Ten years ago today marks an important day of change in my life. It was a day when change chose me. At the time, I was a vice president in the retail bank at Washington Mutual, Inc. (WAMU) in Seattle, Washington. We were in the midst of one of the worst global financial meltdowns in modern history. Every day the news got worse and the future of the bank was more tenuous. Local media trucks parked outside the office waiting for news to break in the hope they could capture the moment when we became the next Lehman Brothers.
On September 25th, 2008 I was attending the first day of a two-day strategic offsite with other executives. Our task was to try and focus on the future of the bank and how to attract higher net worth clients to help grow our deposits. It was not an easy task to do given at the time there was literally a run on the bank for funds as clients were panicking and withdrawing all of their money. In the afternoon all of our Blackberries (yes, you do remember those pre-Apple I-phone badges of power that are now virtually obsolete) began to buzz as word spread that the bank had been seized by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
Later that day we were informed that the OTS had turned the bank over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) who subsequently sold the bank to JP Morgan Chase. A Chase shareholder conference call revealed more details later that evening. Fresh off their recent emergency take-over of Bear Stearns, Jamie Dimon laid out exactly how the process of change would occur. Chase committed to informing every employee within a month whether we would be one of three things; let go, part of a transition team for some to be determined time or a retained employee.
The severity of the change and its impact was overwhelming. In the course of a day a publicly traded company was literally no more, people’s future employment was completely unknown and their retirement portfolios were wiped out if they were concentrated in WAMU stock. The largest bank failure in American history had occurred and I was right in the middle of it. My first thought was of my team and how to support them in the midst of the news. I was still relatively new to WAMU, but my team was made up of people who had been with the bank a long time. A huge part of their personal and professional identity was gone in that moment.
Change happened to and chose all of us that day and there was no choice for us but to go with it. The funny thing for me is that I had joined the bank hoping for more professional stability after years of working for smaller companies. I had a young family to support. My oldest child was three and half years old and our twins were just sixteen months old when the bank collapsed. At the time the day’s events, coupled with what was happening more broadly in the world felt like a catastrophic change.
As I reflect on that day today, I see it simply as a day of change that choose me in a rather dramatic fashion. In subsequent years I lost my grandmother (2009), my father (2011) and my father-in-law (2013). All of this change happened to me and helped to sharpen my focus on the urgency of life and accepting the harsh reality that nothing is permanent. The desire for consistency and predictability is a trap the mind likes to play to lull us to sleep I believe. Change is hard, scary and something to be avoided by most people if they are truly honest with themselves.
I know this because as more time passed I was again one of them. For years my wife and I had explored the possibility of taking off with our family to go to a foreign country to learn another language and expose our children to more than just what they knew and were comfortable with. I admittedly resisted such a dramatic departure into the unknown. “How would we make it work? The timing isn’t right. I’m not sure I want to do that” were all the ways I avoided and put off the possible change.
This change is not the type to choose you, unless you get a job transfer, but as two individual business owners that was not going to happen to us. I began to realize that the farther I got away from the experiences of change choosing me, the harder it was for me to choose to change for myself. Here I was coaching clients how to navigate and lead change while I was avoiding it. Luckily, I had the good fortune to meet someone last September who had recently returned from a year abroad with is family. He showed me it was possible to make this change that I feared. He supported and encouraged me as I explored it further and for that I am so grateful.
Before long the plan was hatched, the tickets were purchased, the visas were secured and now we are almost eight weeks into the adventure. Is the change I chose hard? You bet it is. Do I sometimes question whether it was smart? Absolutely! Will it be worth it in the end? Who knows?
What I do know is that today I’m grateful to be exploring change, that I chose, first hand again. What happened to me and my awesome colleagues ten years ago at WAMU was tragic. Yet today I can also celebrate what that change set in motion for me and my family.
On this anniversary day, I am committing to choosing to change whenever I can, however small or large it might be. I do this because I want to continually build my own resilience and better support my clients who are choosing to and leading change. My hope is this will also motivate others to consciously choose to change so that collectively we do not become complacent and only let change choose us. So, go ahead and choose to change. In my experience it’s more fun than having change choose you.
Finally, here is a little change inspiration to help you get started.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain