Is Your Ladder Leaning Against the Wrong Wall?
© Nick Page on Unsplash
It was the afternoon of Black Monday, October 1987. I had been working in London as a young analyst in investment banking for precisely two weeks. We were standing around the head of global underwriting on the trading floor; he was recommending we pull the first deal I ever worked on. It was a searing early lesson in financial contracts, and over the course of a 35-year career I became deeply familiar with the applications of the force majeure clause. When, due to market disruption, war, pandemic, or other global event, the price of a security can no longer be reliably established, financial contracts that are open, i.e. price agreed upon but securities not yet delivered, can be declared inoperative, null and void.
The market disruptions that followed the Crash of 1987 are the stuff of legend. One of my favorite early insights came from the venerable Financial Times, noting the number of financial fraud cases on the rise and illustrating it with a cartoon of the Thames River, nearly emptied of water, with all the shipwrecks, skeletons, and other debris uncovered for all to see. They quoted what had been required reading in my days at the London School of Economics: John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash 1929.
“In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances, the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.”
Not only do disrupted times and sinking markets bring the bezzle into clear view. If we are paying attention, they can also bring our professional alignment into clarity. After the initial shock of whatever the disruption du jour is, how do we respond? Do we feel energized, engaged, determined to continue our mission despite the disruption? Or do we feel demoralized, frustrated, scared even?
In addition to the Crash of 1987, over the course of my career I experienced the slow moving Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 that started with the collapse of the Thai Bhat and ended with the global mini-crash of October 1997; the 1998 Russian ruble devaluation that ended with the collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management and another of my deals pulled; the painful deflation of the Dot-Com bubble between 2000 and 2002; the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 which closed markets for nearly a week before they crashed over 7% on reopening and continued steeply down in 2002 as the crash revealed the bezzle including corporate scandals like Enron; the 2007-08 Financial Crisis; and the COVID pandemic.
Disruptions come in all shapes and sizes. The list above doesn’t include regional crashes that sent my mid-career ping-ponging from Latin America to New York and back again. Nor does it include more personal dramas—moving to Maine during COVID to care for my elderly mother and being away from my husband, children, and grandchildren for nearly two years, for example. Personal disruptions—critical issues with parents, partners, and children—can be just as terrifying as the global kind, perhaps even more so because, at the time, it can feel (falsely) as though we are alone in dealing with the complexity.
My response to all of this? I put my head down and kept working, terrified. At one point everyone on my team—over a dozen people—was fired in a downsizing except me. I pondered whether being so far down the alphabet pushed my name onto a second page that was somehow left on the printer? Did the universe have bigger plans for me? A few members of my 1987 analyst class and I who survived those years—when 10% of the staff was laid off every February—briefly pondered having t-shirts made that said, “I survived Merrill Lynch Europe 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 …” and then decided we’d be tempting fate. In reality, the first decade I was too tired to even realize that I didn’t like what I was doing, the next decade and a half I was too committed to supporting our family of six, and the last decade was spent scratching my head trying to figure out how I was still there, 25 and 30 years later, and wondering what else might be out there for me.
When I started the leadership coaching program at Georgetown, I was already teaching mindfulness at my firm. I was coaching internally on an informal basis and hoping my qualification might persuade our HR department that they should make me their Chief Mindfulness Officer. I never dreamed I would leave the bank before retirement and take the risk of starting my own business in my late fifties. But it is clear to me now that coaching is what I was always meant to be doing.
How Leaders Can Reflect on Their Own Alignment
If you’re a leader, it’s worth asking yourself: Are you in the right place, doing the right thing? Disruptive times offer a rare opportunity for self-examination. Consider the following questions:
Do you feel energized and motivated by the challenges you face, or are you dragging yourself through the workday?
Are you inspired by the mission of your organization, or do you find yourself questioning its purpose?
Does your work align with your core values and strengths, or do you feel disconnected from what truly matters to you?
If the industry or role you’re in were to vanish tomorrow, would you choose it again?
Sometimes, the work we take on out of necessity becomes an identity we cling to long after it serves us. The key is recognizing when it’s time to make a change before external disruptions force our hand.
Takeaways
Disruptive times expose misalignments. Use them to assess whether your career still serves you.
Consistent exhaustion or disengagement is a red flag. It may signal the need for a pivot.
Reflection is essential. Leadership isn’t just about guiding others—it’s about ensuring you’re on the right path yourself.
It’s never too late to realign. Adjust your ladder to climb toward something that truly fulfills you.
Of course, you also want to harness your neurobiology, to make sure it’s working for you rather than against you in times of challenge and change. See my most recent article on this topic. Want to talk about how to discern whether your ladder is leaning against the right wall? Reach out.
SUMMARY:
Sometimes, the work we take on out of necessity becomes an identity we cling to long after it serves us. Disruptions provide powerful insights into systems and people. You can use turbulent periods to lean in and to discern if you are working to your highest and best purpose and, if not, to take the leap and do your next right thing.