In these troubled times……

Courtesy: dilbert.com

… it becomes necessary to tighten our belts and to lose all reason.

Our CEO declared a few weeks ago a number of cost-saving initiatives:

- All travel has to be approved by him (recently loosened – approval needs to be at Director level)

- No coffee or beverages to be purchased for customers or agencies should they come to visit our building; they need to pay for themselves, die of thirst, or drink tap water

- No Christmas parties for all departments; there will be a single Christmas party to be held in training rooms 1 and 2 on Christmas Eve (duration 2 hours)

- Made 44 jobs redundant last week as part of an “efficiency program”; he sent a company-wide email last week stating that the program will continue to run into the New Year.

Yes, I agree that tough times means tough measures. I’m not sure that it’s necessary to arbitrarily suffocate the joy out of life.

Performance Review

I started my new job at the tail end of the financial year, therefore my full year’s performance is predicated on the old, pained, non-defined, open-ended, uninspiring job.

Although in the end my capabilities were appreciated, I was downgraded because of some time I took off work to care for my wife who was sick. Essentially, my manager said that I was not present when work had to be completed.

There is a moral conundrum here. Technically, this could be correct. It just assumes that a person at work doesn’t have personal responsibilities that could affect that work. So, if a person is actually fit to do the job but isn’t available, then they can’t be deemed to have achieved all that was necessary to complete their function.

I’m following it up with our HR people.

Charming Snakes

There are is a certain character at work that I have an irrational dislike and mistrust. To describe him, it’s best to picture a snake. He seeps into fissures to find shelter whenever the thought of danger arises. He is the greatest of survivors, able to mesmerize people with his speech – the proverbial forked tongue. He slithers across the rubble of our organization, seeking sustenance from everyone’s cast offs, or in the worst case, to consume the project that you’ve nurtured when you’re away from the nest.

This man has risen to a reasonably senior level and continues on his deceitful ways. He is despised by many yet adored by others. Although he hasn’t wronged me directly, I never feel that I can trust him and choose to keep my distance. Much like other animals, I think he senses whenever there is unease amongst those around him and as a result is selective of his coterie.

Those of us who have keep our distance are quietly waiting for a time when this snake slips into a crack too narrow and meets his doom.

Biting the Hand that Feeds

Work dissatisfaction has some vicious cycles. For instance, if you dislike your boss, you are less likely to try and make his/her life easier. You may not volunteer for projects; you probably won’t look for new ways to do things. All in all, you’re just there to do what’s in your job description; no more, no less.
In my circumstance where I have difficulty in hiding my feelings, particularly when I don’t exactly respect the current leader, it gets hard. I’m stuck in a role I can do in my sleep but I’m not scoring the political points to get me out of it. My resume suffers because I’m not moving in a great direction to a potential employer. So, I’m stuck here longer and the more I hate the place. And so the cycle goes. You get the picture.
So, I’m fighting the urge to be recalcitrant. I need to get out of this job and this company sooner rather than later.

Following The Right Leader

Finding true leaders in business is rare. By true leader, I mean the type of person that is not only incredibly intelligent/wise, but also honest, personable and savvy. What you see on the surface is exactly what you see if you peeled away the suit, the Blackberry and the corner office. Is this person the same in business meetings as in a family gathering? I’ve had a few managers in my time and I couldn’t pinpoint one who had it all. There was always a flaw that undermined everything. One was an amazing networker but completely untrustworthy. Another was scarily intelligent but couldn’t relate to human beings. A more recent one was amicable, a political animal and brilliant but you couldn’t always believe his level of commitment to you. He was made of teflon, making commitments and promises but nothing stuck.

Am I seeking too much? And can I ever fully complete myself so that I’m not perceived in the same way?

Does Your Salary Begin With a One?

 

I know that I haven’t made the best out of my career. I mean that in the purest sense. Despite great grades at university as well as an inbuilt confidence, my rank and my salary betray my lack of corporate ability. Perhaps it’s the place where I’ve been, but I’m not politically savvy. I tend to relying on work ethic and a certain ability to work through intellectual problems to get myself noticed.This isn’t the way to get ahead.

Networks are key. I’ve seen it. You don’t need to be the sharpest tack in the box to be CEO, just the savviest. So, my salary, after over ten years of working does not begin with a one. 

The Phantom Resignation

 

I was venting, as usual, to a close colleague at work. She mentioned that one of the best ways to release the tension is to pretend that you had handed in your resignation that morning. It was supposed to free one from much of the day-to-day anxiety, as if the weight of the crap you were hauling were no longer there.

I can see a downside here. What if the resignation never really comes true?

When Did I Start to Lose Interest?

 

I suppose my motivation started to ebb this year when my function was cut from Marketing and rolled into Sales. Okay, I wasn’t a pure marketer and worked more in analytics. Functionally I could have sat in either. My peeve is that there was an inferred promise that I would work for Marketing, investigating consumer trends. Alas, not to be. The change meant an alteration to:

• career progression plans
• skill building
• circle of colleagues

For me this change was unexpected and unexplained. I had no say in the move and no reason was given. Since then, I’ve been treading water and waiting for a chance to leave. In hindsight, I should have looked for an earlier escape or sought reasons. In the end, I chickened out and opted to do the best thing for myself.

I know I should I have been the proactive one, seeking reasons for decisions that affected my motivation. I should have been the bigger one.

The Vicious Cycle: Being Bitter At Work Doesn’t Make Things Better

My current job has no real description. The work is mostly to do with numbers: how they can be made a better shade of black and how they can be re-engineered into a pretty graph or poignant table in a presentation. I know I’m good at this. My problem is that I’ve been doing it for a few years and I really don’t know where it’s going to take me. I’ve been cast into a familiar groove (“the numbers guy”) by the powers that be and it is making me bitter.

I guess it all started when I was able to convince my superiors that I needed a job with more adventure; looking at uncharted areas and pioneer a new view for the company. I guess I could talk about these dreams better than I could practically make them come to life.

So now, I’m stuck. I’ve been doing more or less the same work for three years (the last 12 months have been utter torture). I have learnt nothing new; my bosses don’t understand what I could potentially do (bad communication on my part) and they don’t know what they could give me to do — other than the numbers. So, still stuck.

The trap is that some skills are hard to find and when unearthed will be plumbed for all they’re worth. This is when the stone grows mossy. You get angry about the lack of progression and the monotony of it all, but the superiors don’t care. The job’s getting done. You’ve added nothing to your skills so it’s difficult to take those advancing steps. The blackness creeps in, you get despondent, work less hard and you settle into your rut.

I’ve had this cloud over me for too long. Sick of it all, I decided to take charge. I want a rewarding career and am sick of being a corporate nobody. By chance, I came across this . It has made a world of difference to my attitude. In the end, planning my escape begins with this positive frame of mind: I am responsible for my happiness at work.

 

It All Starts at the Top

 

To me, company leaders are a way of marking the history of an organization. They’re the corporate equivalent of  tree-rings. The survivors bear the scars of everything that has passed and has shaped them into the beings that they are now.

The leaders in my company have had years and years of experience in the industry. As much as this has helped them push the organization onto its high perch, I think that this has bred bad behavior amongst the staff but also shuttered them from anything really new.

I think of it this way, we are social creatures. We imitate those that seem to be doing well for themselves. In my company the mantra is, “As long as the job gets done, I don’t care how you do it.” In such a dog-eat-dog environment with no moral scruples, it’s no wonder that so many people are disenchanted.

I read this article about “infectious leadership” and thought about our guys at the top: 

Link