It's a New Day

It’s a new day. 

This week I am grateful to graduate from Gallup as an alum. As I look to new opportunities, I will continue to cheer on my colleagues at Gallup, whom I deeply admire and value as part of my cherished network.

As I look to new challenges, I am profoundly thankful for my career with Gallup. The company afforded me the opportunity to lead teams in Irvine, CA, Princeton, NJ, and most recently in Omaha, NE. My colleagues included talented leaders and managers and consultants from cities around the world. I hope you will meet some of them as you engage in work with Gallup. They are sure to help you make a meaningful difference in your life and performance at work as they work with you to solve problems.

In earlier days, I also lived and worked in Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina, which was a welcome stretch for a graduate from a school of international affairs. As I reflect on my time, I have worked alongside some of the best managers in the world, as part of a company that emphasizes that It’s the Manager makes all the difference. I have an entrepreneurial spirit, and I loved the challenge of growing teams and creating scalable solutions to help us make an impact.

Most recently, leveraging my capabilities and experience implementing the operational aspects of consulting and research, I worked alongside Consulting Practice partners to create consulting tools and frameworks. And I drew from my experiences as a manager to author articles with consulting partners and the Content Team on Gallup.com. I've written about how to reimagine work; the manager experience and workplace culture among other things. This writing is a reflection of my work in leadership, coupled with Gallup research to guide others leading teams — to make a difference.

If you’ve read Arthur Brooks recent piece about transitions, there is no better way to bring about personal growth than to enter the ‘liminal space’ of change, which means not only saying goodbye but also welcoming the opportunity to say hello.

As I consider what’s next — what to say hello to — I look forward to being in touch with you.

By the way, this experience — this taking a leap — feels a little like what I imagine it must feel like to free solo a climb at Yosemite. It's all hands on rock with no parachute. I’ve only climbed once, on a granite outcropping in Southern Minnesota on a very cold day. That granite outcropping was not Yosemite. Even so, I remember the feeling of jamming my fingers into the cold, hard granite wall, and it took agility, strategy and determination to hang on and make it to the top of that large rock. 

Now, on my new free solo adventure — hanging on to a much larger cliff — I look forward to finding my way to the top of something new in the same way.

And I hope to find partners to scale the rock with soon. I love to climb with those who are curious, who ask big questions, who look to the horizon by imagining the summit of what is possible and who want to work hard — belaying for each other, whatever it takes — to get there together.

I look forward to meeting with you to consider how we might make a difference together at work in this next chapter on this new day.

With best wishes.

Sincerely,

— Shannon