Rumors, Rumors, How They Turn to Tumors!

Being neighbours with a high ranking employee in the company has its advantages. Having reached a certain trust level - we are both extremely discrete and know how to keep confidentiality on information passed between the 2 of us. As such, we have become each others' "sharing" partners when we have been upset by decisions in the organisation made for political reasons rather than profit or benefit. Of course, he being a global employee who has access to top level news, and having been with our company for almost a decade, he has the experience to weigh the rumors flying around and know what decisions will be made by management.

Well, one piece of information he shared with me has not sat well with me. Due to some internal movements in our head office, a global brand position has become open, and apparently my boss is a strong candidate for that position. I made some mental chess moves in my head, and with horror realized that if that were to happen, the person who could end up taking over her position was someone who was very much a political creature who worked with her mouth rather than with her hands. Of course, all these were just possible chess moves, but they were enough for me after a long year of being loaded with more and more projects, dealing with people with their own brand of attitudes, and frustration at red tape - to seriously consider if this was the right job for me.

I no longer enjoy my job - spending most of my time unraveling red tape, fighting battles that were not worth the time or energy, and working with a head office that did not care how their decisions affected other regions. I wouldn't say I am very unhappy as there is still growth opportunities, but the cons are starting to outweigh the pros.

I miss the days when I could roll up my sleeves and revamp a website in a week. There was even once we did it overnight on a high. I miss being in control of all the elements of web publishing - I set the design standards, took care of the framework, crafted the text for optimized searches on major search engines, plonked in enhancements to heighten customer experience, was involved in all the technicalities of managing a web server, linking it to other communications devices such as fax and SMS, having the opportunity to experiment with new software and technological advancements on the company site without having to go through procurement, legal, IT, head office, etc. I simply did a review of competing tools, took their various features and costs and presented my recommendation to my boss. Upon approval, I was given charge to run and set up the entire project by myself, and all colleagues from various departments were happy resources, and we would be able to get all our required tasks completed by the day.

As I was the person who set up the metrics, I had access to all the information I needed to analyze what customers were reading and subscribing to, tailored the next issue of the newsletter for even better response and hits, etc. And that was how I got our website from receiving 200 hits a day to over a million hits a day in 6 months. I miss the mental clarity with which I worked with, and knew exactly which direction I should be heading and what I wanted to happen based on clear objectives.

I'm tired of complexity for no good reason other than to create opportunities and jobs for people, with the intent to impress. I'm tired of the political games and tantrums exhibited by people who prefer not to do the work. I'm tired of the incessant meetings leading to a whole host of action items, many of which could have been avoided if there had been clearer directions and guidelines given from management and better planning by the project owner. I'm tired of battling with lagging deadlines as demands increase with diminishing resources.

I'm waiting to see if this is a phase I'll be able to plough through, or if I decided this mode of working conflicts with my philosophy of how work should be conducted and what working life should be all about. It could be that its the year end melancholia at looking back and noticing that I have achieved so little over this past year...