What are we going to do?

We were in the home stretch as they say. A close associate and myself were working with another party--on site at their company's headquarters. After several months of intense interaction and alignment between multiple parties on a project we were at a phase where we felt it was just "crossing t’s and dotting i’s."

And then "the call" came; two of the four firms involved with this project were no longer interested in the partnership. We had come so far and so much had been aligned, the vision of the collaboration was one that was very positive, folks were upbeat…”Hopes dashed like ships smashed on a rocky shoreline.” (Well maybe that is a little dramatic.) My associate looked at me and said: “What are we going to do?”

What jumped in my mind was a training patrol from over a decade ago in Army Ranger School. We were set to take down a mock missile site in the dessert at 2300 hours. I was the patrol leader and we had a solid plan as I had just returned from the Leader’s Recon and had sketched out the enemy positions. But upon returning from the Recon to the ORP, I discovered the entire Platoon was asleep!

Moving as quickly as possible, assembling the team and moving them towards the objective (which was over 1 Km away) and I realized we would not be able to set up over watch positions and arrange the assault in parts as we planned. I turned to the Ranger Instructor, both of us at a dead run in the scrub brush of the desert, and asked for an extension.

He looked at me as the objective came in sight and said “Ranger, why do you need and extension?

You still have five minutes…Take it down!”

So we did.