being proactive..

My friend cum colleague was upset during our regular tea-time in office. We were bit relived that our free-coffee will continue for some more time after our blue-merger. (BTW I was having home-made-vada with T in Sunday brunch...man u got to live with family)

Even though we were doing the same type of job, he (sh) opted to pursue the project management side while I continued to be in the functional side. Don’t know who and when someone will register my story in their blog like this. Ok back to the tea table. Our friend is upset to the core that he don’t want to do the PM, ever and he is in fact ready to go back to what he was doing an year before. It turns out that the problem is not with the role but that his mentor, or lead (not the reporting manager) is the trouble. Being a very career-climber its obvious his lead is finding all the options to criticize on him or make him look small. Well, being part of the game, our friend thought this would change soon and he will have obvious advantages - but his lead made sure our friend is just a unofficial-PA. Sensing this we did our part to rub the salt whenever we could.

For instance if there is an email from customer for which our friend, if responds, his lead will give 10 reasons why he shouldn't have responded so fast without her involvement. Makes sense, may be, next time he waited for his lead to respond, but only to see a feedback indicating he should have responded to the customer immediately as this was an urgent matter. Now Our friend is clearly confused. Should he reply or not. A third shocker came soon, where in a customer, by mistake had copied all relevant but our friend. Sh neither saw the email so / nor replied. This time the comment from the lead was the "you are not proactive enough to make sure that you are in all the emails from customer". There is an old saying when your senior desides to screw you, he will have all the options. So any emails, with or without his involvement will be an opportunity for his lead to ..use-it.