Big letdown

What to do when your boss turns out to be the biggest obstacle to your projects: Quit?

I've been here only 14 months and I've done so much already. I don't think I should leave just yet. Robert Kuan, chairman of St. Luke's Medical Center, stated it succinctly: The secret to happiness is knowing when to let go. I hear you, Robert.

It's too soon. And there are other, alternative remedies to my situation still.

My boss pays lip service to going global, yet he is immersed in a feudal culture. His view of the successful corporate organization is the absence of dissent among and from the employees. In that case, what he wants are automatons, not people. He does not believe in the agree-to-disagree approach, dialog and negotiation. I am not surprised, considering the lack of two-way communication among the sectors and the levels of this organization.

So. There is an elephant in the parlor but no one is brave enough to admit to its presence.

When the proven formula, which is to get the right people on the bus and get the wrong people off, doesn't work for you because you can't get your boss, the administrator, off the bus, what do you do? The only alternative I see at this point is to work on him slowly and carefully.

Riverside General is headed for a crisis. Several crises, actually, from several sectors: the staff, the doctors, and the senior management team. Maybe even the Board. And when that happens, I'm going to receive the brunt of it, as those who've always opposed me and my projects will capitalize on the crisis and use me as a scapegoat. As my boss listens to these misguided, unenlightened buffoons, that does it for me. When that happens, time to go.

Which is sad because I don't really want to leave RGH and the people who've become such good friends. (And Freddy.)

Like I said, there are still options available to me. So the battle plan is this:

1. Get Freddy on the Board as a voting member. This ensures that I have representation and source of information at the top.
2. Continue working with the doctors with Freddy at the helm. This will deviate his attention from my efforts at staff development.
3. Start work on several fronts, such as the medcart and the history projects (a coffee table book on the hospital's history for its 50th anniversary). Again, a diversion.

In the meantime, I should lie low and make like daddy's good little girl doing daddy's bidding. More and more, I seem to be needing Freddy to succeed in many things. Freddy shouldn't be seen to be too close to me. It wouldn't do to get him identified with me.

Things aren't so bad, really. Just moving too slowly.