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Letting Go

A one-time manager who I have remained friends with, put a lot into his career. It meant that his family had to sacrifice the amount of time and attention they got from him for decades. S made great strides thanks to such collective effort applied on his behalf - and at a great cost to those he loves most. When we met, he was a rising star at the company - already high up at a relatively young age. Since then a lot has changed. 

The money went from being nice to have to essential due to major changes in his family circumstances, his health took a severe beating and he is no longer as invincible at work as he had once been. Multiple re-orgs have left him in a strange twilight zone - his fans, sponsors and boosters (which he had plenty of) have moved on to other companies. S has been left behind with his golden hand-cuffs trying to make the most of what remains of his once glorious career. 

Reading this article about proximity bias and ability to get promoted brought S to mind. He was one of those people who made all the right moves - if he needed to show up and be counted, he made sure that happened, if it served his cause better to be on the road making deals and not showing up in the office for months, he did that. S had an instinctive feel for these things - and he was duly rewarded for his skill and talents until he was not. There is only so much a person can do to keep up with the constantly evolving set of things they must do to further their career goals. Comes a point when they have to recalibrate and make peace with not being top of their game, not winning at everything they try their hand at. 

S was reputed to be one with the Midas touch. He was brought in to close large and complex deals and he executed flawlessly all the time. That kind of impeccable reputation does not come without a tremendous toll on the person. We exchanged new year greetings earlier this year and S is very far from who I knew him to be when we first met - boundless energy, optimism and drive to see things through no matter how impossibly difficult. He is trying to coast the best he can, fighting against the tide of his own nature of a man has never coasted or learned how to. 

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