Somebody sends me a magazine article. A major insurance company is talking about their wonderful solution. I check the database to see if it was something I worked on, so I can pass it along to my management as an accomplishment. Checking database. Its actually a customer that a peer of mine managed. The guy is fine, though It took me a good week to calm down from the upset that I got when he got promoted and the way he got promoted. Essentially he was brought on board because he could suck up like absolutely no-one can, and do a reasonably good job at things – Not stellar by any stretch – A future member of Ye Olde Boys Club. So here I have a guy that got promoted by giving SuperBowl tickets to his second line manager and going boating with a VP of Strategy. .. I have a hard time stomaching these things. Somehow I don’t want to see the people from work over the weekend, especially not to be sucking up! Yeeek! So I gotta hand it to him, whatever he did, he did it better than I did. I looked at what his “leagacy” was when he left – what things has he improved? What were we doing different? What were we thankful to this superstar that got promoted so much, obviously due to his stellar performance and potential? Well, nothing really. Seriously, I looked hard. After being caught at the lake while saying he was out sick; after getting caught eating a 28-oz piece of steak when he was supposedly suffering from some food poisoning, after getting caught in a couple of those I think he is the leader we all want for the next Enron. I better learn something here, I can’t lick balls as good as he can…. I–must– try–harder.
So back to the dilemma. I find out that this customer was worked on by this guy. Now do I send this as “Look at what awesome job master Joe did”, further supporting the theory of his amazing greatness? Or do I let this one slip though the cracks?
My first reaction was: Drop it in the bit bucket, no-one will ever know. My second was: Show it to my management as normal, its what I should do since this is business. .. Now my third one after writing this passage and thinking about it is different. Yes, this is business, but its also personal. I’m always fascinated when someone I hear that the judge says in court for the jury to “disregard that comment..”… like it never happened. Are they machines? So my conclusion is that I should send it along to the guy himself and let him deal with it. There’s a couple of possibilities of what will happen then – they’re a little too long to write but I believe sending it to the guy is the right course of action here. So this goes back to my title question. Is second-guessing my decisions leadership too? Or am I just being politically greasy? Or both?
