New Manager, Former Manager

My manager, Heidi, is leaving my company. She is adopting a baby, and has decided that she wants to stay home with her new daughter.  I totally respect and support her decision, but I am really bummed she won’t be my manager anymore. I really love working with her!

Happily, the person who is taking over as my manager is a co-worker that I admire. Her name is Tracy, and she is officially my boss on Monday.  My former manager and new manager are in the picture; Heidi is on the left, and Tracy is on the right.

Tracy and Heidi have done a great job with the transition. They even met with me in person to talk about performance reviews, and where I want to go over the next year. Performance reviews at my company are coming up soon, so it would be pretty awkward for Tracy to have to do my review with no input from Heidi. The review would say something like, “well, she has worked for me for three days, but she hasn’t complained so far.  On the other hand, she hasn’t trained one class, or produced any work product either… huh, maybe she sucks.” Thank goodness for a smooth and well thought out hand off!

On a related note, the position I had prior to joining my current team was eliminated.  Yikes! Now, was the position eliminated because the job because that position had no work to do?  No!  They just assumed that my group would absorb the work.  Not to mention, they did not even tell my boss’s boss! I feel no need to be included in high level business decisions.   Today I am a trainer, and I would just as soon be left out conversations that include words like “work flow”, “action item”, and “full time equivalent”, but I feel that someone whose title includes the words “director of training” (my boss’s boss, for example) ought to be forewarned about an entire training group being dissolved, and the work load coming our way.  Call me crazy!  Thanks to some quick thinking on the part of the people in my old position, and clever management on the part of my boss’s boss, today we interviewed some of that group for positions within my team. Yeah! I am happy because this could mean a training partner in Austin.

I am feeling grateful about the fact that I am in North Carolina for all of the changes, transitions, and interviews.  It was not planned, but it worked out well in the end.   I am out of practice with the travel.  In the past, a two week trip was a piece of cake, but it has been hard, and I am ready to go home. Tomorrow evening I fly back to Austin.