Being too good at your work can throw you out of work.

you can lose your job if are too good at your job - Shocked! right?

you can lose your job if you provide ideas for improving your department or organization. _ Shocked! Right?

you can lose the job if you are professional and always right.?

Let me explain all the shocking sentences or disrupters to your job.

The three strange disrupters that could get you into trouble are:

1) Performance

This seems like an odd disrupter. Don’t we get rewarded for performance? You would think so. But some departments, even whole organizations, seem prone to?generating more heat than light?– that is, creating the appearance of progress without being accountable for tangible results.

Four hours of work gets inflated to eight hours, grumbling surfaces whenever a new assignment comes in, and problems consume more time than possibilities.

In such an environment,?good performers disrupt mediocrity.

If you inadvertently upstage members of the team by producing an outstanding piece of work, they will be impressed, envious, and won’t forget.

If you diplomatically suggest at a staff meeting an idea you have about reprioritizing or restructuring for greater impact, your boss will appreciate your idea and feel slightly upstaged.

And, silly as it sounds, even if you regularly meet deadlines, your boss may not have thought through the sequel to the assignments he gave you and now doesn’t know what to do with the results. He procrastinates, you wait, and when you ask for an update more than once, he gets testy because you’re … well, pushy.

You will get a merit increase for outstanding performance. However, you may have been moved one ring out from the center for the pain you imparted.

2) Reasonableness

What baffles you is that the ideas and changes you propose seem so obvious, so simple, and so doable and yet never gain any traction in the organization.

Take, for instance, your cost-saving, streamlining idea to move a particular administrative process online. Sounds reasonable. However, support staff worries about what they will now do, yet they don’t speak up. And your boss? She’s uneasy that the fat weekly report won’t show up in her in-box, regardless if she was reading it or not. But she can’t admit that. So, your suggestion goes to the committee.

Then, one of your work buddies pulls you aside at lunch and suggests that, though folks admire you, you might want to stop trying to change everything and just focus on the work at hand. Don’t be getting people worried unnecessarily, he says.

Move back one more ring.

3) Professionalism

Sometime during the first year of your new job, you realize that the currency of your education and expertise, which landed you the position and, you thought, credibility and authority, didn’t end up buying you much.

As the communication director, maybe you turned the organization’s publications into a portal in a culture where publications are still sacred.

As the new lawyer, you closed loopholes to protect the organization only to hear that some in management considered you unrealistic and inflexible.

As a freshly-minted MBA in operations, you recommended a systems change to decrease inventory costs, and then saw the suspicious looks of veteran production managers.

Sure,?you get nods for smarts, but you also get demerits for always taking the side road. You’re not considered a team player. You are now on the outside.

What often happens to most nice disrupters (a.k.a change agents) is that they get marginalized. No one can find – or admit — fault, yet no one completely warms up to you. The boss likes your affability but not your subtle intimidation. He can’t fire you for cause and, besides, he doesn’t want to look like he made a mistake hiring you. He hopes you might consider leaving, though he can’t suggest that.

Sometimes this malaise lasts for years until, finally, some fortuitous opening occurs: you get squeezed by an inflated ethical issue; you get blamed for some executive gaffe or a budget crunch hits. Then, you are likely to be reassigned or offered an attractive severance. In other words, you don’t get fired, you just lose your job.

I know this all sounds bleak, but it’s too real for too many talented individuals in the wrong place at the wrong time in their careers. If you’re caught in this vise, be encouraged.

I understand you are a talented individual, you are skilled at your job. But remember these 5 Affirmations:

1. You are an instigator for change because you are wired to serve people not processes. Just be sure you check yourself regularly to prevent frustration from turning instigation into aggravation.
2. Your colleagues do like you — really. It’s just that you raise the questions they have tried to repress. With kids in college and fear of job loss, they worry more about security than options.
3. You are in your current position to increase your professional value, which adds to the value of your employer whether or not some people see it that way.
4. You wish the world acted reasonably, but you are a change instigator because you are intuitive. You perceive and understand what others cannot. It’s a gift. Treasure it.
5. Your resume is your journal of growth. Add to it regularly.