Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Businessman:

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Most work is done in teams nowadays, particularly in larger
organizations. Multifunctional groups of people come together to
create a product, craft a proposal, resolve a problem, or respond to
whatever the business imperative of the moment happens to be.
They complete the job and then they move on to the next project on
the list, oftentimes meeting with different folks from different areas of
the company for each assignment. It might be months or years
before they wind up working together again, assuming they haven’t
moved to new organizations or positions as folks often do.
Nevertheless, while people may come and go, relationships can
transcend the transitory nature of the work. Frankly in most cases
they have to because relationships matter. A lot. It’s virtually
impossible to get anything meaningful done in a large corporation,
agency, or institution all by ourselves.
While it is important to differentiate between personal and business
relationships, and to keep things on a professional level that might
adversely affect our jobs, we are all going to have a lot of
relationships throughout our careers, interactions with people who
come and go. Some will be more meaningful than others, of course,
but thankfully the world today is very different than it was in
Musashi’s time when it comes to interacting with others. With social
media, emails, texts, and videoconferencing it’s actually pretty hard
to lose touch with those we care about if we don’t get so wrapped up
in events that we forget to reach out to them occasionally. For
instance, using Facebook for friends and LinkedIn for business
partners we can keep tabs on and reconnect with virtually anyone
anywhere at any time.
Nevertheless, certain things do not go as planned, some
relationships ultimately end, and much as we’d like to we won’t be
able to keep in close contact with everyone. This means a parting of
the ways. There is undoubtedly a certain amount of sadness that
comes with separation from someone we have grown close to, but
work relationships aren’t the same as personal ones. Losing touch
with a coworker, client, or customer should not have the same
emotional impact as a divorce or death in the family. Nevertheless, it

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often affects us in much the same way, albeit to a lesser degree.
Consequently we can expect feelings of sadness, confusion, anger,
frustration, or exhaustion. That’s perfectly normal, but these
emotions ought to be relatively low in intensity and short in duration.
For example my boss, one of our most inspirational and effective
leaders, recently quit... well retired technically even though she is far
younger than most who reach that point in their career. Her
announcement came as a surprise to everyone in the organization,
but it turns out that she had been in a financial position where
working was no longer a requirement for quite some time and the
daily grind had lost much of its appeal. When she announced that
she was leaving most of us went through denial, anger, grief,
bargaining, and depression, all the usual stages of grief, before
moving on to acceptance. For some it only took a day or two to run
the cycle, but for most it was a crushing blow, something that took
them several weeks to overcome. She truly was that good of a
leader. Nevertheless, despite the fact that she was gone and
wouldn’t be replaced for a couple of months the imperatives of
business continued uninterrupted. We had to focus on the work,
share the extra burden of her absence, and get things done.
Everyone will face a similar situation at some point in their career. If
we find ourselves feeling down, a great pick-me-up is to spend time
with folks who support and value us, people who can help us work
through our feelings and look toward the future. If we’re not making
progress quickly enough, however, we may need to work with a
professional counselor or religious authority that can help us resolve
our issues. Don’t wait overlong to reach out for help when it’s
needed, business can’t go into a holding pattern and neither should
we. And, many enterprises have employee assistance or insurance
programs that foot the bill, so there’s really no excuse not to reach
out when help is needed. Regardless of how well we are able cope
on our own, however, we should never forget that even when some
of the folks we care a lot about do fall out of our lives, we can still
create meaningful connections with new people. That’s the upside of
the transitory nature of work.

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People aren’t interchangeable, we all know that everyone is unique
and special in a multitude of ways, yet business rarely grinds to a
halt over the loss of any single individual no matter how likeable,
productive, or critical to the operations they may have been. Apple
got over the loss of Steve Jobs, memorialized him, and moved on.
Yahoo survived after firing Jerry Yang, Etsy moved past Rob Kalin,
JetBlue made due without David Neeleman, and Microsoft made it
past the retirements of Paul Allen and Bill Gates. You get the idea…
Organizations are comprised of teams of individuals, so when I say
that the business moved on in reality it was the people who moved
on. They mourned, or in some instances celebrated no doubt, and
then they got over it. We can and should too.
It’s unlikely that most folks today will face separation with the
stoicism of Musashi or his disciples, but while we may be saddened
by separation we cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by it. That’s
unproductive and unprofessional.

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