For any first time employee, there will come a time, wherein you would need historical data to prove yourself innocent. Innocent? Wait, what? Are we going into a job or a judgement podium? if you may think. Let me break that honeymoon phase for you.
The corporate world is a place where you WILL be JUDGED. Its not a matter of if, but when. Some get it early on in their careers. Some a little later. There will arise a situation, where you would need to prove yourself innocent. At that point in time, YOU are the sole person having your back. Everyone else will be at the other side of THE TABLE. Eagerly waiting what you say for yourself.
hey, its not all dark and gloomy. There’s a silver lining to it. When you work in a corporate environment, you end up learning the art of collecting evidence fairly quickly.
Fuck ups will happen. If not today, eventually. One day. The day it happens you would he held responsible. It is upto you to prove yourself “NoT GUiltY”.
There’s a reason why I wrote “Not Guilty” in quotes, all over the place, some small, some capitalized. When you receive the news of the f*ck up, initially at the exact moment when the news hits you (either through email, SMS, WhatsApp) your brain pumps huge surge of recollections. A certain spike brain in activity so to speak will flood the working memory. Old memories flashing with the fu*k up in question. Cognitive functions get clouded.
In such cases, I’ve heard, taking long intentional breathing helps clear the mind.
That is what I had to do exactly. My VP of Products questioned me on why few things were getting delayed during onboarding. It was a high stakes email. The CEO himself was tagged wherein he expressed his frustration towards a team not able to handle a simple process.
Like every other person, I too started scrambling. Looking for previous emails, communication, anything; trying to find out at least 1 point to establish the delay wasn’t exactly my fault.
I see my teams’ messenger notification sound blasting away. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Team members in panic mode, messaging each other, trying to find their own alibi.
This was my first “Job” in the corporate world so to speak. I was witnessing the so called “corporate pro’s” trying to handle a big escalated situation. After about 2 mins of searching I understood what I needed to respond on the email. Response sent.
Barely 10 mins or so had passed, I see a set of responses from other senior executives. Everybody’s responses were sounding very defensive. Responses felt like explanations on what happened, where the ball got dropped etc. There wasn’t any clear ownership being signalled on the response. As if a journalist documenting the chain of events. The act of desicion making was left to the executives.
I stood in awe witnessing how ‘THE situation’ was handled by the “Corporate Pro’s”. It’s so different from what my response was.
It was not rocket science for me to figure out within the first couple of mins; the ball had dropped. I was at fault.
Accepting what happened seemed fair to me. That’s exactly what I did.
I pointed in my response the reason ball got dropped.
I shared a solution I had already put in place.
Before I was logging off, I see another response on the same email thread. This time from the Head of Marketing at my organisation.
I never responded to this email. Just left it with a heart reaction. My reaction indeed came from the heart. It really felt wonderful when someone notices and acknowledges your attitude towards work. That’s not something we get every now and then.
This ‘heartfelt’ response did not come from the executive who came in with the escalation. This response came from another Senior Executive. Sr. Director of Marketing.
That morning when I was going to sleep, I kept reflecting back. As the conscious focus wandered in the maze of mind, I could see all of it playing. Right in front of my eyes. I kept seeing how I already identified signs of the process being broken as early as last week.
As I lay there on the bed, closing my eyes, trying to avoid the early morning light, I could see all of the incidents which I should have documented. But then what?
But what would I have said, even if I had all the things documented? That I had already noticed the process being broken and still did not do anything about it?
Nope. As I would do it the next time I see something which can get improved I would the following steps.
Upon noticing a couple of pattern points here and there, I should inform the Executive Leadership Team (ELT). Action item can be on someone else but sometimes when you are in a high stakes environment, handling the largest account of your company, it is important that your leadership gets to know what is happening on ground. Especially about opportunities that can impact business bottom line.
You may feel, what’s the big deal? Let me tell you, its a HUGE DEAL. Upon receiving detailed documented emails on an improvement that should be made is seen as a signal by the ELT. Its a signal that shows you understand business.
Every leader dreams of having great generals who can lead an army into the world and capture as much market share (analogy from old days, generals would need to win wars to capture more market[land]).
Once you show you understand business context, conversations thereafter take a very different turn. You start discussions instead of talking. At a elevated strata with the exact same people than you were used to. The same people would be taking you seriously, on whatever opinion you give. You would start to have a word at THE TABLE.
Visibility increases, chances of promotion increases, salary increases. Isn’t that why we are all working?
Remember, fuck ups will happen, if not today, someday. Its important to collect evidence. Without evidence you may not have a chance to prove yourself not GUILTY.
Till next time, closing for the night.
Thanks
DB
April 26th 2:30AM we are going from the Saturday night hitting Sunday early morning wee hours.