Have You Met Sally?

Interesting week. Had a call from an old client I haven't spoken to in years! She's just changed jobs and has a new employer… after only three weeks in her new role she's learned she's jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

I DO wish she'd called me before she made that decision!

I'll call her Sally – of course, that's not her real name. Sally is a very smart sales person and has worked her way up into a responsible position – she was actually head-hunted by the firm she is with now, who hearing of her success rate and that of the team she used to head, wanted her for their own organization. However, now that they have her, they want her to do things THEIR way.

Sally has tried to explain the obvious… that being that if doing things their way worked, they wouldn't have been so keen to have her on the team, and the reason she was so successful was because she did things a little differently. Of course, they don't care about that. They just want her to toe the line, do things their way, and somehow be as successful as she was in her old firm. This is actually not an uncommon scenario!

Sally and I tossed around some ideas and she's going to try them. So far she hasn't had any success "talking" to her boss about the situation, but if they don't want her to "walk" it may be in their best interests to compromise. Not that I suggested she threaten them! She calls her new boss "the bear with no hair" – let's just say that among other things, he's a little moody! She'll have to pick her time.

I told Sally that sometimes results speak louder than words and she needs to prove to them her system will work for their organization every bit as well as it did with the last company – and remind them, isn't that why they hired her? I suggested something else to her too…

We'll see! I'll keep you informed!