Problems with my Manager/Director and other management issues

I have destroyed it now. A second argument, in that many weeks. How many more can we have before I give up and decide to go back to London? What are my options? What are his options? It is clear that by now he has identified me as a real problem, and he told my bosses. Another damn Manager with whom I simply just cannot work with. And it is my entire fault. Though he can probably also take some of the blame.

What went wrong? What is it that does not click between us? He said so himself, he is easy going, everyone loves working with him, he looks like a nice guy. Is it just me? Am I unable to accept any kind of authority and criticism?

I am certain that if I were to do a search on the Internet under statistics, survey and Managers, I would discover that it is the same story for a large portion of the population, when it comes to their wonderful relationship with their direct line Manager. However there are ways to deal with this, and I am just unable to deal with this kind of shit.

It was clear on my face that I was disgusted, ready to pack my bags and get out. Only $5,000 down the drain, but I would feel justified, personality conflict with my manager. I just don’t like him, his deep cavernous voice in the background makes all my body hair stand.

Is there something that I don’t know? Something eating him and I am just suffering the consequences as a by-product? Or have I succeeded in alienating him completely with my own behavior? Let’s review this, so I can understand it better.

Last week… I can’t remember what it was last week. It was so stupid, so unimportant, that I have already forgotten. However I am very much living with the consequences now. I basically spotted the problem on the very first day, if I remember correctly. Even if I still have no idea what the problem was, but there was something. He was annoyed with me from the first minute I walked into that office. I’m sure it was not his decision to hire me, as it was not the one of my boss either. It was his wife.

Last week I thought it was my lack of knowledge in the topic of their conferences and his impatience with me. This week, it is that I appear to have been doing everything else except what he asked me to do. I also take forever to do anything, because I have so many other things on the side to sort out. He wants me 150% right away, it is just impossible, not after what I have just been through. For God’s sake, I have been here less than two weeks and I am far from being sorted out.

Feeling somehow guilty because my bosses appear to see so much potential in me, whilst they are perhaps completely mistaken, I worked so fucking hard writing them four more long reports about my past experience. And these reports, they did not specifically ask for them, but they did indirectly, with their questions and their desire to know more.

I thought they would have been over the moon by now. I have not heard a single word about my six reports of an average of twelve pages each (I have written them a book!). It is like if I had never written them. Perhaps I have freaked them out by giving them sensitive files from the competitors, even if Telecoms is not related at all with what they are doing, and these files are between 5 to 10 years old. Maybe they feel I will eventually do the same with their files, who knows. I did not give them a competitor’s database, I would never. Too late now to go back. They certainly asked for such files in my first reports, and it was a direct request.

So I spent Monday and Tuesday writing these reports, because I did not have enough of the weekend to do so. I had already spent 6 hours this weekend finishing the work that the Manager asked of me. This also went over their heads. It seems that they can believe this can be done in two hours, when it took me days. I am sorry, either they had exemplary employees and they worked very hard and very quickly, which I doubt, or they have careless employees who are quite happy to do a half job at every turn.

So now it looks as if I am wasting time, when in fact I am just being thorough. It is in my nature, but I am learning right now to forgo my nature and become a careless employee as well, as long as I can finish the job within two hours instead of two days. The secret must be to give them just enough to be able to pretend I have done a thorough job when in fact I would certainly not base any business decisions on that botched work.

When I told the Manager that in the last two days I was writing reports for my bosses, he checked, and unfortunately my bosses did not support me. They told him that they had not asked me to write these reports. So twice now he tried to tell me that I was bullshitting him. Of course, I was hoping my reports would be well received and that they would defend me. It has not happen, I think they felt my reports were useless.

I also think that it was a ridiculous thought that I could have believed for one second that a company hiring a Management Consultant would change anything of how they are conducting their business. If it works, why would you change anything? In fact, why would you even hire a Management Consultant with a high salary? It is so puzzling, I am losing sleep over this. I cannot make head or tail of my situation.

My Manager, who is in fact a Director, has no experience whatsoever about the type of events I am working on. In fact, the only person who has any sort of experience about this is my good friend sitting next to me, the one who welcomed me at LAX airport (my valley girl). She is just a Manager but was recently told that she was the Director of her events, because of what I wrote in one of my early reports.

This perhaps has killed the faith of my Line Director. He was one of two Directors before, now he is afraid that they will all soon be called Directors, and it is my fault. He told me today to not listen to her, to not even discuss my event with her, since he may want to do everything differently. Except, he has no clue about how to go about it, and she does. It is a big dilemma for me, since I will have to do that damn event which will take me six months to do, just that. This is how complicated they are.

He is an old tree, and he fights back any kind of change whatsoever. Only my first two reports had an impact so far, slight changes, and it might already be too much for him. He must be dreading the new decisions which could be made because of my reports, so he is certainly not happy that I concentrate on that instead of his ridiculous lists I need to research on the Internet all day.

Everything I have done so far should have been done by an assistant they could have paid almost nothing. Especially that this company is based on people who have assistants, half the company has the word Assistant in their job title. Something I have always suggested they change for Executives, since it would help them in their job.

It is sad when someone has so much potential, so many good ideas, and the experience to back it up, but is prevented in doing anything because change is a frightening thought. So their Management Consultant will actually be a Conference Producer instead, and just an assistant at that. Which is fine by me, with that kind of salary, in a country where the standard of living goes through the roof. However I would have liked to have been told that I would only be an assistant, I wish I could be told now so I would know where I stand.

I can adapt to that, no problems. I feel there is a conflict at the moment in the management lair, and I am powerless to do anything about it. I just suffer the wrath of their Director and, since I cannot just let it go down my back like water on a duck, the situation might just explode.

I certainly have no experience as a Management Consultant. The only thing I know now, is that the second job title of a Management Consultant should be Executive Director, so he or she would have the power to crush the little people who cannot accept any change.

I am sure it also fries him that despite my young age compared to him, I have perhaps as much experience if not more than him in the world of conferences. And not only that, it is an experience from just about every large competitor they have. So my bosses appear to have told him that the little moron that I am has more experience than the old tree that he is, since he came to me once shouting: so you think you have more experience than me!? That statement alone tells it all.

Of course, he can only see me as someone without any experience whatsoever, called upon to make all the wrong decisions when he knows it all himself, and he is probably the one who should have changed his title to Management Consultant. However, his experience is limited to the one company he has worked for, for perhaps 10 years, and I’m not even sure if it has been that long.

So you can understand my problem, and I am starting to understand it better myself. Perhaps I had just no realized that I would be perceived as a threat. And now that I have realized that, I will be more amused by his little panic attacks. I just wished that I was certain that my own analysis of the situation was right.

At the moment I can only see that this week I have taken the piss, working on reports to satisfy my bosses, when I should have been trying to please my Line Director. I did assess that situation at the beginning of this week, I quickly surmised that it was more important for me to show my bosses I was indispensable, instead of searching the Internet all day for the Director.

And somehow something tells me that it will pay off. The mitigated reaction of my bosses must have been to calm him down, to keep the right balance. Secretly I am sure they are reading every single word I have written and that soon they will not only appreciate me, they will change everything.

Oh, I feel so much better now! I just hope I am right. And if I am right, I am glad that I am learning so quickly. Something which would not have been possible if I had not written it all down tonight, after drinking three beers in a row.

I feel like I have acquired some sort of wisdom now. What was on my mind when I walked back from work was more like: I am unmanageable, a crisis will develop, I am useless, I just can’t work with anyone, etc.

I need to start my own business or else I will just be going from job to job, suffering with my line Manager for six months to a year, before I leave right after the whole thing crumbles to dust behind me. Now, instead of panicking back at my panicking Director, I can just sit back, relax, and look at him destroy himself.

Don’t get me wrong, I would like it to be different, I am certain he is the best employee they ever had and will ever have. It is important that he stays. His reaction can only be explained by the fact that they did not include him in any of the real management discussions. As a result he now feels as if all this change is not necessary and superfluous. And to be honest, I feel that he is right.

However I have been hired to tell my own experience, analyze it and propose solutions. So I am doing what I am being paid for. It is their decisions to apply my suggestions or not. And the old tree is completely right if he states: what the fuck does he know about this business? Completely right, I am sure he knows more than I will ever do. But I don’t care, I have to fulfill my role and somehow I feel I will appreciate that role, even if heads will have to roll over.

No one gives me shit, or else I am leaving. I don’t care if it is after two hours on the job. But now it is not as simple. I am asking for trouble with a title like Management Consultant. I represent a real danger. So I have to adapt my attitude and behavior. Ultimately the other employees should always lose over me. Otherwise, why hire a Management Consultant, if not to implement changes?

And old trees, if they cannot accept the changes, it is written in the book, they will need to go. Let’s try to save them, by all means, but if they become unmanageable, recalcitrant, what we can we do? Here is the door my friend. Start your own business if you feel that you have all the knowledge in the world to do so.

And this is exactly how I feel right now. I feel I know so much about the conference world, especially after writing so many reports in the last year, that it is a waste that I should tell people what to do. I should do it myself. However, let’s not forget that I just declared bankruptcy. For whatever the reasons. But who cares? Getting money to finance projects, is what all our conferences are about right now. And all these people have no money, just a promising product or service which cannot fail (though in most cases it fails miserably).

And my company could not fail either, because I know what failed and what succeeded all over the damn place, all over the world, in virtually all the main conference companies there are. Just a shame that I could not care less about the conference world and I am still trying very hard to free myself from it. Somehow I thought L.A. would help me achieve that dream, so let’s not destroy everything before it actually happens.

What is also funny, is that if it was my own business, I would not follow most of my suggestions, I would do everything differently. This is something I have recently realized, it is never the same when it is not your own company. If it was your own, you would act and behave differently. Because then, you would actually care. Something no employee ever has been able to do. We just don’t give a shit, we’re just employees trying to survive our day, to get a pay check, and somehow try to still have a life outside of work, if possible.

And this is something most employers cannot understand and I’m not certain if there is a solution to that problem. Unless the employees somehow also could own parts of the company and it was actually worth it for them to work harder. Otherwise, good old generous bonus schemes might do the trick.