InformationWeek

Dear Frustrated:
It's a shame that your good intentions and extra work went for naught. However, since you are asking whether you were too ambitious and too brash, I sense you already recognize that there might have been a better way for you to approach the situation.

It is not unusual for a new person on the staff to have fresh perspectives on what is right and what is wrong with an organization. In fact, a smart manager always asks the new hire for his or her initial impressions about the job and the company. Correspondingly, new employees should make sure they understand why things are done the way they are before passing judgment on the direction and quality of what they observe.

Based on your letter, you appear delighted that the CIO seemed pleased with your applications, but view as unwarranted hostility the reactions of your managers. I have to wonder whether you devoted all the effort you could have to getting the support of your boss and your peers before deciding to embark on developing the new programs. In addition, and just as important, you do not mention anything about your performance on the work for which you were hired. You do say that you received a lot of flak in the data center for not sticking to your primary job responsibilities. Were you meeting all of the objectives for your assignments? Did something in this arena fall through the cracks and have anything to do with your having two new supervisors? Was the CIO less impressed with your overall handling of your job priorities than she was with your programming skills?

A better approach probably would have been to sit with your boss before embarking on your one-person crusade and discuss what you thought was important -- and then listen to the feedback. Perhaps you would have gotten the support you needed to go ahead on the applications you were lobbying to build. If that were so, the problems you describe never would have occurred. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that you would have heard something like, "Yeah, that may all be true about needing those new applications, but we have our own job to do."

In that case, you would have had two alternatives that would have been organizationally appropriate. The first choice is that you could have accepted what you heard and followed the priorities as set by your boss. The second path is that you could have drafted a proposal acknowledging what you heard about priorities and explaining how you could still do your job while helping to develop the new applications.

If your management or the CIO really wanted to support your ideas, the document would provide them with a framework to do so -- and at the same time would have made you look like an energetic team player. However, if they did not agree with you, then you would have had to make the choice of going along with what your bosses wanted or searching for another position. Ultimately, this is what you decided to do, but only after some rather frustrating moments.

The results of following the above path may have led you to leaving the company, just as you did, but you might have saved yourself a lot of aggravation and doubt, while at the same time exiting under far more pleasant circumstances.

It may be tough to hear, but keep in mind a cardinal rule of management: Regardless of how valuable an employee is, if he cannot follow the direction set by his supervisors, or if he needs an inordinate amount of supervision to ensure that he sticks to his assigned tasks, it will not be very long before he is considered more trouble than he is worth.