You can see something coming – a hard conversation, a client who isn’t working out, a business model that’s quietly breaking – and instead of naming it, you just wait. You hope it resolves itself. You find something else to look at.
It almost never resolves itself.
I want to tell you about a Tuesday in September 2013.
I’d been working as a graphic designer at Chesapeake Energy for almost two years. The layoffs had been coming every Tuesday since July. You’d walk in on a Monday and the air was already different. On Tuesday mornings people would cluster in doorways and wait.
By September, they’d cut 65 people in one department on a single phone call.
I knew it was coming for our team, but I didn’t know exactly when. But I knew. And I made a decision.
The night before, I set out a pink shirt. Pink slip (a private joke), just for me. I was going to name the day. Give it some dignity on my own terms.
In the morning I stopped and bought donuts for the entire marketing department. I’d never done that before. I set the box down in the kitchen and people were happy to see them.
Then I went to my office, packed my backpack with the things I’d want to take with me, walked it out to my car at 7:45a, and came back in.
And then I waited.
At 8:00a phones started ringing in offices. Five of us on the design team, standing in our doorways. When my phone rang, I gave everyone on the team a hug and said goodbye.
Walked upstairs. Sat through a prepared statement from the woman who had onboarded me. She was apologetic and just doing her best with the horrible job she’d been handed. Then a security guard walked me to my car.
By 9:30a that morning, the eight of us who’d been let go were sitting at a restaurant down the street. The bartender gave us the first round was on the house. Beer at 9:30a on a Tuesday was a first for me!
The pink shirt, the donuts, the backpack in the car…those weren’t dramatic gestures. They were just my way of saying: I see what’s happening, I’m not pretending I don’t, and I’m going to meet it standing up.
There’s a version of this in almost every agency I work with. Something the owner can see coming but hasn’t named yet. A team dynamic that isn’t working. A client relationship that’s turned soure. A pricing structure that’s slowly bleeding them dry.
Naming it doesn’t make it worse. It just means you meet it on your own terms instead of being met by it on its terms.
I walked out of that building at 9am, sad but not undone.
There’s a real difference between those two things.
👋 I’m Clint. I help your right-hand person step into confident decision-making, freeing up space for you to focus on your agency.👋 I’m Clint. I help your right-hand person step into confident decision-making, freeing up space for you to focus on your agency.
Work with me!