Photo by MagdaMontemor

As I mentioned in previous posts, I’ve done a lot of power-washing the past couple of weekends. During one of my breaks from the seemingly endless toiling, I happened to let my eyes wander up into the maple trees in my backyard. Communing with nature is good for the soul, I think some hippie once said, so I figured I’d give it a try.

As I took in both the twisting branches and stunted growth, two thoughts came to mind; one, I better trim some of those dead branches before they become widow makers; and two, what determines which branches flourish and which ones wither? Is it just a random happening, or can the tree determine where to send its precious sap?

I thought about resource allocation. A stink has been made at my job because our Bid and Proposal (or B&P for you fellow defense industry weenies) funding has been slashed.  It seems the company is taking an all-the-eggs-in-one-basket approach to going after new business, the emphasis being put on new, fast-lane technology, at the expense of our historically bread-and-butter products.  After looking up at the trees, the same process seemed to be at work.

The tree branches that were in the shade seemed to be the ones that had their flow of sap cut off.  Much like the mature products at work, they had developed as much as they possibly could.  They would require far too many resources to grow anymore.  It was time to send the sap to a new, unexploited area, where growth would happen more efficiently.  There was more of an upside in this new path.  More bang for the buck, in other words.  That’s the strategy my company was following; chasing new opportunities, and letting the old, spent products run their course without further investment.

It was to my delight, then, that I found out last week that I’m being transferred to one of these new, high-profile product lines.  It’s a product that’s had its problems, but there’s a huge upside to this business.  Did I mention it’s a high-profile job, with lots of visibility?  We’ll see where this goes.  And I thought I was going to have a nice, quiet summer.

I consider it a chance to step out of the shade into the sunshine.

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