Working and Life

I Should Have Paid More Attention

Unexpected lessons learned from ignoring failure

By the Author with NightCafe

Emily dropped the bomb on Monday morning in our weekly planning session.

“I’ve been fired from the project.”

We were leading the organization in a major transformation of our Human Resources Information System. Things had not been going well. Deadlines were being pushed. There was discord in the ranks and everyone knew we were at risk of canceling the whole project. It was not a comfortable time.

I was playing Assistant Project Manager. It was my first foray into major IT project management and I adored my mentor, Emily. She had seen a zillion projects over humps like this one. The corporate office expected great things from her and I expected to direct my career away from taking calls at all hours of the day and night when some server broke. It was a strategic move on my part to offer to assist her. I wanted to ride her coattails into more visibility, more responsibility, more adaptability.

“Fired?” I was shocked.

She nodded.

“Not fired fired?” My stomach turned.

“No, just from leading the conversion project.”

“Well, what’s that mean, really? ” My fear was what does that mean for me?

“The consulting company will bring on a new PM and someone else here or in our corporate office will be tagged to lead our teams.”

God, I hoped it wouldn’t be me. I pursed my lips, my question — what will happen to me? — wanting to form, but not wanting to be released into the world.

Emily read my blanched look like the good manager she was.

“You and I, we both still have jobs, although they might be different than what we’d been doing for the last year. You still have your Support Analyst position that needs your attention. I — I don’t know. I might do some work for someone in the New York office, I’m not sure. But, for the next week or two, I’ll transition over the project to whomever Stephanie decides.”

Stephanie was the company president, a bit of a dragon lady. She could be tough when she wasn’t happy. And she definitely wasn’t happy at that time.

Still at a loss for words, I pondered taking back my on-call rotation, feeling demoted.

Emily put on her mentor hat.

“That’s the thing you need to know about project management. It’s more than time and money and scope. It’s more than spreadsheets and resource leveling. When things go wrong, the project manager is often the one to be blamed. You and I did nothing wrong. This new technology is really hard to transition into, that’s why it’s already taken a few years of work. Here we are at an inflection point, and there’s trouble. Get a new leadership to take it from here. Like in baseball, I guess. Get a new pitcher to try to turn around the game. It happens. It’s part of the hat of the project manager.”

I nodded. I wish I had paid more attention then.

Emily moved into a cubicle in my IT wing, away from the HR conversion team. She read books. She filled in crosswords. She played games on her computer. She walked into the lobby to take phone calls. I was sad to watch her shrink in presence over the next 6 months. Then she announced her retirement. She would move to Texas to be with grandkids. We gave her parting gifts at a small gathering in the aisle between our cubicles. No big event. Stephanie did not attend.

I hid my grief over the failed career opportunity with software patches and application upgrades and server platform transitions, still on call, still wishing for something different.

After she left, Emily and I lost touch.

Because I really hated those middle-of-the-night something-is-broken calls, I decided to try my hand at project management anyway. I learned about new ways of herding cats, new kinds of spreadsheets and differently focused meetings. It was the new-ish highly-publicized project leadership framework. I got trained and certified. I was given some projects where I had some success, some failures. I learned that failure wasn’t my fault. It was often a mismatch between the technology and the problem we were trying to solve with it. Emily tried to teach me that too.

Fast forward a few years. They decided to convert the whole Financial platform into the same technology that Human Resources moved to, but the effort would be even bigger than with HR. Even harder.

They hired an outside guy to lead it. We missed a few deadlines, we struggled. I led the testing effort with spreadsheets and meetings and reports. We made it through. We celebrated. Project participants got logo tankards and lucite desk decorations to memorialize our success.

And at the end, I formally left my position as a Support Analyst and accepted a new role as a Project Manager. I had made it out of the on-call rotation, permanently.

Five months later, I was fired fired.

My new job was cut, “right-sized,” and I had to take early retirement. All the fancy new project management books have landed in the trash, along with my spreadsheets and meeting ice breakers. If I had stayed technical, learning more about using the technology and less about leading retrospectives, I might have been able to still have a paycheck and health insurance. If I had listened to Emily about the risky nature of being a PM, I might not have taken the risk of the new position.

I’m still getting over the loss of my job and my plan to work until age 70. I suspect Emily had forgiveness and anger management work too. She didn’t show it except for the sadness in her eyes during those empty 6 months.

Me — I’m able to lean into other creative endeavors: writing, painting, weaving, gardening. I sleep only disturbed by biology and not pagers. I have to manage my finances differently. Unlike Emily, I’m not moving to be closer to grandkids because we are pretty comfortable with FaceTime.

I’m finding my second half of life self, just like Emily did. I am paying attention to that final lesson she offered, the lesson of taking on a new life with bravery, composure, and grace.

Support writers. All our non-profit’s offerings here.

Click here to subscribe to the IT Chronicles newsletter.

Click for Wordsmith, Mystery Writing, Write Like Stephen King, more

Click on the image for more IT Chronicles — Art by Susan Brearley and Night Cafe