Necessary Endings (27 page)

So, just like Moe Girkins, treat the endings with respect. Memorialize them, if appropriate. Whatever it takes to get the needed closure, do it.

These symbols can help to make an ending easier. When someone dies, we have a ceremony, a funeral, to say good-bye. We even at times al put a bit of dirt on the grave, or toss some of the ashes into the ocean. The act symbolizes so much to us: the love we shared with someone, the value that we had for them and they for us, the celebration of a life wel lived, and the psychic space to satisfy our very real need to feel our sorrow.

Symbols and symbolic events do a lot to help us get our mind around an ending.

The good-bye party, the good-bye lunch to launch someone into their next season, or on the negative side of the equation, even the burning of the divorce papers—al play a part in helping the two sides of the brain to embrace and process what has actual y happened. In significant endings, you must face your grief, and sometimes symbols help to do that.

Metabolize the Ending to Your Benefit

Joe was leaving a company that he had started five years before. Initial y, the business had gone very wel . It was bought out by a private equity group, which left him in place as the CEO. But slowly the relationship between him and the investors hit the skids, and after another year, the investors began to wind down his role and move him out. It was a lot of pain for both sides, but fortunately his position as founder was strong enough to help him get out in a good position, at least financial y. Because of that, he felt pretty successful.

With his sails somewhat ful of wind, he hit the streets looking for backers for his next deal. He was ready to go. But when we met, I had a different perspective.

“Joe, I don’t think you are ready for your next deal, at least not yet,” I said.

“Why not?” He pushed back. “I think you have to go when the momentum is there, and with this payout fol owing the purchase, I think the buzz is pretty good right now.”

“That is the problem,” I said. “You probably
could
get a deal. And you would make al the same mistakes you made in the last one, and I don’t want you to do that. We need to do an autopsy.”

“An autopsy?”

“Yep. That is where you dissect the body to see what kil ed it, and we need to do that with you,” I told him.

The conversation got real y interesting after that, as he had never real y thought that there was much to be harvested from past experience, especial y ones that didn’t go wel . He was a “shake it off and move on” kind of guy. So when I said that I wanted to look at al aspects of the last deal, especial y the parts that did not go wel , he was surprised. But in my view, that is exactly why he had some long-standing patterns that had never real y been overcome and seemed to stil get in the way of his enormous gifts in a lot of what he did. So we got to work on “metabolizing” his ending.

What does that look like? Think of what you do when you metabolize food: You take it in (ingest it), and your body breaks the food down and recognizes its components as fal ing into two big groups. The first group is what is usable to you, the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. It takes al of the good stuff and turns it into things that you can use: fuel and structure. It keeps you going, and it literal y becomes part of you. Want bones?

Eat calcium. You get the picture.

The second group, the parts of food that are not usable, is cal ed waste. And what do we do with waste? We eliminate it and get it out of the system. In fact, if you can’t eliminate waste, you get sicker as the days go on. So your body takes what it ingests, uses what is usable, takes that forward, and eliminates what it can’t use, leaving that behind.

In love and in work, experience is the “food” of life. Just as “You are what you eat,” you are what you experience as a person. You “ingest”

experience like food, taking it in, and it becomes part of you. To metabolize experience, whether in significant relationships or in business, you have to do what your body does with food:
keep what is usable to you
,
and eliminate what is not.

You have to look at the experience and break it apart. What was good about it? The relationships? The learnings? The new skil s you attained?

The modeling you saw? New knowledge? Your strengths? Take al of that and consciously make it a part of you, savor it, remember it, cement it, build on it, focus on it so it is not lost. It wil become new “cel s and bones,” parts of you that we refer to as wisdom, experience, or character. You wil take it with you and be stronger and wiser for it if you heed the learning that was in that experience.

And on the negative side, there are some items that you wil want to eliminate. You saw some things, did some things, had some things done to you, and perhaps you have some shrapnel from the battle that you need to dig out. Some splinters in your feet. Maybe you also shot some people yourself, and some amends are in order. Maybe you made other mistakes or saw some weaknesses you didn’t know you had. Whatever happened that was negative, take the wisdom out of it, learn from it, and then eliminate what is not useful to you. The pain, the bitterness, the feelings of failure, the loss and grief, and the resentment al need to be eliminated and left behind. But left behind
consciously
, as opposed to just denied and forgotten
.

How? Different people eliminate crummy feelings in different ways, but in general you need to talk them out, cry if you have to, feel your feelings, express them, forgive, and let it al go. Leave it behind after you have given it adequate attention. Decathect. If you do that, then you wil be ready for whatever is next, having learned and benefited from what you have gone through, positive or negative, and you wil show up in your next deal or relationship ful y ready,
even readier than you would have been had you not gone through it
. No matter what happened, you are the better for it.

But if you don’t metabolize the last one, you are probably, like Joe, going to repeat the mistakes and not benefit from what you could have learned. You wil have the same blind spots that lead you to trust the wrong person or be impulsive without due diligence or underestimate your strengths and real value again, thereby sel ing yourself short one more time and leaving money on the table. Whatever you did should be reflected upon and metabolized in the way we have described. Even in the deals that went wel —you should know why, so you can capitalize more and more on whatever made that happen.

Team Metabolizing

I recently led an executive team retreat in which the focus was metabolizing the last big venture that the company had done. We spent a lot of time breaking down the experience and finding what was useful and what needed to be eliminated. There were mistakes discovered that led to structural changes in the company so that they would not happen again. There were lessons learned from the partners that the team was able to capture and institutionalize into some of their own processes. There were some personnel decisions that they were forced to make.

One geographical shift also was seen as necessary to keep the mistakes from ever occurring again. They moved some operations. There were team dynamics and working patterns that, once examined, they al committed to changing. On the positive side of that, when they looked at the contributions that each had made, they found a strength in one of the team members that they did not know she had and figured out ways to capitalize on that in the future. They changed her total focus. And as we went through the entire process, a huge strategic shift emerged as a result of looking at al the pieces.
They left knowing more about their future from examining the last big deal than they would have if they had gone on a
planning retreat.
It was huge. But the lesson is that we should be doing this al the time as a matter of course, and pruning the bush.

Personal Endings

“Stop it!” I said to Jennifer. “Don’t even think about it!”

“Why? I think it wil be great for me,” she said.

“Not a chance,” I replied. “The
last
thing you need to do right now is to be dating. That is like an alcoholic getting a job as a bartender or event planner. It is the worst idea ever.”

What we were discussing was Jennifer’s immediate signing up with a dating service right after her divorce. In fact, I don’t even think the divorce was final yet, and she was already getting ready to get back out there, thinking, “I wil find a good one this time.”

Fat chance, I knew. She had several patterns in the ways she related to men that were going to ensure another bad choice and another failure.

She had done it twice, gravitating to the alpha male who made her feel secure, and later finding that the relationship held no space for her, her opinions, or her needs. It “always had to be his way,” she said. Surprise? Look up
alpha male
. But that was her “type,” as she put it.

There were other dynamics too, both in her selection process and in the ways that she related to a man once she was dating him, that did not bode wel . Bright and attractive and very much fun to be around, she had never had difficulties finding men. But the ones she would find, and what she would let them get away with or enable them to do—that was a different story, and exactly why I did not want her out there until she did some metabolizing.

So I talked her into enrol ing in a divorce recovery class for six months before she began dating again. In that process, she made some huge discoveries. One day, she said, “I am learning that I have some issues with men.”
Really? Wow! How about that?
I thought.

“Gosh, Jennifer, that’s great. I am glad that the class is helping you,” I said.

“It is the best thing I ever did. I am going to be so much better in the choices I make when I get out there dating again. But I am nowhere near being ready. I think I need to take some time for myself, make sure I have worked through Jason, and not go on some rebound and make the same mistake again,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I think that sounds like a plan,” I said, biting back more than a few “I told you so’s.” Either way, I am glad that she did the metabolizing that she needed to do. It served her wel , and about a year later, she found a good one as a result of the work she had done in relation to the last one. She took the lessons that were usable and eliminated from her life the pain that was not. So this time, she did not repeat it. Whew.

The Bottom Line

At any given moment, you are an amalgam of what has happened up until that moment. So if your last experience has been properly metabolized, you are ready. You have learned, made the changes necessary, added whatever you need, and are wiser and more prepared. Facing your grief, working it through, and letting it equip you is a significant part of a good necessary ending.

Two questions to consider as you reflect on your next necessary ending:

• What situation are you ending, or going to end, about which you should do some “metabolizing” work?

• What project, strategy, loss, or other initiative should you and your team spend some “metabolizing” time on?

Sustainability: Taking Inventory of What Is Depleting Your Resources

W
ebster defines
sustainable
as referring to “a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.” When I looked it up, I expected the definition to include something like the ability to “keep something going.” But Webster says it much better with a focus on the depletion or damaging of the resource itself.

The lesson: if you are doing something that is using you or your resources in a way that is depleting you or damaging you, you can’t keep it going.

The reason? You are not just getting tired; you or your resource is getting
depleted
. You or your resource is being cannibalized. In short: you wil run out. That adds so much to the discussion.

What does this look like in real life? It is what we see when people do not do the necessary endings that their hearts, minds, souls, bodies, and bank balances are tel ing them over and over that they need to do. As a result, something gets depleted:

• A CEO or boss drives his people toward a strategy that stretches them past their abilities to keep going, so they get depleted and lose heart.

• A business owner pushes herself day and night to get her startup going and begins to get sick more and more.

• A CEO or manager al ows a toxic employee to make the culture negative for others, to the point where the entire staff becomes demotivated as time goes on.

• A spouse tries over and over to be accepting and forgiving of an angry or disrespectful mate, and begins to lose heart for the person, the relationship, and for love itself.

• A business initiative has a great start, but costs are greater than planned, and the cash burn grows faster and hotter.

• A business keeps hoping for a profit, and takes on more and more debt, always thinking that the turnaround is coming, even as debt grows.

• In between jobs or with reduced income, an individual or a family continues to live at the same standard of living they had when income was flush.

• A person finds himself total y miscast, in a job, career, or position that has nothing to do with his talents, strengths, or passions.

Think of the results of al of those scenarios, and you wil see how profound sustainability real y is. In each one, as time goes on, something or someone is getting
depleted
or
damaged
. For that reason, sustainability is one of the most important reasons for a necessary ending. If you are doing anything that by definition cannot continue because the source itself is being depleted or damaged, an ending is not only necessary, it is vital and urgent.