lessons learned from a bad workplace experience
I had dinner last night with my manager from the Major International Staffing Firm (we were good friends before I started working there, and continue to be good friends now). We were talking about how acquaintances that we don’t see often usually express surprise when we tell them we left the MISF. “But I thought you loved that job!”
My friend put it most succintly: “I loved the situation. And then the situation changed.”
I’ve been trying to figure out for a while how best to write about the lessons learned from the end of my time at the MISF, but that meant I kept putting it off. So I’m going to take a crack at it now and see what comes of it…
I worked in an office of five people who loved their jobs and each other, who were delighted to come to work every day, who were engaged, interested, and constantly coming up with new ideas, and who, under efficient management, maintained an operating profit percentage that was 50% higher than the company’s target. We networked like crazy, we forged real friendships with our clients and talent, and our office was known across our local industry market as The Place To Call First when you needed a web designer or developer.
And then the company got involved. In the space of 6 months, I went from loving my job and my coworkers to having almost no coworkers and and a constant feeling of dread whenever I thought about work. Indeed, there were tears on more than one occasion.
How it happened is a long, sordid story- I can’t really tell it effectively here because it requires too much backstory and too many identifying details revealed. I still don’t want to be part of the MISF’s Google juice, you see.
But I think I’m far enough away from this now to pull out the lessons I learned during this time and in the constant post-mortems my former coworkers (still close friends) and I have agonized over.
- It doesn’t help to create and dominate a blue ocean when you work for a company that is primarily interested in standardizing and replicating its approach to red oceans.
- Do not allow yourself to be bullied into accepting bad treatment or a bad situation that isn’t right for you accusations that you’re just ”handling change poorly.” Sometimes it really is the change that is the problem.
- The advantage of working for a company that does cognitive skills testing on all applicants for internal positions and releases the distribution curve internally is that when someone says, “You really think you’re smarter than everyone else here, don’t you?” you can say, “I KNOW I’m smarter than everyone else, and I have the graphs to prove it.” (Yes, I really said this to a manager. I was already one foot out the door.)
- The disadvantage of working for a company that does such testing is that they will seriously and without irony look you in the eye and say, “There’s a red-flag on your file. It says you’re too much of a strategic thinker. I need someone who is less strategic for this management position.” (Really happened, but not to me.)
- “Get on board with the program” is often secret code for “shut up and do what you’re told- I’m not interested in your ideas.”