Emerging from the TSA security line at the Milwaukee airport last Wednesday night,1 I looked up to see this sign:
closeup
I stopped and chuckled out loud like the dorky dad I am. Only this time no kids were around to appreciate my observation, just two TSA employees who nodded at me to confirm that I was the 1000th person that day to stop and admire the sign.
Turns out this sign is indeed an MKE specialty, from a now-retired airport manager named Barry who felt it was an appropriate word for the very specific act of getting all your shit back together after having strewn it across multiple bins on a conveyor belt.
Walking to my gate through the crowded hallways, catching glimpses of the absurd news cycle on the TVs, still processing the conference I just left, trying to figure out what to do next on several ambiguous business decisions, I kept thinking about the sign.
I could really use some more Recombobulation Areas in my life.
A year into the COVID pandemic, Adam Grant wrote about “languishing” as the dominant emotion of the moment. But by this point it has gone far beyond languishing. COVID + Trump (again) + multiple confusing pointless wars + totally inactive Congress + AI everywhere + 100 other things…it is profoundly discombobulating.
Which is also a made up word! “A recent, uniquely American coinage, most dictionaries place its first usage between 1825 and 1916. It is most likely a combination of discomfort and discompose. Variations of the word include discombobracated, discomboberate, discombobelate, discombooberate, discombobble, discomboobleate.”2
Is it just me, or have you also felt highly discomboobleated the past few months? The past few years? Scattered, hard to focus, unsure where to go next. Low hum of anxiety and stress throughout the day. Often it is unclear to me what really moves the needle. Then it’s unclear where the needle actually is. And then it’s unclear how much the needle matters.
It’s hard to see how this chaos energy era will get turned around. It seems improbable that we will be able to have a national moment of recovery, a national recombobulation. Even a new administration - please may it come soon - won’t be able to suddenly weave together a national united narrative in which things start to calm down.
Lots to talk about here on political / economical / societal levels but for the purposes of this Briefing let’s stay with work and leadership.
I have felt pretty strong senior-itis lately, feeling checked out and lost most days of the week. So I appreciated seeing this piece in HBR last week that made me feel less alone in those emotions:
Many leaders…sense that outcomes can no longer be shaped by their own actions but are instead subject to grander forces like tariffs, wars, cyber risks, political instability, and energy insecurity. Something fundamental is shifting, and while it might have appeared at first as an anomaly, it’s becoming clearer that they’re experiencing lasting changes with consequences for their businesses, careers, and lives.
As a result, leaders are experiencing a “psychological withdrawal”—a pullback driven by lost illusions and a feeling of disempowerment amid seismic geopolitical shifts. This withdrawal creates a self-reinforcing loss of agency: Leaders hold back and refrain from doing what they need to be doing; problems pile up, momentum is lost, and opportunity is left on the table; and the cycle repeats itself. Withdrawal may hit hardest for leaders who are driven by ideals, hope, and the notion of progress.
What to do about it? Merete has several excellent response ideas in the article - create anchors, break patterns, make it playful, and more. Her main thesis is to build negative capability, which is “the ability to lead and function when the map no longer matches the terrain, when the normal rules no longer apply, and when facts and reason are suspended.”
And my friends, it turns out Negative Capability is also a made up phrase (by the poet John Keats) that started 200 years ago, roughly the same time people started saying discombobulated.
As much as it feels like the world is nuts right now, we stand on the shoulders of seven generations of ancestors who have felt that way too.
We are unlikely to break the chain. But perhaps we can take a page from Barry the Airport Manager and Merete the Leadership Professor.
When you have the chance, make it playful. Break patterns. Create anchors.
We can’t fix the TSA or the state of air travel in general. But we can name it, we can mark off a small patch of ground, and give people permission to stop for just a couple minutes to gather themselves.
Even a small Recombobulation Area can stay with people long after they’ve walked through it.
🧘
1 I was there for the B Corps conference! No, we are not yet a B Corp but I wanted to see what that community was like and meet more of those people. It was great. More thoughts on conferences to come later…