So this
happened…
I found out five weeks ago that the job I was
hired to do two years ago is…no longer. Following the company’s board meeting
the first week in December, my manager told me that they’d decided to end the
new business innovation program, which left me—the Senior Innovation Manager—kind
of up a creek and paddleless.
(I also discovered a week later, at the company
all-staff year-end wrap-up that my position had been only funded for four
years, and I’d been hired two years into that funding period. This little fact
had at no time been mentioned to me during the interview and hiring process.)
There are a number of reasons why this should
be—the original notion for exploring new products and services had been
something championed by the previous CEO, and this current one just was never
that much into it. It was also part of an overall organizational transformation
initiative, which also has disappeared after an initial fanfare. And it was a
task like unto Sisyphus to try to get people to understand that even a
non-profit needs to bring in revenues if it wants to keep supporting its
mission. But mostly, I think, this outfit just isn’t comfortable with doing
anything that they haven’t done for the past century. The way I’ve described it
to myself and my manager is: they’re all for innovation, as long as they don’t
have to do anything differently.
(Moreover—my manager has burned a lot of innovation
goodwill, tbh, by pushing his “communication and collaboration platform” that
no one wants to use. That cost a few bob, and he’s described it to everyone as “innovative”,
when it’s not. So, they associate “innovations” with [platform], and think, “Eh,
no.”)
For two days after the board meeting, my
manager avoided me, which was suspicious, and only when we had our weekly
meeting did he mention that this was a thing. But, he said, there was a
proposal to have me move over to another division for six months, to build out
a business plan for a program that is related to one of my ideas for
innovation. (This program is focused on diversity in academia; I’d pitched it
for the business world, but that’s a market too far for this outfit, so we’re
sticking with what we already know.)
I’m afraid I blurted out in disbelief.
“And [head of program] is down with this?”
“Yes, she’s enthusiastic.”
“[Head of
program]?”
“Yes.”
Ah, but there was a fly in this ointment. The
head of HR, who has been as useful as a chocolate teapot, stuck her neb into it,
wanting to know if [head of program] didn’t already have someone on staff who
could create the business plan. [Head of program] insisted that she does not,
and that I am uniquely qualified to do this. My manager said that he cannot
guarantee anything, but this was what the plan was.
Now, in an organization with competent HR, this
would have made me uneasy, but with a dysfunctional HR, whose head has meddled
in hiring, and whom I’ve witnessed in person insert herself into organizational
decisions as a clear exercise in power grabbing—well, I had no confidence at
all that anything good (even “good” in the circumstance: that I’d be getting a
temporary reprieve, instead of an immediate pink slip) could come of this.
Look—I understand it’s HR’s job to protect the
interests of the company, not the employee’s. However, it’s not HR’s job to
overrule hiring decisions that are legal and in keeping with company policies, and
I’ve seen this woman do it and heard of other instances of her doing it. For
just one example, one department had interviewed multiple candidates and told
HR, “We want to hire these two people”. Ms. Chocolate Teapot replied, “No, you
have to hire this one.”
(Most of the negative reviews of this company on
Glassdoor cite HR as reason for the negativity, with incompetence as a major
factor. One memorable one referred to its operation as “the Mean Girls Club”. She
is leaving the company (along with many of her hires) at the end of the month, “after
15 years of service”, with the bare minimum of thanks from the CEO.)
This was how things were left following the
board meeting on 8 December. In the intervening five bloody weeks, there was
every possibility that Ms. CT would find some excuse to toss me. Imagine my
holidays. And every time I asked my (current) manager what the status was, he’d
shrug and say there was no update.
Last week—without update on my status—I was
called to a meeting about the business plan (slugged a “huddle”, God give me
strength), at which it became clear that, truly, building a business plan is
not in this department’s wheelhouse. Following it, I consulted my (current)
about a possible way to proceed, and he said, almost as an aside, “Just so you
know, there’s funding for you for six months. After that [head of program] will
need to get funds from outside sources for you.”
Now, that’s how most of the department’s
programs work: they’re funded through outside grants. (It’s also why the
company as a whole just can’t grasp the urgency of providing products and
services that drive revenues, much less make a profit.) But, you know—it might
have occurred to my (current) manager that this information about funding might
possibly have been something I’d have liked to know, oh, say, five weeks ago
when it was proposed.
However, I’d already reached out to a couple of
people I know to start the process of networking into a new job. One of them
may be a bit of a bust, but the other—a product management consultant I met in
the Valley They Call Silicon—immediately riffled through his network and gave
me introductions to a couple of guys he knows in this area. (I went prepared
into our conversation, with a list of companies and verticals I’m interested
in; I believe in giving people whose help you want all the information you can
to make it easy for them to help you.) From that conversation, I’ve talked with
his two guys, and from them on to some more.
I also confided in one person at my company,
who commutes in to the District They Call Columbia on the train from Baltimore.
He mentioned my situation to one of his fellow commuters, who works for an
outfit in Fairfax. She gave my details to a colleague who runs the company’s
emerging technologies practice, and he reached out to me immediately. He’s on
travel, but we’ll chat in February.
Well, anyhow, this is Gratitude Monday, and
this post isn’t about how dysfunctional this organization is. Or about my
(current) manager’s obtuseness. Or about the long, hard slog that a job search
is. Because what I’m grateful for is that there are people who will help—people
who have helped—in contrast to the past, when people either dodged, or who
blustered that they’d be happy to help, had connections,
etc., but then all you heard was crickets.
I’d thought that this would be my last job. But
since that’s turned out to be unlikely, I’m really grateful that I am not alone
in one more search.
