Do Not Be Rooted To Place

Anyone who reads my ramblings knows that I have a son who recently had a beautiful baby boy. The grandson is now about sixteen months old and not too young for concerned parents to be thinking about where to raise a family and what sort of education is available to their offspring. Certainly, this has been the thinking of our son and daughter-in-law. Up until a couple of weeks ago our son lived in the upper reaches of Manhattan where he had worked for a company for seven years. Our son had worked hard for the company having opened its New York area office and having brought in a record number of clients surpassing all of the company’s other branches. The company decided to consolidate all of its branches into a central location near San Francisco. They offered our son a promotion with more responsibility but unfortunately the same pay. This is not as bad as it sounds since they did pay him well. Nonetheless, one normally advances in compensation as responsibility grows. But I digress.

The change in the company and the thoughts about his family’s future allowed him to make a decision about what would be best for them. Being young and childless for most of the time they lived in New York, they liked the big city and all of the excitement and energy that people find there. However, their life situation had changed and so did their enjoyment of the city and what it held for a young child. They decided that New York was not a good place to raise a child and that a move to another location was indeed advisable. They decided at the same time to leave the company he had been with for seven years for a number of reasons. He then went on a job hunt during the worse worldwide recession in a quarter of a century. In a moment I will share where they wound up going but first I need to refer to a lesson in my book, The Leadership Teachings of Geronimo, published by SterlingHouse Publishers entitled Do Not Be Rooted To Place. Here is some of what is in this Teaching #94.

The Apaches were rooted to geographic location. It was literally a part of their tradition, their customs, and their culture. A Chiricahua Apache custom, for example, was to place the remains of childbirth in a wrapped cloth and to hang it from a close-by fruit tree or scrub while chanting, “May the child live to grow up and see you bear fruit many times.” ….

Thus, the land was a very sacred place that Geronimo or other Apaches would never consider leaving. … Thus, they would go to great lengths to remain in their geographic location and would resist most efforts to move them to other locations.

Teaching

It is natural for virtually all people to feel an attachment to where they live. For most of us there is a need to feel comfortable with where we live and work, to develop friendships with neighbors, and to learn to take advantage of the nearby assets – to be rooted to a place. However, there are times when that attachment can become disadvantageous to us. There are times when opportunity requires us to relocate to another place. ….

In the case of my son, there are a couple of displacement issues at hand. First, he did realize that the time and opportunity were at hand for him and his family to leave the big city for another, more desirable place. A place where they could build a new home, new friends, new work and a new, better life. Unlike Geronimo and the Apaches he refused to become rooted in place to his disadvantage.

The second displacement issue was his company’s desire to centralize their location to California and to close their various branch offices. While this may have made sense to them and for the company’s bottom line, they failed to realize (or care) that forced disruption of loyal and effective managers/leaders would cause a backlash that cost them talent and money. This was compounded by the fact that displacement with increased responsibility was not adequately compensated by the company to make the “un-rooting” at least acceptable, if not desirable. No big deal to those in California who made the decision but a huge deal for those who lived and were rooted elsewhere.