Posted by pegasus on February 25, 2005, at 19:09:30
At work yesterday, the managers got together and presented our current status and plans to the CEO. During my presentation, the CEO challenged me to take my software in a totally different direction than I had planned, because of a huge new $$$ opportunity. I've been working toward the previous plan for the last several months. And I'm leaving for maternity leave in about 6 weeks.
I didn't panic (= miracle). When I got back to my desk, I scheduled a meeting with all of the relevant people who have info about this opportunity, to start the planning process rolling.
So, this afternoon, on my day off, I check my email around 5:00. Well, my boss, who has his own projects to worry about, has scheduled the same meeting that I already scheduled yesterday, at a time that I'm not available. He didn't know about my meeting, because I hadn't invited him, because it's not his job to put this new project together.
I declined his meeting, with a quick note explaining that I'd already scheduled my own, and apologized for not inviting him, saying that I hadn't realized that he would want to be involved in this process, because he usually isn't.
Then later, I got to thinking, and I sent him this email as well:
"Hi Boss,
I just wanted to follow up on this meeting. My toes are feeling stepped on. In my mind, we need to start working on this new software release by gathering information and creating a list of requirements. That's always clearly been my job, and I certainly intended to do it in this case. Maybe I've misunderstood how involved you want to be in the process for my product going forward. I've always handled that pretty independently before. So, I was very surprised that you would call a meeting at all for this, and especially one that wasn't even at a time that I could attend. And maybe you're surprised that I would call a meeting that didn't include you? I'm concerned that us stumbling over each other is going to make this project more challenging than it needs to be and make our department look bad. I guess my bottom line is that I think we need to communicate better in general, and especially about this project.
pegasus"
What do you think? Am I aiming to get myself fired here? I've worked at this company for many years, and have always done good work, and gotten good reviews. I'm worried that they're losing confidence in me because I'm going on leave and then dropping to half time. But why wouldn't he talk to me about it first?
pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:463408
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050224/msgs/463408.html