Tired of doing "nothing"

As I mentionned in one of my earlier blog's, the organisation I work for is changing. I will report to another boss in another department from September onwards - except that I don't know who, which department, and it has been made clear that my opinion doesn't matter. And we'll have to live with the uncertaintly for another 1-2 months. Fine, I understand, big change sometimes requires diluting the democratic principle - otherwise so extensively valued within the company. But, grrr.

Not that my days are not filled in the mean time - trying to squeeeze some extra IT budget, debating with project managers on the added value of some of their projects, listening to employee concerns that I cannot solve immediately, trying to create awareness on data governance and the need for more flexible BI,.. Sounds like a manager's job, no ?

Today I also felt, for the first time, peer pressure. That is, colleagues playing politics to protect their future interests and littering in my backyard. Fine, I understand, change brings opportunity to everybody.

I feel at times overwhelmed by the amount of things to learn to get the middle manager's job right. And then I read on leadership excellence at work in Afghanistan,

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1982093,00.html

"It's not about how you engage the enemy so much now. It's how you engage your district governor," says Brown. "That's a huge change for guys like us — call us knuckle draggers or whatever, but we weren't trained to do COIN [Gen. McCrystal's counterinsurgency strategy]."

This knuckle dragger is dragging his ass to sleep. See ya.