I Quit!

 

Quitting jobs is not my style – or so I’d like to think. I know I did it once when I was still at university. I took on a factory job for the holidays and lasted 7 or 8 days. It involved mindless feeding of sheets of metal into a machine that cut them into the required size. And stacking the cut sheets. Hour after hour. I guess I was doing it for extra travel money but at some point in the middle of the working day I realised I was not enjoying it and that I didn’t need to do it. In my memory I simply walked off the job and out the door and never returned.

Fast forward 50 years. I have been working on a fascinating project assisting in the deployment of technology solutions for remote locations in the Pacific. I loved the work, and the project’s aims, but I was working with a project manager who eventually made the job a misery.

It started out OK. We met mostly online but did spend a whole day face to face early in the project that was pleasant and productive. Things started to go adrift when this project manager – let’s call her Joy – didn’t seem to have a grasp of some of the basics of the technology we were working with. This was fair enough as she had only recently started working with it whereas I’d had twenty years’ experience using this technology. She wasn’t much interested in hearing what I might know about it. Rather she launched herself on a crash course and impressively learnt a great deal about the technology in a very short time. The problem was she then started to behave as if she was the expert on it, disagreeing with me about how it might be employed and using different terminology to the standard ways of referring to various processes. In short, it wasn’t long before I started to feel like she was always right and I was always wrong. In addition, I felt like she was unilaterally making wrong decisions and rising roughshod over whatever I thought should happen.

I began to drift away on my own and do things the way I preferred to do them. I was a little unfair to Joy as I let her think I agreed with her about certain things but then went ahead and ignored her. This I see now was foolish. She was however very hard to reason with because as I said, she was always right.

This project had many stakeholders. The company we worked for, the relevant education department of the country concerned, and the users/owners of the technology in various locations around the world. My preferred method would have been to enter discussions with these various stakeholders and together craft a plan of action and implementation. I was however effectively blocked from communicating with any of these third parties. Joy did all the negotiations and I was fed dribs and drabs of relevant information in haphazard fashion. I was very uncomfortable about this – I did not think it was appropriate for me to be parachuted in after all these discussions to help deploy the technology when I had not been party to any of the lead-up discussions. I felt sidelined.

So, because I had been over-ruled on many issues,  barred from any meaningful discussion with stakeholders, micromanaged by a project manager who just seemed to think I was there to do her bidding, and feeling very much undervalued I was already quite stressed about the job and no longer enjoying it. As I saw it, I had been employed to perform a task that she had taken over.

And then came the bombshell. “Michael” - as a friend she said – “do you think it’s possible that you might be forgetting things?”  I couldn’t believe my ears. She thinks I’m old and forgetful! I can see why she’d think that – that was a consequence of me ignoring things she said and just going my own way. But the dam wall had burst. Bottom line? She didn’t trust me, and I could no longer feel sure about anything I said around her.

I have always prided myself on the fact that I am not afraid to admit mistakes; I don’t mind admitting I don’t know things; I don’t mind coming across as imperfect – I have often forgotten things over the years, or have needed others to point out where I have gone wrong. That is part of working successfully with others – being able to learn from and with others. But now I had to be perfect. No mistakes, slips of the tongue, lost emails, wrong dates, getting someone’s name wrong – none of this could happen or I’d be written off as old and forgetful.

So I quit. I quit what was potentially a really exciting and rewarding project. I just couldn’t work with her anymore. Frankly I don’t think she wanted to work with me anymore either because she seemed to think she knew it all and I just got in her way.

It must be said that after having worked as a leader in my field with quite a lot of responsibility – I had project managed several national projects with groups of up to 20 people over the years – I found it very difficult to be play second fiddle to someone half my age, who was a new kid on the technology block, and who did not appear to respect my experience or judgement.

So – am I forgetting things? Probably. But that’s not new. And besides, that’s for others to tell  …..