Your Face Doesn't Fit

This is a hard one to write. It’s a may never see the light of day and if it does then you will know that I held my breath when I posted it.

There are times when you are simply the wrong person in the wrong place. It’s not you and it’s all about you at the same time.

For years I have seen organisations turn their heroes into zeros. To move people onwards and out when their faces just don’t fit any longer.

Sometimes it is because the person has decided that they can’t lead with any integrity any longer, so they start being less compliant, being more challenging, asking those tricky questions, and standing aside from the pack they once were part of. Until they just have to go. NDA or no NDA.

Sometimes it’s a new leader, who wants to bring in their favourite people, the ones that they know have their backs, that have followed them from place to place. It’s nothing personal, it’s not that you aren’t good at what you do, but the cold hard truth of it is that you are never going to get a chance to prove it. You’ll be chilled out, frozen out, eventually turfed out before the favourite person comes in to take your job.

Sometimes the winds of change blow through a place and the hard work you just keep working at, really isn’t the hard work that’s needed any longer. It’s a different kind of hard work. It’s a have a drink after work where the real work gets done kind of hard work, a swallow that principle and just carry on kind of a hard work, the SLT WhatsApp group where the decisions actually get made, that you weren’t invited to, kind of hard work.

Sometimes it’s that the face that you were brought in to be, the very thing that the organisation said it needed, is the thing that will see you out on the bones of your bottom in the end. They weren’t quite as ready as they said they were for the changes they brought you in to make. And no, they didn’t actually have your back in the end. Did they.

Sometimes they are clumsy, in the pursuit of their own outcomes, career progression, OBEs, and behave badly. It’s not personal to you, it’s personal to them and the fact that maybe you weren’t quite as malleable as they thought you were. And they aren’t quite as good as everyone thought they were and you caught them out.

Sometimes the situation you are in becomes untenable, maybe some wrong doing on your part, something that could be learnt from, moved on from, somehow becomes bigger than you and it’s time to move on with dignity and grace before you are moved on.

Sometimes you have just not got it in you to keep on keeping on. That’s ok too.

I see far too many good people treated badly. Too many public servants that can no longer serve because they just don’t have it in them. So damaged by the organisations that they gave their heart and soul to that it can take years to recover their sense of self and professional identity. If they make it that far.

So if you are still reading, because this resonates, then this one is for you. The walking wounded. The ones who have given their all, only to find themselves in a position they never thought would happen to them. That can’t quite work out how they ended up here. Because it was never going to happen to you was it, it only happens to other people. We’ve all seen it.

I see you and I want to tell you that it gets better. You will get over this. You will find your way. One day, you will tell your story, and it will light the way for someone else. Someone who is just at the start of the journey that you have undertaken. Someone who thinks that their world has ended when it’s only just begun.

Ok.