The boss’s vote of confidence turns the tide

You never know when your job may be on the line. It could be due to fairly straightforward reasons, like budget cuts, or more sinister and unpredictable factors, like a boss who abuses the power of the position.

This story happened years ago when I was working for a large financial institution. I was moved to an operations management role following my assignment to assist with the conversion from Honeywell to IBM mainframes.

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Our team within the operations management group had many responsibilities, including change management, problem management, and job scheduling. I guess you could describe it as doing everything that it was not worth funding a whole new team to do.

His reputation proceeds him

The Head Honcho of the computer operations group (my boss’s boss) was not well liked. He was a very prickly character who found fault with almost everything. To put it mildly, he was not easy to talk to, and you never knew how harsh he’d be. I actually heard him say once, “No one ever accused me of having tact!” He started pushing our team to quickly move from one of the scheduling programs to a new one because, of course, money could be saved if we could convert in time to avoid paying the annual license fee for the older program.

While wearing my “change management” hat, I heard from many on the development teams that they were worried about this upcoming conversion. They were getting conflicting information from the operations group and weren’t clear on what they needed to do.

For example, the target date had been changed several times, and the latest date given for the conversion happened to be right around the same time they had other major projects that were due. Also, the team responsible for the scheduling conversion had provided little or no information about what actions the dev teams would need to plan for and to ensure their projects would not be affected by the conversion.

I approached my boss about this. He suggested we meet with the Head Honcho to discuss it. All I wanted to tell him was that the operations team needed to provide more detailed communication so that the dev team knew what was required of them to ensure the project succeeded and met the deadline. I was more than willing to help coordinate those communications.

Ire and intimidation

The meeting did not go as planned, to say the least. I was about three sentences into my pitch to the Head Honcho, when he leaned across his desk, shook his finger at me, and said loudly, “You shut up and you listen!”

Given my military background (six-plus years as a U.S. Navy officer), I took his order to mean “do not speak until I ask you to speak.” He then proceeded to rant about how critical this project was for saving money and the time and effort spent on the conversion project to date. My boss tried to explain that all I was asking was for more information-sharing with the dev teams to ensure this and future projects were successful.

After a few minutes, the Head Honcho wound down and dismissed me, asking my boss to remain behind.

The tide turns

Somehow, my boss must have said the magic words. As requested, the operations conversion team provided better information to the dev teams, and the project was successfully completed by the Head Honcho’s deadline.

I didn’t have any more run-ins with the Head Honcho, although our first few encounters after this meeting were strained, to put it mildly. But he must have been paying attention to my work.

Several months after that fateful meeting, I was having a drink with some friends at a local watering hole. The Head Honcho walked in with a few other IT managers, and they sat close to where we were sitting. He looked at me, raised his glass, and said, “You know, at one point I thought you were not worth much. But you’re a good guy!”

Somehow I’d gotten on his good side.

What I did not know until a couple of years later was that after I’d left that meeting, the Head Honcho told my boss, “He’s useless — fire him!” My boss stood up for me, explaining that I was a key resource in making sure projects were implemented smoothly. I was given a reprieve, and I ended up having a very long career at that bank — and I stayed long after the Head Honcho had left.

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This story, “The boss’s vote of confidence turns the tide,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.