So a few weeks ago I delved into the work side and ended with the statement that things might be changing. I never want to count my chickens before they hatch and wasn't sure how things would go. I have seen others start down this path and have it end abruptly and I feared that.
I am happy with my job with the exception of one time a year - staff development reviews. They are hard. They are nearly never happy unless you are getting promoted (which is extremely rare) - but even then they find crap you did wrong and harp on it. But especially the year after a promotion. Sucky. My SDR this year sucked. Ok, you talk to AB and he says, "that didn't read bad, it was fine". But I know better. I know those key words.
I was perplexed by a few statements "it is the job of the PM to maintain a cohesive team". Actually not really. That is, of course, a bonus. But the job of the PM is scope, schedule and budget and if one thinks I am not going to piss people off in that, well delusional. Cohesive team? It's a goal of course, but my job? Methinks one does not understand the role of the PM - and this was confirmed in my SDR when my management made the statement that they were still trying to understand the role of the PM.
One of the things that really bothered me was the statement that I was still - after a few years of a major blow up - having PI/PM issues. WTF? I believed it to be legacy. They denied it. I work the PI/PM model with only one other person on active projects presently and he and I get along amazingly well and I am constantly getting kudos from him. So he is either a complete liar or my management is making crap up.
An example was provided to skeptic me and it was VERY obvious which project they were referring to when they talked about an instance with one of my task leads. It's that project where *I* AM THE PI. So I would be having conflicts with my PM? Oh MYSELF! I just about imploded on the spot. This is "written in stone" in my record and to me is simply evidence that my management has no idea what I am doing and never read my contribution report to understand the roles on the 9 projects I am working.
Oh and going back to the cohesive team comment - the example was that a few of my presentations this year weren't as smooth as they could have been - you could tell that multiple people / team members had contributed to the presentation and they could have been smoothed a bit. Ok fine. I buy that. I have two task leaders with VERY different styles - one sends me quarterly slides with only pictures and five words (love him) and the other sends slides with no pictures, jam packed with words and hard to read tables (no love). I try to turn it into my own presentations without completely redoing their work. I know what they are talking about. But wait, wasn't this comment about cohesive teams in reference to my being a PM? Yes? Then why is the example from the project where *I* am the PI and [that other woman] is the PM. Shouldn't this be on HER SDR if this is a PM issue?
Silence.
"Well if you ever want to promote in this group you need to work on this."
Near implosion again.
I don't recall how we got on to the topic - maybe I mentioned that the group I am spending a lot of time working with was working on a turn around office for me. And then suddenly my management piped up, "have you thought about switching groups?"
Is this a trick question? What do I say? I admit truth, "yes, I have". I have for a few years. At first I thought about leaving my directorate in favor of another - but then their funding tanked and frankly I like my directorate a lot. Then I started working a lot with one of the sister groups.
We discussed some options - I stay in this group and have my office over there. I switch groups. They gave me the option of thinking about it and all I could think of was, "oh believe me, I have been thinking about this for a year". But I hadn't been ready to pull the trigger.
I pulled that dang trigger.
It was agreed that management would talk. I would speak with the other manager. She would talk to her staff and then our division director would provide a recommendation.
And the result of this few weeks of work came down yesterday. In the hallway, I ran into my current manager. Final in a day or so, I am leaving.
Hasta la vista!
