My Advice to Allan

Charting a way forward from the open door trap
So what should Allan do about his predicament?

• Is it all Doom and Gloom, or
• does he have any positives?
• Should he up and leave? (There's that should word again! . . . I'll talk to it one of these days) and
• if not, how does he behave going forward?
  
• and what about the company? What's all of this doing to the organization itself?

Lets take these one at a time, and look at the advice I gave him.
What are his positives?Well, to begin with he has a case for constructive or wrongful dismissal in the future. Clearly, the employer has caused a number of unfair conditions to arise:

• He has been disintermediated in his functional role
• Time has passed to such an extent that he can no longer be held solely accountable for any further collapse in morale (if there was a morale problem!)
• Senior Management have behaved negligently towards its shareholders by allowing the situation to persist

The first two bullets are clearly prejudicial to him and if he ever is dismissed or disciplined on their account he will have a strong case to make against the company. He is fortunate in that he knows that the situation is unfolding, so he can do some things to protect himself from downstream troubles:

1. Keep a daily Journal
2. Maintain his professional conduct and behave scrupulously fairly to everyone in the team
3. Be fully transparent in all his dealings with the team and the client

Go or Stay?
Now that's a contextual question. To quote the shyster lawyer "it all depends".
My answer is Stay if a suitable combination of the following apply:

• he is persuaded in his own mind that he has retained the goodwill of the key influencers in the team
• its not personal (i.e. the attack is on the team, and he is merely the quickest target to bring the team down)
• he can continue to fulfill his role without damaging his cv
• he can maintain his personal integrity and keep his sense of injustice in check
• there is no succession plan to hand over his duties (start immediately to set that to rights!)
• he is approaching a milestone that will allow him to disengage gracefully

Otherwise, get out as fast and as gracefully as possible. Without recriminations. This is a time to resign without apology or explanation: serve notice and go. Its a small world out there, and one doesn't want to get into a "he said, I said, they did, I did" discussion.

How to behave if one stays
Over and above the three points above ~

1. Try to avoid one on one situations. That way one won't land in the "he said/she said" situations.
2. Do NOT try to double guess who your accuser is. There lies a pathway to madness which will surely undo one. Let go of all personal feelings in this matter. In many cases, people who push back hard are merely behaving in accordance with their natures: its not personal. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that people who don't share one's opinions are necessarily working for one's downfall. "If you can't let go of your paranoia, then get out of the situation".
3. Observe my Grandmother's first Rule: "If it's not written down, it don't even exist". Confirm everything within the team in writing. This is a great rule to keep in any situation. Sometime in the future I will blog it.
4. Build a succession plan. Plan to get out of the project, by empowering Junior Management and handing over duties.
5. Build a collaborative structure. This is a great time to build a collaborative work structure, its the best defense against team mates who wish to undermine Management or the team. Its also the best defense if the project is under attack, rather than the individual.

And what about the Organization?
Well, now, the cliched quote goes that a fish rots from its head, not its tail. But, as Joseph Wambaugh noted, "the whole fish still goes bad". So this is a company that is headed in directions that no sane person would want to stay with. It appoints Managers, and then acts in ways that disempower them. It allows Kafkaesque situations to arise. It encourages a playground attitude. It's Senior Management is clearly immature and naive.

My long term advice to Allan is: Sooner or later, leave. You deserve better.