Time Runs Differently In The Quantum Realm. Maybe I’m Not That Old After All.

The other day, my teenage son was laughing because I was a fully grown adult at the turn of the 21st century. It felt crazy to him, like when I used to ask my parents where they were during the first moon landing.

That got me thinking about how long ago my career started and how many years of experience I have (plus the fact that my go-to joke used to be that “I started working when I was 2” until I realized that even that equals a lot of years).

So, maybe I should have started this email this way:

“Once upon a time in the 20th century, there was a young college student who graduated business school and started working at a big-4 accounting firm. Of course, in those days, there were 6 big accounting firms…”

Anyway, in my decades (centuries) of experience, I’ve held roles across audit, finance, risk, and compliance. The common thread has been that I’ve had to understand the organization as a whole and the interconnected pieces underneath.

I think of it like a photo mosaic. The smaller images do their own work, while creating a larger image together. It’s a delicate balance: if the colors in one are slightly off, then the colors of the next will also be slightly off, and so on.

If you’re not a trained visual artist (I can sort of draw a stick figure) you may see part of a photo mosaic that looks “off” but not necessarily understand what about it makes it feel off or how to fix it. At least, I know that I wouldn’t.

An organization is also a delicate balance. Each area does its own work while also supporting the larger structure. But, what often looks like a single miscolored tile can turn out to be a mosaic of its own. Then each of the pictures in that mosaic it a mosaic itself, made up of teeny tiny pictures, ad infinitum.

It can feel dizzying.

Identifying and correcting these issues in an organization takes as much expertise and skill as it takes the artist to identify and correct miscolored parts of a photo mosaic.

And, most importantly, there’s nothing wrong with knowing and feeling that something is off but not being able to pinpoint what about it feels off or how to fix it.

But luckily you know me and I’m immune to art-induced vertigo. In fact, I’m the equivalent of the trained visual artist when it comes to organizational chaos. I help organizations identify and fix what’s causing the larger picture to feel off (even if it’s because of one tiny tile that you can only find in the quantum realm).

If your organization is giving you art-induced vertigo, let’s chat. I’ll bring the motion sickness bands.