I climbed into bed, Dorothy stirred, came to and got up to check on Andrew who, while almost a year old, was still in our room. “Everything OK?” she asked.
“Someone in the Network Operations Centre made an unauthorized change to the network” I yarned, “it won’t be a pretty meeting tomorrow so I think I will just phone in – I will really start yelling if I am actually in the room with them”.
I didn’t realize it but I had just started one of the most important days of my life. I was already scheduled to attend a presentation on the MBA program at the University of Western Ontario – I didn’t think it was for me but I was pretty inexperienced as a manager and needed to get some help, somewhere. My new job and the Manager of Network Engineering for a Canadian Telco was actually really interesting and very challenging but the people management aspects of it were difficult. I often joked that I wasn’t good with technology, something that wasn’t at all true, but the reality is that I wasn’t good with people. After pondering the MBA program for a few moments, I had pretty much made up my mind not to go to the seminar when sleep came.
I woke late in the morning and had some cereal for breakfast – I was still sticking to my diet and walking every day. As of January, I had added a gym membership and was working out in a very unorganized manner, three to four times a week. I hadn’t started running or anything – didn’t seem to be me in some way. Harvey, who was working for the same company as me now, asked me if I had thought any more about taking it up but I was happy with what I was doing, felt better and Dorothy, my wife, seemed very pleased with the progress I had made – as was Michael my doctor.
I called my boss at work, a lovely man name Christian LeGarre, and we discussed the issue from the night before. He knew I was frustrated and urged me to be as diplomatic as possible particularly since there had been a number of issues such as this and Anne, the Director of the Network Operations Centre, was feeling a fair bit of heat about it.
“Christian, we have to help that group understand that the network is still being built” I said, “It is not ready for operations yet and all the traffic on it is of a test nature”
He nodded, but disagreed “Paul they have to be able to take it over sometime”
“Christian, they don’t have the skills yet and they are not following procedure when the try to make changes. They need another three months of training and engineering needs that long to shake down some of the bugs”
He considered this. “What if we propose a slow migration over to them, with complete operational control in June? Could you work with that?”
Truth be told, I didn’t want to give up “My Network” but did know that it had to happen. “If Anne, would agree to no changes without proper procedure and Engineering supervision for the duration, I can work with that schedule”
“OK – that’s what I will propose – see you on the conference bridge for the 2:00 PM meeting” Christian signed off.
That gave me three hours. I decided to play with the Andrew until lunch, James had started school that year and I hadn’t spent a lot of time with either of them. I was traveling a ridiculous amount. This new job was tough and, although she found it very difficult at times, Dorothy was a trouper and had given me tremendous support. We were living in my Grandparent’s old cottage in a place called Jackson’t Point. I had renovated the place, heavily winterizing it, but with two children it was entirely too small for all for of us. We were planning to buy a new, much larger home in the next year or so, one of the reasons the new job was so very important. Still, I was working eighty hour weeks, traveling well over 150,000 miles per year. It was hard for her and I really did appreciate it.
“Dorothy, I am thinking about not going to this seminar tonight on the MBA thing” She looked surprised. “Why not?”
“I already barely have enough time for you and the kids – this would mean even less”
“Paul, this is a way for you to get something back from the company – it was their idea. We have to think about your career too.” Dorothy was always great about stuff like that. “If nothing else, while you are doing it, you won’t be able to travel as much and will be home more at night”
I was skeptical. “It will be a lot of work and I am not sure if I can do that and my job at the same time”
Dorothy didn’t seem to acknowledge my comment, “Go to the seminar then we can talk about it and make up our minds”
By the time we had finished the conversation the meeting was due to start and start it did. Anne, a very nice woman, was clearly worried that she would wear the blame for what had happened and Christian was doing his best to reassure her that we were all at team and so on.
Unfortunately, his platitudes seemed to make her even more defensive and she turned on me a bit.
“Network operations needs to own this network – Engineering needs to get out of the way!” she said in frustration at one point.
Christian agreed and laid out the high level plan. Things were going well but then one person, lamentably me, said “But I want it clear that Ops cannot touch the network without Engineering supervision in the interim. I won’t tolerate any repeats of yesterday.” As I said, I was pathetic with people and it clearly showed.
It didn’t go well from there – eventually I just slammed down the phone after yelling out “I will not pull another all nighter because your staff are not skilled enough to run this network”
I was really angry and Dorothy could see it. She suggested that I calm down but I was way past that. I was killing myself to build this bloody network – this was crazy. We had huge staffing issues, an experimental technology, and poor middle management – not acknowledging that included me.
“Paul, why not go to the gym for an hour – things will look better then”
“By the time I go to the gym and then get back I will be tight for time for the seminar tonight”
“Well, Harvey keeps telling you to run and you keep talking about it, why not run around the block” She suggested “throw on a couple of layers of clothes and go out for 20 minutes – its not that cold”
I had used to come to that house every summer and my father had run with me around the block a few times. I knew a 1 mile route that was flat, easy and quick. All right, I will give it a shot, I decided. A quick rummage through the dresser found me a pair of boxer shorts, a pair of long johns, a T-Shirt and sweat-shirt. I also dug out my usual toque and gloves. Quickly throwing it all on I headed out to the door, just as my office phone rang.
“Ignore it” Dorothy said, pushing me out.
The cold air hit me as I went out the door – not that bad. I turned left and trotted down the road toward Lake Simcoe, the lake at the end of our road. I got down to the lake and there was a strong cold wind blowing off it but my breathing was good and I felt reasonably comfortable. I turned left onto lake drive and started heading west toward Salvation Army Camp Road (where there was a summer camp for inner city children). Getting to that left turn, I began the single longest leg of my journey, a twisty, windy road and the wind was now at my back. I actually felt pretty good – after all, it was only a one mile run. I turned left again onto the main access road in the area – Metro road and then after another couple of minutes onto my street again.
I was back at the house in just over 10 minutes. I felt ok but I think Dorothy was relieved to see me back and not dead either from a coronary or hypothermia. She asked how I like it and I told her that it was great – more fun that I thought it would be. She then told me that my office phone had rung about three separate times.
I quickly checked the messages and it was Anne, Christian and then Anne again. Decided to call Anne first. It was not what I expected, she was crying.
“Paul, I am so sorry – I just lost it” I suddenly realized that she was the one who had looked bad in that meeting and she knew it. I also realized that she was genuinely mortified.
“Anne, its ok – I will help get you guys there but work with me” I stammered
“I know! I should be more patient and less aggressive. Now everyone thinks I am such a bitch”
“And they think I am an arrogant asshole engineer”, I laughed. “That’s why they want to send me to business school to get an MBA”
She was quite for a moment “Really? Paul, that’s wonderful!” I suddenly realized she hadn’t know that and maybe probably shouldn’t have. “Well, its sort of in confidence, Anne”
“Oh, don’t worry Paul, I think it is a great idea and I am not jealous – we are at different places in our career, you and I.” Hell, Anne was doing ok – this conversation was not what I expected.
After some further discussion, we agreed to the basics of Christian’s plan and that I would meet with her for lunch the following day to work out the logistics. After assuring each other that there were no hard feelings on either side, something that turned out to be absolutely true, by the way – we turned out the best of friends. I called Christian.
“What the hell was that” he snarled. Christian never used the mildest profanities and the thought of him snarling was something that would never have entered my head.
“Well, I guess it got out of hand” stammering seemed to be my method of expression that day.
“Paul, Anne was completely humiliated in that meeting – her career at this company damaged. You looked like the arrogant engineer you are but your track record bought you some slack – she doesn’t get that. We need an effective director of operations and she may not be able to fill that role anymore.”
Oh, Christ, I thought. I just got Anne fired.
“Are you still going to that seminar tonight?” he asked. I said yes.
“I don’t know whether to tell you not to bother or to make sure that whoever you meet there loves you – by God you need that training”
“You and I will talk in the morning.” He concluded, clearly really not pleased.
------------
I drove down to the city that night to go to the seminar and while I was driving thought about Harvey talking about running. I didn’t want to think about what else had happened that day, I was frustrated, embarrassed and pretty worried. I needed my job and I liked it, I also felt genuinely bad for Anne.
I had enjoyed the run and understood what Harvey had told me about running for the first time: “one foot in front of the other, mate” it was all about just moving forward. Harvey was a smart man – perhaps the smartest I had ever met. That made me think about something else he told me about - “The Peter Principal”. The Peter Principal is actually fictional but probably true nonetheless. The idea is that in a business environment, you promote the people who do a good job, and if they still do a good job, you promote them again. So when do you stop promoting them? Well, when they stop doing a good job, but the problem is now you have someone in a position who is not doing a good job. The Peter Principal is about the fact that invariably people are promoted one level about their absolute competence. Now there are three things you can do with a person in that position:
- You can leave them there and hopefully they will not do too much damage
- You can have them revert to their old position and hopefully they can live with the loss of face implicit in that situation
- You can train them to be able to do their new job
Oh my god. It suddenly all made sense – I knew I was a good telecommunications engineer, vanity aside very good, but I was a terrible manager. They needed someone who was good at both and this MBA thing was their way of growing their own.
The seminar was pretty good, actually, and they gave me a lot of material to read along with an application and a video to show my spouse. When I got back to the house Dorothy and I sat down to watch the video and then she asked me what I was going to do. I said that I was inclined to do it but that it would be a fair bit of work even getting through the application process. It has occurred to me that given some of the health gains that I had made, I was going to have to manage my time very carefully to ensure that I kept exercising, had time for my family and my job while doing the MBA. We agreed to sleep on it and she went off to bed.
I went into my home office, sat down on the computer and started to look at what I would have to do to write a GMAT. There was an email note from Harvey wishing me luck with the seminar and that made me think about the run today. I had actually enjoyed it. I found myself looking up running articles on the internet and found that a Canadian Bank was sponsoring a ½ marathon in September – just around the time I would be starting my MBA. Suddenly it all clicked. I went to bed.
Dorothy stirred when I got into bed “are you ok?” she asked
“Dorothy, what would you say if I told you that I just decided to apply to get into the MBA program and that I also just decided to run the Toronto ½ Marathon in September.”
