They Came And They Conquered

Change.  Change.  Change. 

Shuffling the cards in the deck.  This is what is constantly happening if you’re near the top of the food chain in corporate America. 

Restructuring.  Reorganizing.  Revamping.  Streamlining.  Optimizing.   

In a sense, it literally is ‘Game of Thrones’ unleashed.  How high can you climb and how long can you stay there? 

You place your bets.  Choose your side.  Make your alliances and then you’re a player on the board.  If things work out, you sail off into the sunset.  If you choose wrong, then you cash-in that severance check and start again on the other side. 

We get it. 

The corporate machine shoves all that superficial culture crap and diversity down young people’s throats so that the HR boxes can be checked.  But there is no denying it, this is a win-at-all-costs game.  We take no prisoners. 

This is capitalism baby – bright and shiny in all its fucking sparkling and eye-blinding glory. 

And if people get leveled along the way to building a staircase into the sky, if lives happen to be shattered so that the next CEO can claim the Iron Throne; fuck’em.  Get off our board, because you know what you signed up for. 

Welcome to the high-flyin’, high falutin’, baller tossin’ jaded world of suits and ladders. 

And may the best man, or woman, win… 

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They came and they conquered.  

“Holy Fucking Shit…”  I said to myself as I let out a sigh so long it might as well just wrap itself around my ankles and knock me off my feet. 

These past two weeks have been brutal – a PowerPoint and Excel quagmire of unclear requests, presentations and expectations.  Muddled motives festering in people’s minds like a disease.  Basically, your typical shit-show of corporate leadership running around like a chicken with its head chopped off because they have no fucking clue what they are doing. 

Sound familiar?  Probably, because that’s 90% of corporate America in a nutshell.  And why have my two weeks been so bad?  Because the new guys have taken the reins, and the standard chaos has followed like a riptide swallowing everything in its grasp. 

Literally two weeks prior to COVID-19, my company went through a major hierarchy shift.  Our President residing over all the USA took a new CEO post at another global company.  And yes, the timing could not have been worse (obviously he didn’t bet on a global pandemic eating the world).  So, he does what any new guy does, restructures the whole shebang and puts his loyal and suck-up cronies in place.  But can I really blame him?  Of course not.  He’s got a new kingdom to defend and he needs to start building that army to keep the peace. 

Now, I can’t speak for your company, but my current employer is pretty fucking terrible when it comes to transitions.  Instead of placing the best man (or woman) for the job as a replacement, we like to take someone from an entirely different region and business line and put them in charge.  Maybe for some industries this might work, but for ours, it is a disaster waiting to happen. 

But it is what it is, so you do the best with what you can.  And even though I bitch and moan on this blog, as my outlet for sanity, I do try to play the optimist more often than not. 

Fortunately for me, this isn’t my first rodeo.  I’ve seen the trend over the years and have it dialed down to a science.  There’re really only two options for the new guy – three technically, but no one ever does nothing and keeps the status quo (who the fuck would do that?) – so you either break up the business lines or you vertically integrate. 

You can time this shit to a dime.  The new head honcho comes in, the company is vertically integrated, so he decides to break it up.  If the company is separated by business line, then he combines them.  It’s basically guaranteed.  And all the people like me, the lower tier executives, wait for the shift, hold our breaths in the balance and then get back to work. 

And this is exactly what happened to my company two months ago.  The new USA president came in, assessed the situation.  He saw the last guy had vertically integrated, so he split shit back up among the business lines and regions and here we go again on the same old merry-go round. 

Even though corporate management becomes a carousel, companies themselves don’t like to truly change. 

Now, if you don’t work for a major public corporation, then this little two-stage dance might seem foreign to you.  Why the fuck might they do that, you ask? 

And it’s simple really, it all comes back to ego and expectations. 

When you’re the top dawg, the pressure is excruciating.  You’re judged by your 10-Qs, 10-Ks and have a daily stock ticker that screams your scorecard at the end of each trading session.  You only have so much time and goodwill to spend before the ever-constant revolving door hits you in the ass or the next predator in line is able to circle in for the kill.  

Plus, you don’t get to these high-level posts by accident.  You might think the current leader is a moron or incompetent, but they can’t always be in the right place at the right time.  They know what’s expected of them.  Even with an insane amount of luck, they still have to be a cold-blooded killer at times. 

Yet, on every blue moon, the stars align and there proves an exception to the rule, and these are the outliers that you probably do want to be working for… or searching for – real change agents.  But the odds you might get to see one of these rare and beautiful unicorns during your working years are slim to none.  These enigmas get all the press, because the status quo just doesn’t make the headlines anymore. 

But you know what your task is now. 

So, the next time you’re sitting at your computer, slaving away at whatever tedious moron-request your unreasonable boss is demanding of you, and you see that pop-up email in Outlook about the next organizational change.  Take a click and note who the new generals in play are and determine what shifting battlefield you’re standing on. 

And don’t stay hunkered down in the barracks for too long.  Sift through the smoke and debris and make your move.  But don’t take too long.  Be quick about it – decisive and bold.  Because if the new regime is any close semblance to what I think it is, then it’s probably only a matter of time before the troops start gathering. 

Because the new kings in town will remember, that there’s always someone next in line, and it probably won’t be too long… 

Before they come and are conquered themselves. 

-Q-FI 

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How goes it for all my corporate peeps out there?  Seen any significant change whispering in the wind?  Or ever had a dance with a new regime?