Decision Time

Oh, hasn’t it been a while? So sorry. Much has gone on.  Let me try to update you.

I’ve made an important decision.  I’m leaving at the end of the year.  No, Dumb Boss isn’t finally getting rid of me.  I’m not being fired because we lost that case.  Nothing like that.  I’m just done, that’s all.

If you don’t know, I joined the Company in 2007 to turn around the dysfunctional Legal team.  Thankfully, everyone acknowledges that I’ve achieved that.  So, what was next?  It’s fair to say that Dumb Boss isn’t helping to facilitate My Next Big Step.  Plus, the international opportunities that I joined the Company to access have shrivelled up since the GFC knee-capped the joint.   At the Company at least , I’ve meandered into my personal dead end.

For what seemed like a long time, I kept updating this blog with Dumb Boss’s considerable sins.  I tapered off as I slowly came to take his lunacy for granted in some kind of corporate Stockholm syndrome.  And to realise that he has them fooled.  Not all of them, of course.  Most of his peers know he’ll end up with his face on a wanted poster and think he’s evil.  But those above him buy his act, and I just came to realise that his staggering ability to manipulate the truth meant my concerns about him would never gain traction – he was too good at covering his tracks. 

I knew things had gone too far when one of my direct reports shut my office door, and sickly explained how Dumb Boss arranged for him to be approached to review some legal advice that I had given.  All because Dumb Boss didn’t like the answer.  Even though I told Dumb Boss that outside counsel agreed with the view I had expressed.  My direct report refused.  When others hear this story, they are horrified.  When it happened, although it registered as wrong in my head, I barely flinched.  I had finally come to accept his bad behaviour as normal: it was time to go.

But not before I took my issues to the head of  HR, unfolding 2 years of stories about the control freak.  They tried to have my reporting line changed.  Although the CEO was happy to do it, our Group requirements for GC reporting wouldn’t permit it.  Then, the choice: stay or go?  Exhausted from all of it (and possibly not in the best frame of mind to make the call) I decided to go.  I laid out the ground rules: I would stay until the end of the year, have them pay me a shitload of money for breaching my employment contract, and they couldn’t say crap about me. 

It’s been over 9 years that I’ve been a General Counsel and, as much as I’ve loved it, I’m done.   The advent of Corporate Risk Management roles means that the GC role has slowly receded in importance in many organisations – I am continually amazed at how many things legal is kept out of in place of the Chief Risk Officer.   I have no interest in becoming a CRO, so it feels like sunset time for this part of my career.

So, you’re wondering: what am I going to do?  Truth is: I don’t really know.  Not yet.  I need to breathe in deeply, over and over again, shut my eyes and actually listen to the world around me.  Then I’ll go see if there’s something left of the life I forgot about living while I was clambering up the corporate ladder.    

I am trying to develop my poverty plan: what if I never work again?  Can I afford just to sell up, move to another country, grow my own food and never let corporate life darken my doorstep again?  Of course, I’ve spent plenty of time changing my own mind on this.  Every time I think about it, I find a breath catches in my throat.  The reaction of others has reinforced the two-edged vibe of this decision.  Some have been caught, wide-eyed and fearful for me.  Those few in my team who I have told are upset but they’ll go on without me.  Most of my friends, though, have practically cheered. 

When I broke the plan to my brother, he said “Fantastic.  We have been so worried about you.  I know that, if you don’t leave that place, you’ll be dead before you’re 50″. 

So, I’ll take 9-10 months or so off (before I start begging others for work!).  Travel for half of it.  Perhaps I’ll come across me again somewhere on the Mediterranean.   I’ll walk the Camino de Frances across Spain, wile away weeks in the Greek and Croatian Islands.  Finally visit the Cinque Terre and Lake Como in Italy…straddle Europe and Asia in Istanbul.  Find me again.  Write a book. Work out a future.