And now for an angry non-conformist post….

There’s a policy at my place of employment which outlines that social networking should not be used to misrepresent the company. Every year we go through ridiculous training classes to remind us that the company doesn’t like social media and its employees disseminating information in an uncontrolled medium. So I’m hesitant to post anything here which may infer bad press. The idea here is for it to be a friendly reminder of ‘who’ owns you.

I’m fine with the training and the recommitment to ethics. I’m all for corporate morality and helping HR check off a box in an effort to successfully avoid litigation from some executive’s inescapable fall from grace. But what I’m not fine with is the hypocrisy of an enterprise which routinely reminds its employees of ‘doing the right thing and you will be recognized.’ Gone are the days where people did things for the greater company good. Instead, it’s the ‘me-first’ attitude. Granted, I’m seeing this from my knot-hole and such a broad generalization of culture is not necessarily true.

My general state of malaise comes from this over-arching re-organization happening in the workplace. It’s the corporate version of musical chairs. With corporate downsizing only barely in the rear view mirror, we’re now reorganizing with limited or no discussion of organizational strategy and goals to measure this new performance by. What do we hope to achieve with this? No answers. But we’re hiring like crazy and people are changing jobs at a frequency inversely proportional to Son #1 changing his chonies.

Before all of this transpired, I had grown increasingly uneasy with my job. I was under utilized, I wasn’t intellectually challenged, and my talents and experience were being swept under the proverbial rug. That being said, I took this position years ago to be an agent of change for the perception of the businessman (a tattooed freeride mountain biker CAN sell airplanes). While my position isn’t intellectually challenging, it’s hugely stressful and I’ve proven my abilities through my hard work, persistence, and work ethic that I can accomplish an inordinate amount of work with a limited amount of resource. I’m effective and play well in the corporate sandbox with others. However, despite all of that, my skills and talents routinely are lost in the position. It’s widely known that I want to try new intellectual challenges around the organization but apparently hard work and effectiveness are not wanted.

This has left me with little choice but to consider moving on. The opportunities here are much more visible but are few and far between and heavily anchored in politics. Unfortunately for me, I don’t subscribe this level of bureaucracy. I’ve found over the last few months that hard work, persistence, leadership, and customer satisfaction are only a small part of the bureaucracy pie being served. The other annoying piece is that of self-promotion. I’m finding that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The loudest and most gratuitously self promoting individuals earn the advancements. In my current position, I’m fighting perception of it being non-technical. Combine that with the lack of volume projecting how cool I am, all the sweet things I can do, and my kick ass designer suits, and I’ve been lost in the shuffle.


So as the cliché goes, if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. Let’s not say I’m ‘falling in line’ with these blatant self promoters. What I’m doing is taking a proactive approach to a business condition which I can’t control. With a little control over the messaging about me, I’m able to shift perception. Truly, this is entirely out of my hands yet I can at least work towards a convincing level of commitment to my background and experience. Interestingly enough, I’m starting to see some positive results. Nothing has stuck yet and there are no new sure-things. But at least the message about my abilities is now being heard and being positively responded to.

Now back to your regularly scheduled posts with positivity. Ha.