Go With The Flow - A Timely Reminder

It's my experience that the Universe has a tendency to give you a good kick in the ankles every so often, to remind you to stay on the right track.


A bit of background - I spent 4 years as an apprentice, 2 years as a design engineer, cross-trained as a technical author, got promoted to team leader within 12 months of cross-training, got promoted again to project manager (and trained as a PRINCE2 Practitioner), avoided redundancy by cross-training as a software tester, cross-trained again as a database administrator, then got made redundant (along with the other 599 employees in that division).

After several years temping/contracting around young children, I got employed as a Bills of Material engineer, designed a specialist corporate database before leaving for a job paying £6k more, where I sped through the ranks from senior developer to acting technical director, via managing a team of 14 developers as well as managing the outsourced development of certain projects. When the company went into liquidation I did more contracting, including project management, before needing to get enough payslips to justify remortgaging my house to get my ex's name off the mortgage.

Again, in the space of 3 years I'd gone from developer to senior developer to acting IT director, this time via project management of a business intelligence team. Circumstances surrounding the fallout of my divorce then meant I needed to change jobs to work closer to home and I went in as a senior database specialist before moving to a company where, I thought, I would be able to work my way up the corporate pecking order again.

The latest nudge towards my self-employed destiny got delivered via a corporate email, which suggests that, either nobody bothered to read my CV when I applied for this particular post, or they read it and thought I was lying:


Hi Anna

I have had an opportunity to catch up with Mark following his return from annual leave and he has asked me to pass on the following feedback regarding your application for the Project Manager role.

The main reasons that we chose not to progress your application on this occasion was particularly because we were looking for an experienced Project Manager with significant experience of working and leading a Business Intelligence team. As you are no doubt aware the role has significant people management responsibility (15-20 FTE's), managed through 2 direct reports, we are looking for an individual who can demonstrate that they have managed large teams, with significant emphasis on driving excellent performance through delivery of business wide projects.

The role, we believe is not ideal for an individual who is looking for their first project management role, or who is looking to move away from a predominantly technical role into and into a mainstream project management role.

I appreciate that this may have come as a disappoint to you, and I do hope that it will not discourage you from applying for positions in the future.

kind regards

I won't be "applying for positions in the future"; there seems little point when the company I work for can't be bothered to give honest feedback based on actually reading my CV rather than on assumptions based on my current role within the company.

I will be working flat out on building my skills so I can develop an excellent team of productive distributors.

I don't need corporate validation to prove anything to myself. I'm grateful to have a timely reminder about that.

I Love My Kleeneze Business!

I know I've said this before, but the day job is not what it could be. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about what some of our team is capable of - we are, after all, all multi-faceted individuals with our own interests, talents and motivations. To see that enthusiasm belittled, that passion for change warped into apathy, that expertise ignored - to me, that is the antithesis of proper management, let alone true leadership.

It just goes to show, all the Dale Carnegie Group leadership courses in the world can't change a person if they don't see the need to change...

So, today went much as expected. Managers held meetings and sidestepped the expertise within the team, yet again. I watched an entire team go through the motions, all giving no more than 50% of their effort to their day job, letting the minutes tick by, not bothering to learn new skills or polish old ones. After all, why bother when your managers "know" what you're capable of and won't let you out of your pigeon-hole?

Not me, though. I'm in early, out on time and working as effectively as possible during my day job hours. Why? Because it makes sense. I can catch up on EzeReach messages first thing, while nobody else is in. I can check emails, tweak online adverts and tune plans during my lunch break. If my workload is being completed on or ahead of schedule, nobody can complain if I take the odd 5 minute break to talk to a prospect, or network with others in the company.

Then, when I get home, I'm energised to do the nightly delivery and collection of catalogues; the delivery of orders and the processing of new orders. I'm fired up by the thought that my adverts are being looked at and generating enquiries, that the retail business is building momentum. I'm focussed on what's important.

Four months ago, I was stressed, hated the monotony of the day job and despaired of ever having savings, let alone a decent pension pot.

Now, after being a Kleeneze distributor for 3 and a half months, I have my own business, I'm saving money for the first time since I became a parent and potential team members are contacting me.

Life is great and I love my Kleeneze business! Know anybody who would be interested in earning an extra income? Send them my way, I promise to look after them.

Kleeneze Success - The Confidence Builder

I work at my Kleeneze business part-time, as do almost all new distributors. I fit it around a busy life which includes a 45 minute each-way commute and a full-time IT job in a corporate head office.

Anybody who has ever worked in a corporate head office department will have experienced that wonderful mix of office politics that flourishes in environments endowed with rigid rule-following, ever-tightening budgets and complacent staff waiting for their final-salary pension pots.

I hate office politics. Traditionally, I'm the sort of character that takes the kicking from people both clambering up and sliding down the greasy pole. I can't cope well with a passive, pessimistic reaction to office politics; it actually makes me physically ill, with psychosomatic symptoms ranging from mild hair loss to eczema and other allergic reactions. But, as anybody who has ever tried it will tell you, standing up for yourself against master office politicians will scar you even more permanently.

Prior to joining Kleeneze, I'd experienced enough office politics in both this company and my two previous jobs to convince me that I just wasn't cut out for a 9 - 5 corporate life. Unfortunately, I still had to deal with the playground tactics around me and it wasn't going well.

Today, I got side-swiped, yet again, by masters of the craft. Normally, that would be enough for the allergic reactions to start showing up over the weekend. Not this time.

With the confidence built up over the past few weeks with Kleeneze, I took a different approach. I side-stepped the potential political quagmire, politely drawing a line at the edge of the quicksand, and walked away from the fray.

You know what? It feels wonderful. I'll be at home at 6pm tonight and my real job starts then - collecting catalogues, bagging up orders and filling in my tracking sheets. I already have enough orders collected in this week to know I've achieved my 10% bonus for the second period running.

The day job just gave me a reminder about why I'm doing Kleeneze and I'm so grateful to the political idiots in my department for doing so! Who says negatives can't inspire you?