All quiet on the lunatic front?

Oh, I think not, dear reader!  Grovelling apologies for having been silent for a couple of months.  But Dumb Boss is striking at his worst!  I will need to update you in parts as to the whole sorry saga, but suffice it to say that DB and I have come to blows of late.

The story so far:  as you know, we’ve had a new CEO since April.  My initial impressions were that is a top dude who was quickly sniffing through DB’s patronising exterior to find not much substance underneath.  New CEO has been conducting a “business diagnostic”, finding all sorts of problems lying underneath the surface (I don’t think he realisted how dire the place was when he signed up!).

Meanwhile, my team and I have been overwhelmed with work (I am so very very OVER working weekends) and struggling to keep up.  DB seems to have been busy building alliances with some of the other Executive Directors (read: direct reports to the CEO), while other more seasoned execs are rolling their eyes at him and making quiet remarks to me about “some people playing the politics”.

Some of DB’s more stupid moments have included publicly criticising the old CEO – even to junior staff!  This is pretty rank at the best of times but – wait for it – the old CEO got promoted and he’s now the new CEO’s BOSS!  Apparently there was a falling out between old CEO and DB as old CEO left the building and the relationship has been frosty ever since.  In the meantime (and totally unrelated) my relationship with the old CEO has never been better as I’ve been handling something he stuffed up and making sure he and the Company’s interests are protected.

Anyhow, for some reason (don’t know what) DB has bolstered his own confidence and he is acting like King Cockroach (ie top of the pile of lunatics; convinced he will still be around even after the nuclear blast).  His confidence includes ignoring my requests for lawyers to report to me who have been hired on a 2 year project!  He doesn’t understand the need for lawyers to be independent – thinks there will be better results if I just stay in touch with them rather than their having a hard or dotted reporting line to me.  He is, of course, being influenced by a Project Manager of such evil intention that you can hear the Darth Vadar theme in the background every time he wanders away from the Death Star.  Such a schmuck.  Both of them.

Darth has even taken to saying that one of the lawyers he recently hired would make a great general counsel, and that I have no authority to decide what happens in respect of the legal team.  Nice.  All thanks to Dumb Boss.

Then – THEN – I am sitting in a meeting and the CEO announces (out of the blue) that the legal, risk and compliance teams should be located in the business.  I tried to retain my composure, and keep a straight face, all the while thinking “WHAT THE ….?”

Two days worth of phone calls later, and DB still hasn’t explained what the deal is – so I was getting more and more pissed off with DB, and finally flipped my lid at him. 

DB responds by ringing me and listing my sins: (i) I focus too much on the needs of our Boards and not enough on management; (ii) I am too risk averse and (iii) I do not respect the “chain of command” by checking with him first before I raise issues with the CEO or other Exec Directors!  Hell, I am the GENERAL COUNSEL!  Hasn’t this guy worked that out yet! 

So, then he pipes up with “If I were you, I’d be thinking about whether this job is what you want – it seems you want something more senior and a bigger role, so maybe this isn’t the role for you.  I will go into these issues further at your performance review next week…”  I read this as him saying he wants me to leave.  So, I call the former HR guy (who has since been promoted to our head office in Europe) and ask what I should do.

He says that he wouldn’t put it past DB to be deliberately seeking negative feedback about me to bolster his own view and that, if he and the old CEO were still there, this would have been clipped.  He says that his interpretation is that my role as a keeper of corporate governance is under threat, and that I should make an appointment with the CEO – BEFORE my performance review.  Why?  Because I don’t want the meeting to be about my review.  So, I make the appointment…and sweat for the rest of the weekend.

My old Job II: the horrible middle bit

I was told in September 2005 that this new guy was being given my job.  He would arrive in January of 2006.  I had four months left to be in this role I loved, to be with my team. I immediately took my title off my email signature.  Looking at it hurt too much.

They said they wanted me to stay.  When I told them I would leave, I was wheeled in to spend an hour and a half with the CEO.  Please don’t go, we love you, we’ll find you another role, they all said.  And they did try and offer me one or two, but they weren’t right.  I could have become the local General Counsel – but how could I accept a demotion when my performance had been so good?  How could I explain why I did it?  No, get the numbers ready, I said, I’ll be heading off.

While this was going on, arguably the biggest crisis in the company’s history was going on – and I was front and centre in it.  For 9 months, I not only endured the crisis, but also the knowledge that I would soon be out of a job.  I lost sleep, broke out in a rash: I knew I wouldn’t do one thing, though, and that was go out with a stress claim.  I didn’t want to be that person.

Some days, I know I lost perspective.  Occasionally (but not too much) I cried in my office.  When my team found out, they were mortified.  This was unfair, just plain wrong.

Meanwhile, there was the team.  The most wonderful group.  My management team were stellar – we worked like a well oiled machine, and kept things humming along, and the team happy.  Our staff engagement was one of the best in the company (no easy feat for a group of cynical lawyers!) and the only people who left were the ones moving to other states.

I moved out of Legal into a temporary business role in March 2006 to help clean up the last vestiges of the crisis.  We agreed that I would stick around for 6 months in commercial roles to see if a suitable alternative role came up.  In April, I received an email saying that the Legal Team were finalists in the National Law Awards for “In-house team of the Year.”  I was torn: how should I handle this?

The new General Counsel turned out to be pure evil.  The team in his old law firm all held a party on the day he left because they were so delighted to see him go.  Even our local managers in China thought he was such an asshole that they asked his old law firm partners “Is he evil or just stupid?”.  Evil, apparently.

He was particularly nasty to me, and made sure all his communication was via email.  He was all class.

Well, we won that award.  And I went up to collect it (I just told the new guy I was going to: it was my team, and for 2005, the year I led them).  The new guy didn’t even bother telling the team they’d been nominated: “We won’t win” he said.

When we, embarrassingly enough for him and for the CFO, did take out the gong, he sent out a congratulations to the team and gave them all a reward, but promptly forgot to include me in anything.  Not unpredictably, the team didn’t win the following year (I was at the awards dinner, and my heart was in my mouth the whole time).  He didn’t bother sending anyone to attend the dinner (there was silence when their nomination was read out, much to the host’s amusement and in great contrast to all other nominees) and, when the team lost, he said “Well, they were never going to give it to us 2 years running.”  Another award that night went to the same team for the third consecutive year.  Hmmm. 

The final chapter of Old Job will appear in the New Year.

Wearing the fallout of bad news

After I told the Dispute Resolution Team that I gave the role of their Manager role to an external person, and that Mark would be leaving the team at the end of this year, they slept on the news.

And got mad.

As part of my “be seen, and talk to the team, even when they hate you” campaign I went around this morning to see how they were going.

Mark seemed OK.  We met separately and he said he was worried we’d shaft him.  I said we wouldn’t and we’d be fair with him, so he seemed OK.  [Note: Mark is great at making you think things are fine, but he bitches behind your back; I'm not dumb enough to assume I've escaped]

Lisa shot me a look that screamed “I hate you, you fool, for firing my work husband.  How dare you.”

Ivan, a team member who’s been with the Company for over 40 years, and who was out of the office when I made the announcement, gave me the thumbs up - he agreed that giving Mark the role would have been a crap decision.

And, in the DR Team Meeting this morning, Anthony (who is the Acting Manager for the DR Team) asked the DR Team how they were going with the news.

Their reply was to say they wanted a series of questions answered. 

I’ve told the team that I’ll meet with them to address the questions, but I won’t answer any related to why particular individuals missed out on the roles; that’s for one on one feedback with the individual involved.

Here are the questions, with the replies I’d really like to give.  I’ll probably come up with some politically correct responses between now and Wednesday, when I will answer them live, without a net.

1. Why, since all the lawyers wanted Mark to be the manager, did I appoint someone else?

 A: Let me answer your question with another question: when have you ever worked in a place where the managers were chosen by democratic election?

I was brought in to transform the team.  That means I’m the one who gets to appoint the Managers, not you.

Get out of your petty, painful, bitchy, gossipy past and smell the coffee.  Stop loving me when you agree with my decisions, and hating me when you don’t. 

Grow up, and realise this is a fact of corporate life.  I’ve missed out on roles I’ve thought I’d be perfect for, too.  I learned to suck it up.  So should you.

2. How can this decision have been made, when it makes no sense on any criteria?

 A: Sorry that I, and every member of the Legal Management Team, abandoned all sense of logic and sensibility, and appointed someone based on the fact that they were the best person for the job.  We’ll learn from our mistakes next time.

In the meantime, you should alert the CEO so he can fire me for my incompetence.

3. From an admin team perspective, we are disappointed an internal candidate didn’t get the job.

A: Since the admin team is full of slackers who don’t even work the hours that they are paid, I will take that as a compliment. 

4. Why was the role advertised externally?  When the other Legal Manager roles were recruited last year (ie BEFORE I JOINED!), only internal candidates were allowed to apply.  Why not now?

A: Because, dumb as I am, it didn’t take me long to work out that none of the internal people were people I would trust to be on my management team.  The quality of these questions is proof enough that I was right.

Just because some idiot decided to hire only internal people nearly a year ago, before I arrived, doesn’t mean I have to live by their rules. 

I note with interest that you waited until I announced the appointment before you objected to this.  Why didn’t you ask this question when I first advertised the role?  Oh yeah, that’s when you figured you were all so great that one of you would get it. 

Guess what: you were WRONG!

 So there.

Delivering Bad News (Part 2)

I took Mark to a coffee shop to give him the bad news.

I started by asking him what he thought I was about to say.

He said “I think you’re going to tell me I didn’t get the job.  If that’s the case, then we need to talk about what will happen with me.”

I said he was right.  That I was sorry, and that he didn’t get the job.  But that meant, because the new Manager had similar skills to him, his role would be made redundant by the end of the year.

Mark was taken aback just a little.  While he expected this next step, he didn’t expect to get told today.

I explained that, as soon as I announced the new appointment, he would want to know if he would continue to have a role.  Since this would be the next question, I said that I wanted to make the decision about who got the Manager’s role, and Mark’s future together.  That it was only fair on him and that, while having to work for the next 3+ months knowing he doesn’t have a job by Christmas, I figured that it would be easier for him than uncertainty.

The truth is that I also didn’t want to string Mark along.  Since I arrived at the Company, I have done everything I can to be open and honest with the team.  I didn’t think I could live with knowing Mark’s fate without telling him.

And, in the end, he was grateful for this.

I had a list of reasons in front of me about why Mark didn’t get the job – about his self-focused viewpoint, and his petulance.  But I didn’t get into the list.  I figure he’ll want to know more over the coming weeks, but this meeting wasn’t the time for that.  Instead I focused on how great Mark is at his job, and how difficult the decision has been.

I emphasised that, since I arrived there, I was assessing Mark for the Manager role I knew I would create.  That I was open and honest with him about my concerns re him, and I gave him every opportunity to change my mind – that I wanted to change my mind. 

In fact, I said that, because of the obvious upset it would cause his team, it was the easy decision for me – and one I didn’t want to miss making if I felt at all that I could make it.

But I could only live with making the right decision, and not just the easy one.

I told Mark that he had been great, and had been a wonderful help to me since I started.  That I knew I was losing an exceptional lawyer whose clients loved him, and that this was a price I understood I would be paying.  I said I’d do what I could to help him get another role, and be a referee for him.

I also gave him the number one piece of advice you can get when you are leaving an organisation due to redundancy: 

people will remember you for what you were, and how you acted in your last days.  No matter how brilliant you were for years in a job, it’s always how you departed that stays in peoples’ minds.  Avoid at all costs complaints and bitching, no matter how right you are. 

Above all else, depart with dignity and grace.

Bad News Delivered (Part 1)

Last week, I told you that I was going to have to deliver some bad news.  Bad news about one of the staff in the Dispute Resolution Team, Mark, being made redundant.  And about my appointing an external person as their new manager, instead of one of the internal candidates getting the job.

Well, on Friday I communicated the news.

On Thursday, I sent everyone in the Dispute Resolution Team an email saying I’d meet first with the internal candidates, and then with the whole team to tell them who got the role.  All day Thursday, they were like kids on Christmas eve – busting to know.

Lisa’s meeting

I started with Lisa.  Lisa has been there for a couple of years, and she’s Mark’s “work wife”.  (There was some study or other done, and it turns out that many of us have the equivalent of spouses at work.  No, not to sleep with, but just someone of the opposite sex we have a close connection with in the workplace).

Lisa doesn’t have a leadership bone in her body.  She’s a really good lawyer, and works hard.  Her downside is that she’s too much of a purist, and her advice can certainly do with more commerciality.  And she’s no leader.

Instead, she’s the person likely to listen to everyone else’s opinions before she works out her own.  She’s a little like a lost duckling, who’ll follow the last person who walked by.

Lisa was desperate for Mark to get the Manager role.  In fact, she looked me in the eye and stated with some warning in her nasal, squeaky tone that “we will be very disappointed if one of the internal candidates doesn’t get the role”.  She also thought she’d throw in her opinion that Andrew, a younger lawyer in the team, better not have got the role because he’s just not good enough.

God, I love those moments.

So, I had to tell Lisa that she didn’t get the role because I don’t really see her as a leader.  That she was great at process, and seeing where ways of doing things could be improved, but she didn’t have the energy needed to drive change.

She didn’t like this much, and she thinks I’ve missed the obvious.  However, since no-one is following her, I figured I hadn’t. 

Lisa’s was a tough meeting.

Delivering Bad News

I’ve got a challenge coming up this week.

When I arrived at this job, I found that the Dispute Resolution team (ie mainly litigators) hated their boss. Big time.

Now, this wasn’t without reason. She was pretty much a conniving underhanded type whose story always changed depending on what made her look good to the senior Corporate Loonies. She lied to me quite a few times before I moved her out the door. Seeing her out was my first tough decision here at the Company, but a pretty easy one in the circumstances – too many people had stopped trusting her for me to keep her. Plus, turning a team around is like a game of chess: you need strong opening moves to set yourself up for success later in the game. My only choice was to move her out, and it was a relief to do it.

So, the old manager has long gone, and I have been recruiting to fill her role.

Let me tell you the first couple of rules of team turnarounds:

RULE 1: Underperforming teams are always that way because of poor leadership.

RULE 2: Where there is poor leadership at the top, there are usually one or two people below them who reckon that they deserve their boss’s job. Sometimes, those people DO deserve their boss’s job. But alot of the time they don’t.

Why not?

Because they’ve spent their days, months and sometimes even years bitching and moaning about how terrible life is under their crappy boss and worked themselves into a state where they think they deserve to take their job because (a) they are the loudest, (b) everyone else listens to them, (c) they can see everything that’s wrong with how the team is being led and (d) that makes them the right person to fix it.

Often, they convince some other members of the team of this too.