I learned this lesson during a major organizational transformation when I invested everything (emotionally and professionally) in a corporate initiative that I thought would define my career.
I was leading the technical architecture for a company-wide digital transformation. After years of legacy systems and manual processes, we were finally modernizing our entire technology infrastructure. The executive team had committed significant budget, and I was responsible for designing the new architecture that would serve the company for the next decade.
I worked nights and weekends designing integration strategies. I spent months researching best practices and building comprehensive technical specifications. I turned down internal opportunities in other departments because I was committed to making this transformation successful. When colleagues asked about work-life balance, I’d say “This isn’t just another project, we’re building the technology foundation that will define our competitive advantage.”
Every executive decision felt personal. When senior leadership decided to reduce the project scope to cut costs, I felt like they were undermining work I’d poured my expertise into. When budget pressures forced us to choose cheaper vendors over my recommended solutions, it felt like a personal rejection of my technical judgment. When delays pushed back our timeline, I took it as a reflection of my project leadership.
I was carrying emotional weight that wasn’t mine to carry. I felt responsible for business outcomes I couldn’t control. The project’s progress felt like my professional validation, but more importantly, the project’s struggles felt like my personal failures.
Eighteen months in, new executive leadership decided to halt the transformation and restructure the entire IT department. The technical architecture I’d designed was shelved. The team was reassigned to different priorities. The sunk costs were written off as “lessons learned.”
A friendly director from an other department, who had managed through several corporate reorganizations, sat me down and said something that changed my perspective forever: “You need to remember: your name is not on the building. You don’t own the P&L, you didn’t make the budget commitments, and you don’t get the executive bonuses when major initiatives succeed. You’re an employee, not an owner, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
It wasn’t being cynical, he was just being clear. And it helped me understand the difference between being invested in excellent technical work and being emotionally entangled with business outcomes beyond my control.
That expensive lesson taught me: professional commitment and emotional over-investment are two very different things. One serves your career; the other burns you out.