A Synapse Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

You do not typically have the liberty to start with a blank slate, to flash it all away as the Men In Black do, to wait it out and hope for collective memory to fail.  There is no command-shift-delete that allows you to clear the cultural cache.  It endures, persists, and will outlive your brief footprint on its surface.

Learn from the past, the dying memories, the latent, the dormant, that which lurks but which in due time will once again rear its head.  Relive the good times, celebrate the tribal successes of those who came before, pay homage to the spirits that yet float about the halls, get out the old albums and reminisce.  Motivate with tales of olde, good and bad.

Tell each other why this time will differ from the last, and the time before that, or why the good times will continue to roll as they always have, or why the turn in the road ahead will demand a new and improved We.

Break the amber around the professional hearts and minds of those who will follow, who will lead, and who will give counsel, each according to their comfort.  Provide compelling reasons, examples, and demonstrations, of what goodness looks like.  Enlist both, those who’ve succeeded, and those who’ve failed, to tell their stories.  Make each accountable for each, person by person.

This New Yorker cartoon is paid for and used under Non-Exclusive license agreement with Conde Nast.

© Michael C. Simonelli, onthegocio.com, 2013