I could blather about the midterm elections and how it’s not as bad as it could be, or about how maybe the change in the legislature will make it so Obama actually gets off his ass and does something about the one thing that all Americans can (likely) agree needs fixing. Instead, I’m going to say that apparently the first week in November is the week we should all worry about our jobs.
The first thing I did Monday morning was send a note on behalf of my employer’s Board of Directors letting staff know that BigBoss had “resigned” effective the previous Friday. I’m using quotations because from what I’ve heard from my new officemate, his resignation was a surprise to BigBoss. In some ways it shouldn’t have been and in some ways it was undeserved.
True, he did drive us into a financial ditch by spending a ton of money on things the organization didn’t really need or couldn’t make use of. Did we really need a $60,000+ all staff meeting in the spring of 2008 five months after the National Bureau of Economic Research, the organization responsible for these things in the U.S., had already declared us in a recession? On the macro level, it probably did something for staff cohesion to have everyone meet everyone else, and I’m sure the workshops were useful to many me included, but from a financial standpoint it wasn’t the smartest expenditure ever.
Nor was spending what I’m sure is tens of thousands of dollars on a consultant to evaluate how our Development Department (dis)functions when he didn’t have the buy-in to make real change, like forcing senior leadership to recognize that our canvass isn’t an educational tool it’s a fundraising tool and that having a Development Department and a Canvass Department that function with no integration is less than fully effective when it comes to how many resources we put into raising the money we do.
And while those to things are financial mistakes I can point to directly, he made one other huge mistake that doesn’t directly deal with fiances. See, the head honcho job at my employer is particularly thankless for two huge reasons: founder’s syndrome and an inability to pay market rates for skill personnel.
Dr. Wikipedia says of Founder’s Syndrome, “Founder’s syndrome is a label normally used to refer to a pattern of behavior on the part of the founder(s) of an organization that, over time, becomes maladaptive to the successful accomplishment of the organizational mission.” I think that definition needs to be expanded to include long time employees, those who have worked at a place 15 years or more, who worked closely with the founder(s) but did not come to an organization at its beginning. Nothing says “change resistant” than a senior manager whose first reaction to a new idea about a business process is “We’ve always done it this way.” How change resistant that manager is can easily be determined by asking “Why are we still doing it that this way.” If the answer is anything even in the same postal code as “Because we’ve always done it this way.” you’re in for a huge fight against even the smallest changes.
BigBoss failed to understand this, or failed to understand how deep this problem went, until it was too late for him to establish any kind of command and control authority structure. He was also hampered by the fact that my employer’s finances are and always have been, kind of shitty. This is why when our Communications Director quit in 2009 we weren’t able to replace him: salaries for that position in DC are way more than the approximately $65,000 per year we were paying him.
It’s a balancing act, I know, when you are unable to fire and replace people with other competent people because you have no money to hire in personnel with the same level of experience but don’t you think the visionary, growth oriented move would have been to fire senior managers unwilling to change and hire in people who might have had less experience but would have been more flexible and open to new ideas? I certainly do. I have no idea what kind of support he would have gotten from the Board, also in place and doing not a whole lot for a long period of time, but knowing BigBoss and recalling a very frank conversation I had with him about how his inability to convey that he was the final authority on things was a problem, I doubt he even considered this as an option.
On an interesting parting note: I got a personal note thanking me for my hard work during his tenure and expressing a desire to keep in touch before a note with his contact information went out to the rest of the staff. TGF says that I should take the compliments about my work on their face and ignore the probing to see if I’d follow him to another organization until it develops into something else. After all, I know what kind of leader he is and can always refuse an offer later as “not compatible with the direction I want to take my career.”
TGF is most wise.
It’s always interesting how organizations get rid of people. In one, a long-term employee would be promoted to the position of [equivalent level] of Special Projects, moved to the window office overlooking the parking garage, and relieved of all staff. Like clockwork, they would be leaving to “pursue other opportunities we wish them well” within thirty days. IT always knows first, for they must protect the office furniture and computers from being poached.
(BTW, you have an html typo that hides three of SP’s most awesometacular endorsements 😉