What I Signed Up For

I’ve been semi-retired to part time at my W2 job since October of 2017.  I wrote about my initial experiences and feelings early on back in November, but it’s my intention to keep updating my experience as the journey progresses.

So for a quick recap, I was a senior manager and director of a large office when I decided enough was enough.  Having reached financial independence, I wanted to go part time.  My management was amazing and helped me out.  But I had to give up the director job and they found a couple new tasks for me that involve modernizing our technology and business practices.

I’m working 20 hours a week, usually two 10 hour days.  And I’m in charge of no one.  Two days of work, 5 days off.  A normal lifestyle flipped to opposite.

Yes, overall it’s still bliss.

 

Stop Calling Me Sir!

One of the new projects they put me on involved working with a team of 5 other folks to come up with what could roughly be described as a business plan.  These are mid-career employees, one of whom I managed years ago.

So now I was trying to be one of them.  Once they found out I was on the team, the whole dynamic of the project changed.  Or so I’m told by someone else who was there prior to me joining.

I came to meetings, they sometimes called me “sir”.  Man I hate that.  I want to be one of them again – I don’t want to be seen as “the director guy”. 

But I realize that seed has been sewn.  They’ve become accustomed to seeing me as one of those guys….. i.e. upper management.

 

Let’s Have A Meeting To Prepare For The Meeting

Then there are the meetings.  As a manager, my style was very hands off.  Micro-management is the bane of the working world, and my agency has far too much of it.  My philosophy has always been to treat people as smart adults and let them go, let them be free. 

Or as Gen. Patton famously said “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results”.

A big part of being hands off is to have minimal meetings.  As a director I followed that principle, and the performance of my office as compared to others proved it to be effective.

But the first thing I noticed on this new project with more junior folks was the constant meetings about the project.  Way.  Too.  Many.

There barely seemed to be any time to get things done before we were in a conference room again!

Additionally, they had no clue how to run a meeting.  The first 10 minutes of each meeting seemed to be setting up the AV systems and call-ins, and talking about TV shows in a social aspect while waiting for folks to show up.

Poof, there goes another 10 minutes….

If you’re going to have a meeting at 9:00, get there a bit early to set up slides and start the damn meeting at 9:00!  When others inevitably show up late and you’re ten minutes in, they’ll quickly get the picture that you’re not effing around.  If they care at all they’ll change their behavior and stop showing up late.

Being thrust back in this environment, I’ve found that I have to curtail my desire to suggest certain improvements in how they work. 

I learned lots of things during my career progression, like how to run a meeting.  That’s one of the simple things that got me to senior management.  These folks are still on that road, and I realized quickly that if I started to assume the role of mentor in this group and suggested changes I would further cement my status of “the director”, along with all the “yes sirs” that the title brings. 

Ugh.

I want to be one of them dammit, but I can’t take some of the crap that comes along with that.  Like too many poorly run meetings.

 

Ego Check

They hired a colleague who I know pretty well to take my old job.  He’s now the director of the office that I had running like a well-oiled machine, and it was kind of a promotion for him.

I’m very happy for him, he’s a good dude and super smart.

However, he’s started to add extra meetings and bureaucracy to apparently “tighten things up”.  It’s been a slow creep, but a creep nonetheless.

I’ve only been watching it from the outside, but a few of my former employees have dropped hints to me that it’s causing some, let’s say, discord in the office.

As much as I want to think I don’t have an ego or too much of a BS sense of pride about this stuff, I’m finding that I have more than I thought.

Part of me is itching to meet with him and try to peel back the onion on these changes to see why he’s doing it.

But that ship has sailed.

It’s his office now, I voluntarily gave up that job and I have to sleep in the bed I made.  My bed only involves working 20 hours a week, so don’t cry for me Argentina.

But still, I’m finding out things about myself here.  Even though I didn’t like the Director job, I did it well and it turns out a part of me is kind of proud of the work I did there.

So seeing another person take the reigns and make changes is upsetting in some ways.

Damn.  Self discovery again.

 

So in the end, seeds were sewn, beds were made, ships have sailed.  I’m moving on in this new life and learning as I go.  The self discovery aspect is actually enlightening and I know it will serve me going forward.

But the process of making those discoveries is the uncomfortable reality I must wade through.