The increasingly complex environment of today’s business life, together with the economical growth of the last years, has set the grounds for an unprecedented demand of middle managers in advanced countries. These have to be either recruited outside the corporation, with uncertain results and risk, grown inside (but it takes time), or in many cases picked up from the staff as being hopefully the least bad choice.

This poor fellow finds himself in a tight spot and in most cases it will quickly evolve into a blockade to the bottom and a desperate run upwards before the mess becomes too obvious. Thus leaving a trail of demotivation, bad decisions, and desolation.

In any corporation level there are four possible states where people will find themselves. The person itself can be either ambitious (fire) or calm (water). The environment can be a blockade (earth) or supportive (air).

An ambitious person in a supportive environment will become a rocket and will make good use of her fire through the air. Yet in a blockade environment will burn like charcoal. A calm person in a blockade environment will find her way to survive and do as good a job as possible like a battleship entangled in marshes. Yet in a supportive environment she will roam the seas and be the launch basis for her colleagues, the rockets.