New adventures can be fun…if they’re something that you’ve planned for and have certain expectations as to the end result. When they strike with a blindsided 1-2 punch, they’re not always quite as much fun, but they are definitely exciting.
For me, this year started out rough. The first quarter of the year was met with several unexpected and unanticipated surprises. For starters, I didn’t expect my work life to get turned on its head.
My direct supervisor has always been open about not holding her staff back if they were interested in bidding out, or applying for a different position. In my 18 years with the company, I have only once considered do that, in part because I’m incredibly happy where I am. Not that I have no desire to move on or up; I just enjoy the department that I’m in, the work that I do, and recognize that I’ve spent a great deal of time building a reputation. (Wait. Isn’t that branding?) It didn’t come as a complete surprise to find out that my co-worker, a relatively new hire, decided to bid on a job that was a huge step up. In fact, it surpassed my position–still in administration, but reporting directly to the CFO as his Executive Assistant. Not only did she bid on the job, she was offered and accepted it. Words cannot express how thrilled I was to hear the news! Of course, this was a monumental leap for her and a devastating blow to me, in terms of staffing that is. With her departure, I was left with only one admin–hired less than six months prior–to support a staff of approximately 100.
I wasn’t too worried. After all, just last year, I was the only admin in the office while my supervisor and I waited for the internal recruitment process to run its course. Then, we gained two new admins at 6-month intervals. I figures that together, minus one, we would persevere. Then the other shoe dropped.
Less than a month after losing an admin, my supervisor called a staff meeting to announce that she, too, had accepted another position. This I was not expecting.
With her leaving, I was named interim manager. Working for a pseudo-government agency, all jobs are bid on and with only rare exception is an individual appointed to a position, and that process usually requires a fair amount of justification for bypassing the normal hiring process.
My first day as interim manager just happened to coincide with the first day of class. The class that I had mentioned in a previous post: Second Self: Identity and Personal Brands.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. As all of these staffing changes were occurring and school was beginning, I was in the middle of working on a massive, time-sensitive project that required my full attention all day long and numerous hours of overtime, and I couldn’t rely on my only remaining admin to take up my slack since I hadn’t had the time to fully train him yet. Let me tell you, he learns fast. Talk about trial by fire, he jumped in with both feet and was willing to do anything possible to help out. If I needed him to work late or come in on his day off for a couple hours just so that I could run out for lunch, he was ready to help. In all honest, I couldn’t have made it through all of this without him.
When my now former boss’ position was posted, I wasted no time applying for it. I put in my application the first day I was able even though I knew that jobs are posted for 30 days. I thought I would have more time to improve some much needed ‘soft’ skills, but that wasn’t about to happen.
In the meantime, I finished my project and made the deadline for the major portion, receiving an extension for the remainder. About that time, I was starting to get comfortable in my new role and was finally catching up on other tasks that had been temporarily set aside. Things were beginning to level off.
Life must have decided that I hadn’t had enough yet, and I shouldn’t have been shocked, but when my new boss (previously my direct reports direct report) called me into his office to announce to me that he had submitted paperwork to proceed with his retirement. I was.
Holy cow. How much more can I handle?
Oh yeah. Let’s not forget that the job that was supposed to be posted for 30 days closed 2 weeks early. Now I’m facing a new challenge: the dreaded interview.
Oddly, the class that I was so dreading so much has almost perfectly correlated to the process that I’m undergoing at this very moment. I’m now applying what I’ve learned to rebrand myself in a way that says ‘management’ and not just ‘staff’.
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