Who Moved My Big Cheese?

This morning I'm supposed to be in a large meeting of field-based executives who are in for a semiannual confab. I'll be on the dais myself this afternoon around 4ish doing some technical training of the group. I always look forward to that type of experience. It's like being on stage, performing again. :)

But the first session today is a group of Big Cheeses doing a panel discussion for the assembled multitude, some of which are there because they long to simply touch the hem of an executive's garment and so have careers mystically healed. Yesterday the organizers were grousing about how there will be so many "crashers" (groupies, crowd followers, etc.) that they needed to expand the room, and still think it will be SRO. So, why not yield my seat to someone who gives a ... um, I mean, to someone who is truly eager to sit at the feet of the wise and learned. Well, I am too, I guess. The trick is to find some.

I recall not two months ago, when catching Rug and Mousewoman in an unguarded moment, that I heard her complain about the mess that still needs cleaning up from her predecessor's regime. Rug reported to her predecessor at the time of that conversation and gave her a fellow insider's knowing assent. That man (whom I'll refer to as Mr. Clean) is now the CXX or some such set of initials and is one of the big cheeses presenting this morning. I've met him, the CYY and the CZZ, too. I'm pretty sure that they wear pants and underwear like most of us do.

There are exceptions to that of course. I may have seen some of those exceptions in Scotland. ;) Dang it. I should have bought one of those things for myself. Woohoo, sure felt *that* breeze!

Passed the leadership trinity on the street on Tuesday, in fact. They were walking over to a photo shoot in a big hotel, and I was going to my desk from the parking garage. If I didn't know who they were, I would have thought they were the most ordinary of men. And they may be exactly that. Mr. Clean has that reputation anyway. People shake their heads and wonder how he got promoted.

Some people get promoted to be Big Cheeses because they are truly talented, with useful skills and abilities. Some get their shot because they are really good with people - natural leaders. Some can present a consistent, unruffled confident corporate image. And yet, others get promoted despite the fact that they possess none of the above, in a big time way. But they know somebody. Or are handy.

For a while I think that held true for me. I got shots at promotions and new assignments because I had mentors, not because I was good with people, had useful skills or exuded a corporate image. Instead, I'm withdrawn & aloof, have mediocre business skills at best, and exude quirkyness while being way too transparent about what I really think. Yet, I rose up the ladder... I think it was because a Big Cheese was helping me.

Since I left Wazoo Corp. (after the corporate takeover) that has NOT been the case, and the Peter Principle has come into play. The Peter Principle, for the uninitiated, is that we are always promoted to our level of incompetence. However, if you have a highly placed mentor, the Peter Principle is automatically suspended for you in that organization. And, if you rise high enough, even if you are incompetent the organization must not admit it, because it reflects poorly on their ability to identify talent. They have to promote you again to some place where you can't hurt them.

I recall some 15 years ago, and continuing for the next 7 or 8 years until about the year 2000, watching the Big Cheeses at Wazoo Corp. I tried to understand what made them successful, but I focused on their public behaviors, not their private connections or innate abilities. I would watch them work a room, speak to a group of middle managers, greet workers at lunch, etc. I thought - I'll be doing that some day; I'd better figure out how.

Not anymore. There's some combination of jadedness, cynicism, loss of ambition, recognition of my limitations, a sense that time is fleeting, a desire for greater meaning, etc., that has said to me: "stop stop stop!" I am *not* going to be a Big Cheese. I don't aspire to it, and I'm not going to even *try* to be one. In the sport of corporate ladder climbing, some need to be down on the field of play, some need to be spectators watching and cheering for their favorites, and some - like me - need to be in the broadcast booth doing color commentary. :) I've officially retired from professional ladder climbing. I'm the former athlete (not to be referred to as washed-up or has-been, however) turned analyst.

And really, I had my day in the sun as far as that goes. My last job at Wazoo was not a Big Cheese, but a good-sized one, a Nearly Big Cheese, I'd say. But even then, I wasn't corporate. I was quirky, entertaining, self-deprecating, transparent to the point of once in a while needing to be reprimanded by a Big Cheese for being too honest. You can tolerate that in a department head, even in a senior executive, the VP of Such and So. But not in anyone higher up than that. So... it won't be me as a Big Cheese. Too much of an outlier, too much of an oddball.

Now, I suppose if they dropped it on me, I'd take it. But, I would probably wind up being an embarrassment to someone if I were going to be true to myself. I think it would be better if I were named CSS (Chief Of Something Smaller.) Like a classroom maybe. :) Then I could be quirky, transparent, entertaining, emotional, and... be liked for it. The young minds full of mush would leave my class and say: "he is kind of a funny old guy, isn't he? Eccentric, you know; odd - but sweet. I like him. And I actually sort of understand what he's trying to say. He's definitely my most interesting class this semester."

I'd take that.