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.It s become to-tally P&L-oriented, which is neither a creative nor an innovativeway to be involved in a business.And with the disintermedia-tion that s happening in the business, all of the power was ac-cruing to people other than acquisitions editors people outsidethe publishing houses, like agents.Slowly, it began to dawn onme that being an agent might be the absolute best option.Icould have more reach than I had ever imagined.I could be trueto who I was, and not just by being a deal maker.I mean, thereare literary agents who are deal makers, who are very transac-tional and extremely focused on their relationships with pub-lishers and who do not serve the interests of their authorsparticularly well.But I knew that that would not be how Iwould operate.I would stay true to being relational, being con-cerned about the content of books, being absolutely an authorsagent, because the publishers don t have as much power as theyused to have.And I knew this would be a very good selling lineto authors.It is hard for people to achieve the objectivity they need toquestion and change their daily routines while they are still ac-tively immersed in them.Time-out periods sometimes as shortas Jane s ten-hour drive, other times as long as Brenda s multiyearmoratorium help people make changes by providing a space forreflective observation.18 Stepping back makes room for insightswe have been incubating but cannot yet articulate.It helps us see 133-158 Ibarra CH7 3rd 9/24/02 11:31 AM Page 152oooworkingidentity152the coexistence and incompatibility of old and new.Changesin the habitual rhythm of our work or halts in our normal pro-ductive activity can work as triggers, waking us up from our dailyroutines and refocusing our attention on change.19 In a time-out,attention shifts away from everyday pressures, creating the spaceneeded to reconsider the future.Brenda s first reaction to a trigger the menace of a carica-ture was to overcompensate for the void she felt by putting hercareer at the bottom of her list of priorities.But stepping back ledher to a more creative solution, in which she combined the best ofall worlds.Being an agent gives me a complete career and a complete life.There s no trade-off.Sure, I get busy and, of course, on any giventask, I have to decide what comes first, my job or my life.My lifeis more enjoyable all around.It s not just about work versus per-sonal life.It s about What s my voice? Can I be creative? Am Ijust a corporate drone? Do I just exist as a thank-you in people sprefaces? Am I a writer? If someone were to draw that cartoonof me now, what would I tell the artist about myself? Lots: artsboards, philanthropy, a dog, a great marriage, a Jewish faith, Pi-lates, dance class.Windows of OpportunityJulio Gonzales, like many of his fellow students in a one-yearmidcareer master s program, approached the end of his sabbaticalwith a mix of anxiety and anticipation.That year had given all thestudents a chance to design experiments, to make new connec-tions, and to step back from daily routines.A lot had happened inthat year, enough to raise awareness of the problems, but in manycases, not enough to point to good solutions.Time had run out.When Julio and his peers started the program, a year had seemedlike an eternity.But major transitions often require two or threeyears.Now the questions burning in their minds were: Can Itake an interim step? If I do that, how do I protect myself from 133-158 Ibarra CH7 3rd 9/24/02 11:31 AM Page 153making sense153falling back into the same old, same old? How long do I havebefore inertia sets in? These are very good questions.In a series of studies on the in-troduction of new technologies (for instance, software engineer-ing tools or graphics software), MIT researchers discovered awindows of opportunity effect.20 They found that managers haveonly a discrete time period in which to effect a real change afterintroducing a new technology.After that period, use of the tech-nology tended to congeal, freezing unresolved problems in thetechnology and fixing its use in a specific organizational context,at least until the next crisis.Adaptation to new technologies wasrarely a smooth, continuous process.Rather, it occurred in fitsand stops; whatever changes did not get made at first were put offfor much later, usually not until the consequences of those latentproblems accumulated to provoke a crisis, opening the next win-dow for change.Research on leaders newly taking charge of or-ganizations shows the same effect: New leaders have a fixed timeperiod in which to make changes; after that, it gets harder.21Nathalie Gaumont, a thirty-nine-year-old French nutritionistand M.B.A., came to understand the windows-of-opportunity ef-fect.In the heat of the moment, she informally accepted an attrac-tive job offer from a former boss.It was the perfect offer, accordingto Susan Fontaine s logic of CV progression.Nathalie would moveup a big notch in prestige and responsibility, moving from headinga European group to overseeing operations worldwide
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