Perspective

Preparing for new life challenges requires some general "house cleaning," both figurative and literal. In my pre-blogging days, The Philosophress had me compose a "Note to Self" back when working for the job from the Hot Place (ironically, ice cream was involved). I stumbled onto it while cleaning out computer files, and I will share excerpts for you here. It's quite interesting to see how lucid my thinking was back then, just 2 months into that job. I still don't think I've consistently regained the level of perspective and clarity I demonstrate below, which is still a harsh reminder of exactly how destructive that experience was. I've also learned to be far less trusting of people who don't deserve blind trust.



A note to self 6/21/05 (names changed to protect the innocent/guilty)

Dear Self,

Today I had a very encouraging talk with my boss and the capital financer for my company. I spoke with him about my professional development, and by all accounts it appears secure. He is of the opinion that one should wait and hire the right people for the long-run and train them because then one does not need to cycle through many poor choices, wasting time and resources.

On the other hand, my immediate supervisor does not do well with organization. He prefers to react instead of planning and developing foresight. He struggles enough to track P&L for previous months, let alone gauge cash flow and budget forecast. While my boss wanted a working assistant manager immediately at the newest retail location, there exists no such person at this time, only shift leaders with future potential. He is not pleased with the lack of manager but understands this must be fixed in time.

My agenda was to talk with my boss about information loss due to miscommunication. I felt it had long-term effects on me personally—my MBA, my growth within the company, my skill set and what I’m asked to perform, and my work/life balance. He reiterated and reinforced everything that we spoke about during my first interview and our phone conversations. He especially wants the community service program to be back up and running; we are one of only 2 of his companies that are not actively participating.

In the short term, I mentioned my challenge with trying to pin my supervisor down to learn and grasp some of the fundamentals of my current position. My boss mentioned that if a roadmap for my personal timeline existed, I should be managing a retail store at this time. He sees great value in learning the ropes and while store managing isn’t my desired function, “you should be in the top third at it.” He admitted that my supervisor doesn’t like to take the time to train people and that I need to persist at questioning and setting a time.

Additionally, he was a little concerned that a timeline/roadmap hadn’t been laid out, and indicated that a gameplan for my progression should be laid out by the board meeting next month. He told me he’d give me 7-10 days to sit my supervisor down and crank out those details or else he’d “push” from above. However, his preference is to have me take that initiative, and hopefully I can make this work.

At the board meeting, we will need financials for the company. Currently, we are lacking information for April’s P&L, and May is not closed either. We need to have June’s and July’s by the board meeting, preferably in time to look over trends and discuss intelligently where we need to go.

Lastly, I talked about redundancy and how things are slipping through the cracks. My boss countered by saying that we’re moving ahead with the commissary space and that we should be doing shipping/distribution to all our retail locations from the commissary space. I again brought up our lack of human capital and he realized and acknowledged these constraints.

We are at a crossroads—if we cannot get the “model” correct, then we will continue opening company-owned stores with alternative capital until we get it right (he is not willing to contribute any additional capital). Ideally he would like me to handle everything regarding the opening of the new retail location. He said although my supervisor could crank it out, it would be a good “dry run” to see if the current model equips the franchisee to be successful or if it needs further refinement.


All things considered, here are the overarching conclusions:

Positionally, I am where I need to be in terms of managing an individual location. The support/counsel may not be there, but positionally, this is appropriate.

I need to talk with my supervisor about my timing/availability for summer 2006. This will determine which MBA program I apply for. My boss doesn’t mind which program or how the timing works, just that we get it figured out.

As soon as I can handle something extra, I need to start assuming the financials. We cannot remain in a reactionary mode, and a growing company needs to find ways to trim expenses, especially with the present source of capital funding eventually going away.

My boss is committed to taking a long time and finding the right person, then sticking with them and giving them the tools and training necessary to succeed. He understands the importance of a detailed, forecasted outlook and will not tolerate anything less in the long run. We again reiterated the mutual “failure” if I remain in a managerial position.

My boss agreed again when I mentioned work/life balance, stating my supervisor's (limited, from my perspective) involvement in professional organizations, and I pressed by indicating my need to be involved in social and professional mentoring relationships. We discussed the lack of the community service program as a current indicator that this aspect of the business is not being respected and needs to be improved.