Within the first ten minutes of “Titanic,” Leo DiCaprio’s character Jack Dawson spoke the most ironic line of the film. Lives changed this week as reorganization ended the tenure of some people I now used to work with. Hopefully the buoyancy of severance packages and placement assistance will keep them afloat until the Carpathia of new employment appears on their horizon.

The bitter cold of that night in the North Atlantic is symbolic of the chilling decisions some had to make about who would live and who would die. Though not necessarily life and death, some friends of mine had to make some agonizing decisions over the past couple weeks that undoubtedly sank their hearts and those of the good people that received bad news.

Now what? Well, we must all look at this as an opportunity… a fresh start. One blog I’ve been reading lately is called the Creative Generalist. Over the past week, author Steve Hardy has been blogging from the BIF-2 Collaborative Innovation Summit in Providence, RI. As many struggle to cope with the change of the week, I hope they consider and embrace the positive. Our business landscape is changing and we have to move quickly and decisively to be ahead of it. At BIF-2, the words of InnoCentive founder Alph Bingham fit perfectly for us: “The biggest competitor is the status quo.”

This week’s change improves the organizational alignment of Sales and Service on paper, but just like in sports, competitions are not won and lost on paper; they’re decided in the trenches. To take full advantage of the new alignment, we all need to invest more in our internal relationships. Just think about it… Are you more apt to help a co-worker when you’ve got to know them as a person, or if you’ve kept them at arms length due to some pre-conceived prejudice or past conflict? Building our internal relationships and mutual respect will increase communication, understanding, and ultimately our collective success.