they say, mend my life, don t go, don t go, mendmy life. And I thought, Wow! Slap me in the head.If I stayed,why would I be staying? I would stay for them, not for me.Iwould be staying because Alfred Mitchell said, You can t do thisto me. That s when I realized that this was like a bad marriage.That s when it became clear to me why I was leaving.I wasn t,and maybe never would be, participating in defining the structureand future of the organization.I was a tool, which is flattering,because I believe that I m maybe one of a half-dozen tools thatthe organization relies on to take care of the issues.But you getto a point when you say, I m not a pawn. I knew I had to gobecause I just wasn t happy.I was miserable and tired of com-plaining about it. 133-158 Ibarra CH7 3rd 9/24/02 11:31 AM Page 147making sense147By the time Harris came upon the poem, he had already ac-cepted his new job as president and COO of a medical devicestart-up.A new beginning does not necessarily mean we are fin-ished with the past, and Harris, having promised himself a six-month transition period, was having a terrible time disconnectingfrom Pharmaco and his mentor, Alfred.The poem he read helpedhim come to terms with that by simultaneously intensifying hisimage of what Pharmaco would be like if he stayed and givinghim a metaphor for why his leaving was inevitable.His turningpoint had come three years after he had started trying to find hisway to a new career.None of us can snap our fingers to create ei-ther unfreezing or jelling events.Is there any way to ensure thatwe won t miss them altogether?Preparation Favors Reinvention Fortune, said Louis Pasteur, favors the prepared mind. 12 Thestory behind his famous dictum illustrates the mechanics of in-sight in any domain, including career change.At age fifty-seven, Pasteur was studying chicken cholera.Be-cause of an oversight, he left some batches of bacillus culture, takenfrom some diseased chickens, unattended in his laboratory overthe summer.When he returned in the fall, he injected his chickenswith the bacilli out of a relentless spirit of experimentation.To hissurprise, the chickens did not die.He concluded that the bacilluscultures had spoiled over the summer and went out to get a new,more potent batch as well as some new chickens.Both old and newchickens were injected with the new culture.The new chickens alldied, while the old ones survived.When he realized that all the sur-vivors had been injected once before with the weaker strain, theaccount tells us that Pasteur remained silent for a minute, thenexclaimed as if he had seen a vision: Don t you see they have beenvaccinated. 13Although vaccination against smallpox had already existedfor seventy-five years, no one before had hit on the idea of extending 133-158 Ibarra CH7 3rd 9/24/02 11:31 AM Page 148oooworkingidentity148vaccination from smallpox to other infectious diseases.Pasteursaw the analogy: His surviving chickens were protected againstcholera by the spoiled bacilli just as humans were protected fromsmallpox by inoculation with cowpox cultures.He also saw a sec-ond analogy: The weakening of the cultures left unattended in thelab was akin to the weakening of the smallpox bacilli that hap-pened naturally inside a cow s body.The vaccine for the latter hadto be extracted physically from cows.Now Pasteur saw that vac-cines could be produced at will in the laboratory.Discovery literally means uncovering something that has al-ways been there but was hidden from sight by the blinkers ofhabit. 14 In the case of vaccination, the blinkers of habit stemmedfrom the convention that work on vaccination and research onmicroorganisms took place in separate, previously unconnected fieldsof scientific practice.Pasteur was ready to make a discovery whena favorable opportunity presented itself because he knew bothfields and had primed himself through years of study and hard work.It is also no accident that the vaccination idea came to Pasteurright after his summer break.Having stepped back from his directwork on cholera, he was able to see his old problem in a new light.This is the famous incubation phenomenon, in which, afterceasing to consciously work on a difficult problem, [artists and sci-entists] sometimes experience an apparent flash of illumination,during which a solution appears to them unexpectedly. 15 Profes-sional reinvention also requires a stepping back to obtain a newway of seeing what is.16 The full emotional and cognitive com-plexity of the change process can only be digested with momentsof detachment and time for reflective observation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl odbijak.htw.pl
.Then came a momentwhen it all made sense.After I talked to Alfred, I picked up a book of poems that a friendhad given me.I d had it for a while but hadn t gotten around toreading it.The very first poem is about leaving.I don t rememberthe exact words, but it says something like, You re leaving yourhouse, there s wind, there s darkness and you start hearing peo-ple s voices and they say, mend my life, don t go, don t go, mendmy life. And I thought, Wow! Slap me in the head.If I stayed,why would I be staying? I would stay for them, not for me.Iwould be staying because Alfred Mitchell said, You can t do thisto me. That s when I realized that this was like a bad marriage.That s when it became clear to me why I was leaving.I wasn t,and maybe never would be, participating in defining the structureand future of the organization.I was a tool, which is flattering,because I believe that I m maybe one of a half-dozen tools thatthe organization relies on to take care of the issues.But you getto a point when you say, I m not a pawn. I knew I had to gobecause I just wasn t happy.I was miserable and tired of com-plaining about it. 133-158 Ibarra CH7 3rd 9/24/02 11:31 AM Page 147making sense147By the time Harris came upon the poem, he had already ac-cepted his new job as president and COO of a medical devicestart-up.A new beginning does not necessarily mean we are fin-ished with the past, and Harris, having promised himself a six-month transition period, was having a terrible time disconnectingfrom Pharmaco and his mentor, Alfred.The poem he read helpedhim come to terms with that by simultaneously intensifying hisimage of what Pharmaco would be like if he stayed and givinghim a metaphor for why his leaving was inevitable.His turningpoint had come three years after he had started trying to find hisway to a new career.None of us can snap our fingers to create ei-ther unfreezing or jelling events.Is there any way to ensure thatwe won t miss them altogether?Preparation Favors Reinvention Fortune, said Louis Pasteur, favors the prepared mind. 12 Thestory behind his famous dictum illustrates the mechanics of in-sight in any domain, including career change.At age fifty-seven, Pasteur was studying chicken cholera.Be-cause of an oversight, he left some batches of bacillus culture, takenfrom some diseased chickens, unattended in his laboratory overthe summer.When he returned in the fall, he injected his chickenswith the bacilli out of a relentless spirit of experimentation.To hissurprise, the chickens did not die.He concluded that the bacilluscultures had spoiled over the summer and went out to get a new,more potent batch as well as some new chickens.Both old and newchickens were injected with the new culture.The new chickens alldied, while the old ones survived.When he realized that all the sur-vivors had been injected once before with the weaker strain, theaccount tells us that Pasteur remained silent for a minute, thenexclaimed as if he had seen a vision: Don t you see they have beenvaccinated. 13Although vaccination against smallpox had already existedfor seventy-five years, no one before had hit on the idea of extending 133-158 Ibarra CH7 3rd 9/24/02 11:31 AM Page 148oooworkingidentity148vaccination from smallpox to other infectious diseases.Pasteursaw the analogy: His surviving chickens were protected againstcholera by the spoiled bacilli just as humans were protected fromsmallpox by inoculation with cowpox cultures.He also saw a sec-ond analogy: The weakening of the cultures left unattended in thelab was akin to the weakening of the smallpox bacilli that hap-pened naturally inside a cow s body.The vaccine for the latter hadto be extracted physically from cows.Now Pasteur saw that vac-cines could be produced at will in the laboratory.Discovery literally means uncovering something that has al-ways been there but was hidden from sight by the blinkers ofhabit. 14 In the case of vaccination, the blinkers of habit stemmedfrom the convention that work on vaccination and research onmicroorganisms took place in separate, previously unconnected fieldsof scientific practice.Pasteur was ready to make a discovery whena favorable opportunity presented itself because he knew bothfields and had primed himself through years of study and hard work.It is also no accident that the vaccination idea came to Pasteurright after his summer break.Having stepped back from his directwork on cholera, he was able to see his old problem in a new light.This is the famous incubation phenomenon, in which, afterceasing to consciously work on a difficult problem, [artists and sci-entists] sometimes experience an apparent flash of illumination,during which a solution appears to them unexpectedly. 15 Profes-sional reinvention also requires a stepping back to obtain a newway of seeing what is.16 The full emotional and cognitive com-plexity of the change process can only be digested with momentsof detachment and time for reflective observation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]