Impressions from the Past
Today, a lady got a promotion. Let's call her Gretchen.
I had dealings with Gretchen before, however they were not good.
Gretchen needed some content in the portal I manage. Simple enough. Unfortunately, it was going to take some time to identify her stakeholders specifically. Impatience was wining over doing something right. They wanted to cram the content onto every employee's layouts - despite the fact that most of those employees would have no idea what this content was. At the time, I still had the quixotic notion that I could keep the portal relevant, compelling, and relevant. I pointed out that having that additional kind of noise in the portal was not a good thing. If we waited a week or two, I could set it up so the tab only went to the people who needed the content.
They said tough shit - we'll do this now.
Fast forward a year and we find their tab that had to be pushed to the entire employee population that didn't mean anything to them, complete with year-old due dates and out-of-date content. See, I was right.
The thing that bothered me was that no one had my back, even though I was right and I knew I was right. My management didn't help. The IT management for that institution - whom I work with all the time - didn't help. All I got was silence.
My involvement with our portal is long. I wrote a lot of code for the first version. I've managed the current version for almost 9 years now. I have been involved in implementing two solutions for the portal and influenced almost every piece of content which was set up for our customers.
However, I routinely tell my management, "No one cares about the portal."
This event with Gretchen was the beginning of the downfall.
In truth, it was not Gretchen who forced my hand. Really, it was the institutional IT manager who made the call. However, they both made the promise to update the content in the tab. None of that happened, as foretold by a very wise man.
Gretchen became the Chief of Operations today. Now, I don't really work with Gretchen. If her boss and her peers think she is worthy of that promotion, I'm sure she is good at her job. I only had this one brief encounter where I presented what, in my opinion, were some very compelling reasons not to do something.
No, wait.
It's not that I didn't want to do the something. I just wanted to wait a week or two to do it right. We would achieve a better result, confused less people, and helped me out with my personal goal of letting people see the value of the portal. Which was all for not.
In truth, my view of Gretchen is probably skewed. However, I think this is a good lesson to us as leaders. If you are going to push someone to act in a way that is against their judgement, follow through on what you promised.
Congratulations to Gretchen. Live long and prosper.
I had dealings with Gretchen before, however they were not good.
Gretchen needed some content in the portal I manage. Simple enough. Unfortunately, it was going to take some time to identify her stakeholders specifically. Impatience was wining over doing something right. They wanted to cram the content onto every employee's layouts - despite the fact that most of those employees would have no idea what this content was. At the time, I still had the quixotic notion that I could keep the portal relevant, compelling, and relevant. I pointed out that having that additional kind of noise in the portal was not a good thing. If we waited a week or two, I could set it up so the tab only went to the people who needed the content.
They said tough shit - we'll do this now.
Fast forward a year and we find their tab that had to be pushed to the entire employee population that didn't mean anything to them, complete with year-old due dates and out-of-date content. See, I was right.
The thing that bothered me was that no one had my back, even though I was right and I knew I was right. My management didn't help. The IT management for that institution - whom I work with all the time - didn't help. All I got was silence.
My involvement with our portal is long. I wrote a lot of code for the first version. I've managed the current version for almost 9 years now. I have been involved in implementing two solutions for the portal and influenced almost every piece of content which was set up for our customers.
However, I routinely tell my management, "No one cares about the portal."
This event with Gretchen was the beginning of the downfall.
In truth, it was not Gretchen who forced my hand. Really, it was the institutional IT manager who made the call. However, they both made the promise to update the content in the tab. None of that happened, as foretold by a very wise man.
Gretchen became the Chief of Operations today. Now, I don't really work with Gretchen. If her boss and her peers think she is worthy of that promotion, I'm sure she is good at her job. I only had this one brief encounter where I presented what, in my opinion, were some very compelling reasons not to do something.
No, wait.
It's not that I didn't want to do the something. I just wanted to wait a week or two to do it right. We would achieve a better result, confused less people, and helped me out with my personal goal of letting people see the value of the portal. Which was all for not.
In truth, my view of Gretchen is probably skewed. However, I think this is a good lesson to us as leaders. If you are going to push someone to act in a way that is against their judgement, follow through on what you promised.
Congratulations to Gretchen. Live long and prosper.
Comments
Post a Comment