Lately, it seems I’ve been talking to more people who are really frustrated at work…a mix of being on projects that are going nowhere, lack of accountability for missed dates or incompetence, fatigue at “flat is the new up” as a way to justify no increases in years of clear inflation. So, some lessons learned on the age old question we all face during our career: “should I stay or should I go?”
As I get older, one of the things I’ve noticed is that the biggest problems aren’t typically “big events” but the accumulation of bad habits over time. Just like time can help (compounding!), time can hurt as well. And as you get older, you start seeing the incremental impact of all these habits…good and bad. So what are some of the lessons I’m learning?
I was lucky to learn this lesson early in my career. Many times, an organization will look for consolidation opportunities. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to consolidate systems: there are cost savings involved, unit costs go down, you decrease the effort needed for change management…it’s the classic argument to create scale. A transaction is a transaction, right? So when is it a problem?