I’ve had a frustrating two weeks of work.
Normally I try not to say negative things about work in my blog. Coworkers (past and present) have been known to read this, and my blog is a quick Google search away years from now for potential hiring managers… So while I may include commentary in here that is sometimes crude, sometimes inflammatory, sometimes controversial, I at least try to avoid talkin’ smack about my employer.
Today is an exception.
The past couple of weeks, I’ve struggled to feel like what I’m doing was meaningful, adding value to the customer and to the bank, and that in general I’ve been earning my paycheck. Sure, my teammates are hugely supportive and very complimentary towards the work I’ve been doing, many of the colleagues that I work with daily are great partners, and my boss has had a lot of encouraging things to say about my performance. It’s just hard for me to put down, in dollars and cents, what the net benefit of my engagement has been.
Let me give you an example: in a different role, I led a project that saved the bank about a million and a half dollars per year. That was a HUGE accomplishment for me, and helped bolster my professional ego a lot. In my most recent role, I helped contribute to some gigantic leaps in some very important measurements, particularly in the employee satisfaction ratings on our annual survey, which had me floating on air for a month.
Part of the problem, I think, is that my three months in this new role has largely been about learning the business and “putting out fires.” The area that I’m in has been under siege since the beginning of the year, due to much higher than expected workloads, and we’re finally getting it settled. These are good things, but the past three months hasn’t let me show the kind of long-term dollars-and-cents results that look good on a performance review.
It’s important work, and I feel like I’m doing it well, but there are days when I finish up after the sun has gone down (sometimes right in time to go to bed, exhausted) and have this nagging sense of ennui about things… Like what I’m doing is spinning my wheels, not contributing enough to the bottom line, and not utilizing my skills and talents (and there are some!) to the fullest.
Then I saw this, and I got over it:
Seriously, special shout-out to my current teammates and my boss, all of whom rallied together for me this week. Stuff was getting to me — especially on Tuesday, when frankly I wanted to see if the custodial department was hiring — and they all did a great job of knocking me out of my funk and getting my head back in the game. As frustrating as work can be sometimes, having good people to be stuck there with certainly makes all the difference.
Kevin,
Sometimes you have to get things caught up and settled down (which is a major task unto itself at times) before you can truely show advancement and growth. That has been your focus since you started the current job. You are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and you’ve been in the tunnel so long the light is a little scary. Keep plugging away and your true worth to the company and the customers will come through. Trust me when I tell you that if you had tried to “grow and improve” the group while they were still in the muck, you would have failed miserably and been in more of a funk at having failed than showing that you can help clean up the backlog and then grow the group.
Stay strong little brother.