Glean

A small piece of farmland sits at the east end of my street, a stone’s throw away if you have a decent arm.  Having grown up in the shadow of corn fields, this sliver of familiar Americana within my reach somehow contributed to the karma, or maybe, it was feng shui, that told my internal compass years ago this was the place to set down roots for my young family. 

The 2009 harvest was so noticeably late I would often comment to my boys about this anomaly. I remember vividly dragging them to the field, camera in tow, long after fall plowing should have occurred, thinking I had lucked out with a holiday card design concept I may never have imagined had the corn not been there to inspire me. While the card never came to fruition due to my extremely uncooperative subjects, I do have an illustrative study of awkward, indignant and exasperated boys against a back-drop of seriously yellowing husks.

We’d drive by, day after day, well after the winter solstice, to find the stalks still standing, shriveled, brown and dry.  My farming friends explained that the year’s soggy autumn had caused two problems:  Fields too wet for the equipment and a slower drying time once harvested, which meant the dryers couldn’t keep up with the demand.  If the corn wasn’t dried within a certain window of time after being pulled out of the field, the entire harvest could be lost, which meant the yield had no choice but to remain stoic in the fields slowly dwindling and decaying, discomfited and defeated.

This week at my company the annual officer level promotions were announced. This is always a time of inner turmoil for me. While I am pleased to see so many of my deserving colleagues make the list, each year my name is absent, I get a little wistful and take stock in myself. Yes, it is true I was on the list last year and it is virtually impossible anymore in my organization to rise so quickly you’d be promoted in consecutive years.  But my desire to move up will not be ignored, as ferocious and palpable as my growling stomach when I’ve yet again pushed eating down to the bottom of my priority list.  The ink is barely dry on the announcement before I am consulting the qualifications for a step up and looking for ways to amass the experience I need to achieve the next rank.

I realize; however, that it is more than aspiration and talent, it takes significant and measureable results to be considered.  Anything less than a bumper crop leaves you in the dust.  And mine was a year perfectly healthy, proud crops were left standing, through no fault of their own, helpless in tacit humiliation, in jeopardy of rotting in the field.

None of us are immune to the occasional disappointing yield. It’s what we take from it that makes the difference.

It’s tough not to feel a little sorry for yourself. We all want to be successful, to be on the winning team, to have our work matter.  We worry about how outsiders will view the situation.  Will they assume the outcome was a result of a poor performance on our part?  How will this affect our chances for future opportunities?  And what does this do to my personal bottom line?

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do some serious soul searching.  What I learned about myself is that more than anything, my personal disappointment was around the fact that the circumstances I was in didn’t allow for me to use the full breadth of talents I have to offer, to employ any of the skills I love to use, those which differentiate me and really make me shine. While I tried, my attempts were futile.  Like the corn crop teeming with harvest to bear, I was stranded in the field holding on to that which has no purpose unless it’s shared with others.

Armed with that knowledge, I’ve challenged myself to look at my skills from the 50,000 foot level and think about how to apply them in areas I’ve never considered in the past.  Just because I don’t have a team of direct reports right now doesn’t mean I can’t lead a team of colleagues in other pursuits.  I’m still the one who brings my unique blend of critical thinking, intense organization, and drive to completion that spells success.  While my harvest was paltry, I’m sowing seeds at a faster rate and in more fields than I ever thought possible. 

Some years we grow up; the reach of our new branches so extensive that the world can’t help but notice, like when my son wakes up in the morning and I would swear he grew overnight. There is an avalanche of recognition that comes with such obvious progress:  Awards, accolades, promotions and bonuses.

Other years our growth is not so visible, our root structure is spreading deep beneath the surface.  While it all happens under cover, this is truly the watershed.  All those seeds we planted, they’re germinating.  Some will take and others won’t. And we’ll be surprised when the ones we thought for sure would make it die out, while others we didn’t think had a prayer will take us on a path we’d only dreamed we could follow. 

Pulling into my neighborhood in the early evening darkness in January 2010, I noticed the light of a tractor in the field and corn kernels littering the street.  A smile of relief crossed my face, as I knew immediately what was happening, the corn was finally being plucked from our prying eyes, mercifully put out of its misery at last. I wondered how much the farmer had lost.  A few days later, my boys presented me with handfuls of this symbolic souvenir rescued from the road, a tender and salient gesture of atonement for the photo shoot debacle that did not go unnoticed. 

The vestiges of this extraordinary harvest sit on the potting bench in my porch now, a treasured reminder of so much:  A lifetime of residing on the periphery of an increasingly scarce and confined form of art. Evidence that tangible rewards do come, although not always in the prescribed window of time, or as plentifully as assumed.  That even in a bad year, when so much that’s out of our control takes us off course, there is something salvageable if we look hard. 

And most importantly, even when we’re certain what we have to offer is not being accepted, acknowledged or absorbed, we should never stop putting it out there. It often comes back to us in rewards delivered by unexpected bearers paying rapt attention all along.