Whatever happened
to their shiny eyes?
It’s an interesting question because, if you’ve spent any time leading people, building a business or creating something that matters, you probably already know exactly what it means, even if you’ve never thought about it in those words before. As you read this, faces may already be coming to mind. People who once arrived every morning full of curiosity, energy and optimism. People who embraced challenges because they believed there was always another way. People who made a difference because it never occurred to them to ask for permission.
The thing is, they’re probably still there.
They still arrive every morning. They still care about doing good work. They still solve problems, support colleagues and carry the experience that helped build the business into what it is today. So perhaps the real question isn’t “What happened to the people?“ It’s, What happened to the environment that allowed those people to flourish?
Nothing changed overnight. There wasn’t a meeting where curiosity was banned or a memo announcing that questioning ideas was no longer welcome. Organisations don’t work like that. Neither do people. Change is usually more restrained. It arrives a little at a time until one day what once felt temporary simply becomes the way things are.
You’ve probably felt it yourself. The conversations still happen, although they rarely spark the same excitement. Meetings still fill the diary, and they create less energy than they consume. Good ideas still appear, yet too often they disappear beneath the weight of today’s priorities. Nobody intended this to happen. It is simply what happens when maintaining the business gradually becomes more important than imagining what it could become.
The curious thing is that most of us instinctively look for the answer somewhere else. We tell ourselves it’s because the market has changed, people have changed, or the world has changed. There’s truth in all of those things. The world has changed. Business has changed. Expectations have changed. Yet there are still organisations where people arrive full of possibility, conversations generate energy, ideas are explored before they’re dismissed, and people leave at the end of the day tired, yet fulfilled.
So what makes the difference?
It’s a question worth sitting with because the first answer is rarely the one that changes anything. The best questions don’t demand immediate answers. They change what we notice. Once that happens, it’s surprisingly difficult to see things in quite the same way again.
If that question has stayed with you a little longer than you expected, there’s a good chance it’s already doing what worthwhile questions have always done. Not by giving you an answer, but by inviting you to notice what may have been there all along.
