Your Contributions

A guy I worked for a long time ago recently posted "Thank you for your contributions" when L (one of his directs) left the company and announced his departure on LinkedIn. Those of us who knew L and his boss were hardly surprised. Our only question was what took him so long but the market these days is nothing short of brutal. Had it not been for that L would have exited the hot mess he was in a long time ago. There was really never a path for anyone who worked there to succeed or even harbor the illusion that they might succeed. Reading this story about the former CEO of X reminded me of L and the thank you for your contributions. It was nasty on our small, local scale as it was for this woman who was clearly tasked with mission impossible as CEO of X.

I remember meeting L soon after he took the role and him asking me variations of the same three questions. What the hell is going on there? Is everyone else okay with with? How can this possibly work? That was exactly me when I was in his shoes. For me it was vindication that something was truly and irreparably broken in that place and it was not me. But one has to exit the scene to have such epiphany and L had only recently entered it. I tried to break it down to him best I could but it did not add up for him. He left puzzled and dissatisfied. Now that he is out of there and has been thanked for his contributions, I hope he feels like his questions are answered.