What are you looking for?

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after." - JRR Tolkien

I recently received an e-mail from a colleague who had just taken a transfer to a different part of the company. She did this to find a healthy work balance while still managing a significant part of the business and making an impact. This happens all the time yet she had recently e-mailed me and suggested that she just figured that the company HQ had written her off and that connections she had once made were no longer available to her.

This is the same professional that a couple years earlier I had shared a truth. Companies, although many have great missions and do a great good have no soul. A company will not check you at your limit, will not send you home early, will not celebrate an anniversary or birthday. A company, better yet a corporation is meant to do one thing. To sustain and grow and live past the lives fueling it now adding shareholder value and doing what it does forever.

She is a dedicated, talented and driven professional. She had been carrying a torch for a brand in the company for years waiting and working for the benefit of that brand yet becoming frustrated because it was an on gain off again brand for the business. Finally, after a masters degree, two children and a killer commute she decided to look for something different. She decided to look for balance and professional growth.

Here is the good news, she won. Not waiting for the company to some how grow a soul she went looking for something and found something new that she was never quite going after. Balance, professional impact and vital connections in the business that did not get cut off but actually grew stronger because of her journey.