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Leadership Has Left The Building...

Recently, the entire top layer of the company that I work for resigned and started a new consulting company. 

As much as I've always wanted to have a Jerry Maguire moment, this is about as close as I've come to witnessing one in real life. 

People ask me questions like, "What is going on?" "What does that mean for you?" "What do you think about all of this?" 

My response, unfortunately is, "I don't know what to think." 

The only thing that I can do is observe and talk to people to see how they are reacting to the situation. 

Since the "coup d'état" as I'll call it (only fitting since my origin is Thai), I've observed three sets of reactions from employees and only one reaction from the company's leadership. 


  • Reaction #1, Employee Apathy - Huh? Those guys left. Does it affect me? No? Back to work.  
  • Reaction #2, Employee Self-Interest - The leadership team left! That means more opportunity for me. Time to start posturing and positioning and taking credit for everything to make myself look good. 
  • Reaction #3, Employee Self-Preservation - WTF? I left a chaotic unstable environment to come to a stable one. And this happens? Updating resume now. 

From the leadership perspective, I've seen only one reaction and that is to preserve the existing business by all means necessary. 

Like an analogy from Ben Horowitz's book, The Hard Things About Hard Things --  the company's leadership moved from peacetime to wartime -- and the war is against the infidels. 


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