Tear-water Blog

Owl Reflects on Past Mistakes

Owl dusted off his corporate blog.

“Tonight, I will shed a few tears in public,” he said.

He pulled out his laptop. “Now,” said Owl, “I will begin.”

Owl sat very still. He began to think of things that were sad.

“Houses you cannot afford,” said Owl. His eyes began to water.

You can’t write a book without ripping a few pages.

“Startups with cash flow problems,” said Owl, “because they grew too fast.”

Owl began to cry. A large tear rolled down and dropped onto his keyboard.

“Employees that have been laid off and are never seen again,” said Owl. More tears dropped onto the keyboard.

“Lack of accountability,” said Owl, “because we chose to experiment with Holacracy and flew too close to the sun.”

“Corporate retreats to Europe,” said Owl, “which we can no longer attend.”

Owl was crying. Many large tears rolled down his face.

“The ship has been righted,” thought Owl, “and there are no further lessons to be learned here.”

“Vacation bonuses nobody received, because we had to shut down a bunch of perks,” sobbed Owl.

“Hiring plans we had to scrap,” he cried, “because they were built out of wishes and fairy dust. And runways, which are too short to use.”

Owl thought about many other sad things. He cried and cried.

Soon, his face was covered with tears.

“There,” said Owl, “That does it!” He hit ‘publish’.

Owl felt happy, as he re-read his own post.

“It’s tough to fire the employees you considered to be family,” he said, “but blameless post-mortems are always very healthy.”