Member-only story
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. -Voltaire
When I was in High School I was lucky enough to work with all sorts of large animals at the zoo. My favorite was the elephants. I loved working with the elephants. One night, we had a meeting after hours, and the African elephant, Tembo, was swaying and you could tell she was angry. She had a chain around her leg, and she was behind the thick bars, I figured we were safe. My favorite keeper said-
“Yeah, she doesn’t think she can break that chain because she couldn’t as a kid. Those bars would be mashed potatoes if she figured out that chain is not really holding her.”
This night has always stuck with me, nothing was holding her back, but the belief that she couldn’t.
Fast forward 30 odd, well very odd years.
Before the pandemic I took a job as a Director in a multi-billion dollar company, running the geospatial line of business. The first year was like most first years, building an internal network, figuring out the clients, getting the lay of the land. But now I’m almost two years in, and I’m wondering where I can go next, what is the next step. There isn’t a VP of Geospatial where I am, and in the larger company, there are people who are far more established than me who would get that role. I looked around, and it felt…
