What do I want to be when I grow up?

The last few weeks have caused me to really take a hard look at where I am and what I really want to be when I grow up. I'm having the corporate dilema of not really knowing where I should be career-wise. And I'm combining that with the self-doubt of is it me, or the situation??

It's a shake to my confidence I've never had before. I have always believed that with enough work and learning from my mistakes I can figure out any job. It's not that I won't screw something up, it's that' I won't screw it up twice. That mentality has served me well. I'm not afraid to take on a role and I'm willing to accept responsibility when something goes south. Because then I can fix it and make sure it never happens again. But in my current role, it's just not working. Namely because even when I change things I seem to still be off the mark. I've been here 2 years and there's been a lot of work, but only minimal real success. Especially when you balance it with that I see as a profound lack of success.

I'm not sure if it's just me or a bigger issue.... Is it possible that I Just Don't Get It? Is there actually something TO Get? Or is the whole situation so messed up that I am really making the best of a crappy situation??? I really wish I knew.

It's tempting to assume the latter because it makes it not my fault. I tend to be somewhere in the middle. I don't think I really don't get it, but I do know I'm not really getting it either.

It comes down to a new dilema for me of what do I want to do vs what are my strengths vs what do I think my strengths are. And are those 3 things close to being aligned. For the first time, I just dunno.

Ahh the glory of Executive Panic (a.k.a White Knight Syndrome)

It seems to happen on a random schedule at the worst possible times --- Executive Panic.

We all know what it is -- When the big VP comes in and starts looking at programs only to realize that things aren't (and are never) exactly following the Utopia processes that exist. It's not that you were completely ignoring them, or that you didn't know. Sometimes life in the trenches mean you have to work around some things to get the job done.

The problem is that Sr Leadership are fine when things are going smooth, but when things get complicated, they come in and start hammering you because you did it. For me, it happened when a project went a little south. Ironically it didn't ever blow up the way Sr Exec think, but everyone seems to want to believe it did. The problem for me as a manager is that now I not only have to manage the team through the issues, but I also have to manage the Exec trying to be White Knights who want to come in and save the day.

I particularly like their use of Buzz words like:

• foster collaboration
• swat team the issues to a positive conclusion
• rally the troops to the success of the project
• understand how we can set this group up for success and support them

It's as if for the last 3 months I'd been ignoring the fact my team wants to be successful. The real irony was that after one of our "collaboration call"some members of the team were asking why the Exec were there and what the panic was all about.

That made my day.

So, as things start to calm a little, and the Exec are off panicing about something else, I am actually right back where I started from a project perspective. The issues I've escalated are still escalated, not resolved. And now I have the added work of picking up the pieces left by the Exec White Night as they move off to foster collaboration somewhere else in the company.