Why is common sense so hard to find? The fact that it’s called “common sense” suggests that it should be standard fare pretty much anywhere you care to look.
Someone who I know well told me an interesting story about his tenure at a large, unnamed public agency he used to work for. Keywords here are “used to work.”
He and his colleague, let’s call her Ann, both applied for the office manager position after their previous manager retired. What’s interesting to note here is that the previous manager hired both my good friend and his colleague Ann.
Ann was promoted to office manager and suddenly my good friend discovered that anything he did, did not measure up to his new boss’s expectations as it did with his old boss.
You can imagine that my friend was extremely frustrated. His work began to suffer and he fell behind on one large task that he was given.
At one stage my friend was about three weeks behind on his task.
Now I’d like to backtrack for a second. While it seems like a bad thing that my friend was behind about three weeks, it was not all bad. My friend is a big picture thinker who only sees the finished product in his mind – not the baby steps needed to get there. The task was not due for a couple of months, so he was able to knuckle down and step up the pace.
He caught up and found himself two weeks ahead of schedule.
Ann called a closed door meeting and my good friend found himself alone in a meeting room with his boss. He was asked to bring all his documents relating to the task and report on the entire timeline. His boss Ann had this little gadget that she liked to bring to meetings – a pen. Ann used this pen to record conversations.
My good friend proceeded to outline his progress on his task, emphasizing that he was two weeks ahead of schedule.
That however, was not good enough for Ann. She steered the conversation back to where my good friend was three weeks behind schedule.
My good friend however, steered the conversation back to the present and how he was in fact two weeks ahead of schedule.
Ann however, did not want to talk about the present or about the progress of the task. She only wanted to talk about how weeks prior, my good friend was three weeks behind schedule.
My good friend then steered the conversation right back to the present. The meeting was called by his boss to talk about the task’s progress and in the present time he was ahead of schedule.
Again, my good friend’s boss steered the conversation back to the past where he was behind schedule.
My good friend then did something he regretted the moment he did it. He stood up, leaned closer toward his boss, and yelled in her face.
Ann, his boss sat in her chair expressionless. My friend thought that he would be written up for insubordination or something. He was surprised that Ann did and said nothing.
The meeting ended at that point which it should have. My good friend had done everything he was required to do. He gave a status report on his task and was two weeks ahead of schedule.
What surprised both of us is why the meeting needed to be called in the first place. My good friend’s former boss would never have called a meeting for a task status update – she would have had a two-minute conversation in the hallway.
What is also interesting is the larger office dynamics that went on in this large, unnamed public agency.
Ann, as a first level manager, was required to report her own status updates to her own second level manager, let’s call her Dawn. But Dawn often did not ask Ann for any status updates. She went directly to my good friend, putting him in the uncomfortable situation of having to talk directly to his boss’s boss without her knowing.
But like most things, my good friend did this with grace and poise.
After that incident, things settled down to what could possible be described as normal. However, my good friend’s boss Ann never let him forget about that incident – that he was three weeks behind on his task, which by the way, was completed several weeks ahead of schedule, and that he yelled in his boss’s face.
My good friend doesn’t work for that large, unnamed public agency anymore.
