the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

I ran into an old colleague last week, not someone that I had worked very closely with, but our paths had crossed a lot over a dozen years or so as we made our respective ways through the labyrinth of a large corporate empire. We took ourselves into a nearby hostelry to escape the rain and have lunch.

As always on these occasions we re-fought a few old battles through rose tinted glasses. We had sometimes been on the same side in these, sometimes not, and when she made that observation I offered the argument that there should not have been sides: surely the objection should always have been to the benefit of the organisation.

That, she said, was where I had wasted my opportunities, and cited two incidents, about five years apart, where I had moved to operation that I was leading into another part of the corporation, but on both occasions I had, personally, lost out. I could have had a much more successful career if I had put myself first and made sure that I was going to do well out of the changes but, instead, I had put the organisation first.

Both organisation changes had seen me shunted sideways rather than moving on up and, whilst there was recognition of my talents, the lack of self-interest and self-promotion was seen as a weakness: I was too nice.

I’m not sure that I can accept the last point, for I don’t think that I was that nice, but overall I can see that she was right, for, once I got into any sort of position of influence, I was primarily interested in doing what I saw as good for the business, and the consequences for me were only ever secondary.

In some ways that was a weakness, in that I should have thought that element of the proposal through, after all, I had worked everything else out, but, for me, that self-interest was somehow distasteful and so I did nothing about it, although I always tried to look after my team in these deals.

Whatever the outcome I was always able to look into the mirror and feel comfortable with the image that I saw. I got through working to my own code, the one that evolved from the way that I was brought up, and, above all, for the most part I enjoyed my time in a suit. I had some fun, and, for me, that is more valuable than having scrambled up another couple of rungs on the ladder.