I took a position with a new employer, leading a project that had been floundering. This company had just under 800 clinics nationwide, and the project was to roll out a hosted software supply chain solution to each of the clinics. This solution would bring about many benefits for the company and the clinics, but after one year of the rollout, only about 10% of the clinics were using it. Out the door went the rather ineffective first guy tasked with the rollout, and in I came.

Now, I’ve been an industrial engineer in previous work lives, so knew all about the conflicts that can arise when work processes and procedures are changed. And this was a big change for the clinics; one that was accepted well by some, and not at all by others. Nine months later, on the date that I was given to have all clinics compliant, I had all but 2 on-boarded, (and the CEO made sure those 2 were in line within days). I remember being asked by the president of the company, about a month before my target date, what my fallback plan was. I replied that I didn’t need a fallback plan, because my team of three others and me were not going to fail, and we didn’t.

The accolades piled in after the completion of the project, from practitioners to the CEO. A common theme of the attaboys was that this was the first project in the company’s history that had been completed on time. Considering the company was founded during the Civil War, that is a long time.

You might be wondering why I’m telling this story on a question about being fired; it’s because I was let go shortly after the completion of the project, with the reason being that at times I was “just too direct”. So the guy that rolled the software to 80 clinics in a year was fired for not getting more clinics in line during his time, and the guy that rolled it out to the remaining 720 clinics in 9 months was fired for doing exactly what he was hired to do.

The real reason behind me being let go was a very insecure manager, who couldn’t handle the accolades I was given, considering his involvement in the project was basically zero. The guy worked remote, flew in from time to time to strut around the office, and actually just got in the way. He couldn’t stand the fact that no one looked at him as driving the project.

I hesitate to call what I did “revenge”, but rather clearing the air on my work while I was with the company, as well as letting that company know about some potential issues my former manager could be creating.

I sent an email to the VP of HR, (among others), in which I defended my MO while employed; it was never going to be a popularity contest. In the email, I included a nice cross section of quoted accolades, including who had sent them and when. Oddly enough, these accolades included some from the manager himself. And I also mentioned three verifiable instances of my former manager’s behavior that could potentially cause issues for the company. The first was him calling a member of my team an unflattering term, based on her hair style, on her very first day with the company. The second was loudly implying, in an open office, that the manager of a team working closely with us was hiring only young attractive males; he called it “cougaring up the hiring practice”. And the last potential issue was this individual turning off some of the financial controls built into the hosted software we were rolling out. Considering the company had failed a couple of SEC audits, and was working to dig itself out of that mess, having this guy do what he did was kind of a big thing... I only learned about this action after being called into a large meeting with the controller, who started off the meeting by lighting me up. After I told her that I was leaving the room, unless she changed her tone, followed by the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about, my manager literally raised his hand, like he was in grade school, and pled guilty.

My communications to the VP were not altogether altruistic; I was hoping to negotiate a better severance, for doing the right thing throughout, which included doing what I was brought in to do, and at the same time being a good corporate citizen. Of course, my request for better severance was declined, because corporate life… I did learn later that the three incidents I mentioned were all investigated, and of course, found to be true. That was pretty much the end of my former manager’s career with that company, although he was allowed to skulk around for awhile, with all of his direct reports removed, before he moved on.