Andrés Iniesta’s Farewell, and How to Make Endings Count at Work

When Andrés Iniesta, one of the most gifted and successful soccer players of his generation, retired from FC Barcelona, his emotional final game was followed by a remarkable goodbye moment: the player, sitting alone and barefoot, in the center of the empty stadium. Most of us don’t have those kinds of poignant farewells in our jobs, even though today more of us are constantly in transition — switching jobs, companies, cities, and even countries. Regardless of your line of work, it is easy in such moments of suspended animation to feel lost or stuck. But when we have rituals to guide us, and spaces to hold us, suspended animation turns into animated suspension — a pregnant pause between old and new selves. A working life without endings is like a story without punctuation: The more it goes on, the less it makes sense. If we are to be more flexible in the workplace, if we are indeed going to be perpetual beginners, then we need to become much better at endings, and so do our organizations.