Bring that Change

After about a year at an old company I worked for, I started to notice patterns and processes that I was quite unhappy with. I did enjoy the people I worked with and the problem we were trying to solve but I didn't have high hopes for things to change. It was a struggling moment for me as I pondered about leaving and chasing a better engineering culture. I went back and forth about this until something clicked.

Growing up in Italy the future always looked bleak to me. Partially blinded by the fascination for Silicon Valley I had a hard time seeing a glimpse of hope in my home town. I was honestly a little lost but (skipping a bunch here about how I met my wonderful wife) one way or another life brought me to the US. Right off the bat things looked and felt more vibrant. When I joined an early startup I was blown away by the can-do attitude of a lof of folks, including founders and the C-Suite in general. As I got to know them personally I realized that they were regular people, just like me, with an idea and a willingness to do the hard work.

I was blinded by a culture of others getting ahead and took my sweet time to realize that the way I looked at things was wrong. Inspired by the people around me I was able to overcome the struggle and brought the change I was hoping to see. Looking back at that moment I feel silly, it was all so obvious and right in front of me I just never did anything about it. That was a career changing moment for me. I started to take charge of the changes I wanted to see and just did it! I was lucky enough to have the support of people around me and to this day that mentality shift made me a better manager and a better leader.

Thoughts

A simple mind-shift can make a big difference in life and in your career. Rather than "this is happening to me" I started to think "what is in my power to make a change". Sometimes the power I have is simply to talk to the people who can make a change and lead upwards. You don't need to be a manager to lead a change and you should hold your manager accountable if they have the power to make a difference and do nothing about it.

I realize this is just a passing thought, lots of thinkers have talked about this in much better and more convincing terms than I did. It's not always as simple as I make it out to be but I hope this inspires you to look around and think about what YOU can do. Drop the complains, state the problem and plan a path forward. Does it work 100% of the times, no, but changing the way you look at this is empowering and a leader habit.