The Right Foundation for Supporting the Workload

In 2012, I made my first significant career change in more than a decade. While I had a hand in various human resource tasks and projects during the dozen or so years I led our facility’s behavior-based safety process and supported many of our company’s locations across North America that were active in that same initiative, this move pulled me completely aware for safety and landed me neck deep into a world I previously only thought I understood. As I wrapped up Leading With a Clear Purpose, I shared how my own purpose evolved over time. I had found tremendous fulfillment in being able to pass along some of the tools I had learned to use as I advanced in my own career, and see my peers earn similar opportunities for advancement as a result. It seems like moving into a role where my complete focus would be on our “human resources” was the next logical step to take.

What I experienced during the next two years or so was anything but that! I could look across the hall into my former office, but that’s as close as I go to feeling the kind of purpose I had been able to draw from developing the folks I worked with through that behavior-based safety process. I typically got to my office before 6am, initially to have some undistracted time to focus on the college courses I was taking with hopes of keeping me from going to jail for violating some sort of employment law. It didn’t take long for the folks whose shift began at 6:30am to realize they could catch me with any issues they had before their day started and the folks whose shift ended at the same time to bend my ear on their way out. By the time I worked through all that each day, the rest of the office staff started rolling in and it was time for me to get started with my daily routine of working through time and attendance issues, internal or external interviews to fill open positions, or address any disciplinary issues that needed my attention - and all of them ended up needing my attention…

Since I shared it in detail in both What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) and Leading With a Clear Purpose, I’ll only mention it briefly again now for perspective. During the final eighteen months I worked in that role, I hired 225 external candidates and led interview teams to fill what felt like at least half that many positions with internal candidates; and that only accounted for around half the time I was in the building. Throughout that last year and a half, I rarely left my office before 6:30pm and I remember walking out plenty of evenings between 7:30 & 8pm. Had that been where it stopped, 6am to 6:30pm from Monday through Friday, it wouldn’t have been much different from what I’ve seen most salaried employees juggle routinely or what Cindy and I had been doing for our entire married life between our regular jobs and any side projects we had going. But most certainly did not stop there! Phone calls through the night and on the weekends became far too normal. Carrying a laptop home on holidays or any time we left town for a few days was all but mandatory just to keep from falling behind.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I had become extremely effective at keeping all the proverbial plates spinning. The workload itself wasn’t all that bad. The most difficult part of it all, and what played a significant role in me making the decision to leave that organization after working there for almost my entire adult life to that point, was constantly hiring people to work for a management team that I no longer believed lived up to the core values detailed in our employee handbook - the same handbook that I had invested countless hours into producing the most recent revision…

Don’t mistake any of this for me attacking that organization for making me work too hard or having devious intentions. I have yet to find a way to excel in any role that carries even the slightest bit of leadership responsibility without putting in more than a 40 hour week. And while the company as a whole had indeed changed quite a bit over the nearly two decades I had been there, I can’t point to anyone at the executive level who had horns or carried a pitchfork. Looking back, I’m convinced that the deciding factor boiled down to no longer seeing where the things I valued most were valued by the people I reported directly to. As difficult as the decision was, I realized that it was time for a change - and that’s where we’ll pick up next time…