-Thoreau

After being hammered by negativity, bad news and gnawing doubt about the times, the country and its leadership, we hunger to recapture bygone solidity that was. It may only come about through a total overhaul of resolve and mental weaponry. Once, when EDS founder Ross Perot and Roger Smith, erstwhile chairman of General Motors, were warring over their ill-fated alliance, Perot made a painfully prescient observation about GM which can easily be fast-forwarded to present day, describing almost anything from government gone wrong to the state of our business.

Perot quipped, "At GM, when there's a snake on the floor, the first reaction is to form a committee to commission researchers and consultants to study snakes. At EDS, if we see a snake on the floor, we kill it." The Texas homily hits home, describing vast failures in the country's values and moral temperament. Yet often at this point in the "cycle of belief" some people sense a breakthrough. Have you ever had the feeling you're embarking on the most important trip of your life? When this feeling hits us, all of a sudden we understand our purpose; the clarity of what we can achieve is overwhelming and we have the first indications (though not yet clearly mapped) of what must be done and how we'll do it. These breakthroughs are the opposite of a performance collapse and begin with subtle, nondescript nuances. You may reject this premise and file it away as misplaced optimism: something off faded pages from a Tony Robbins seminar. My strong sense rides on the notion that the current malaise and its vituperated rancor may actually expedite "the killing of snakes," opening the door for the beginning of a breakthrough yet unseen or unfelt. Possibly, the missing map has returned to our door. And what are the leading indicators of a breakthrough ready to happen?

• The frustration of experiencing great sacrifice (though that sacrifice is yet unrecognized).

• Deep loneliness overshadowed by a compelling desire to overcome adversity.

• A hunger to reclaim dignity for our industry and for ourselves upon rejecting failure.

• An unwavering resolve to put agenda aside, traded for core energy and collaboration.

• Reorganized leadership that acknowledges it may have been wrong, accepting the need to reassess, re-commit and reload.

When a breakthrough is just over the horizon there are signs to be read; a voice, a message that captures the work to be done. It could be anything from a sales triumph to the complete reordering of a company's outlook.

It could even be our own reappraisal of what's possible if we're willing to recognize the present and move forward. For it's a beautiful moment when darkness fades and slowly, one by one, an organization is poised there on the knife's edge of something bigger, something better. 

Sincerely,