Re: Avoiding "brain drain" in the corporate realm

[johndageek]

sigh. The joys of corporate America. The opinion of those who have no creative juices, is that if we standardize, documentize, bounderitize and quantitize all aspects of creativity, anyone can be creative. While in reality all that has been done is that the creative person is unable to create because all of the above itizing has made change very difficult, so the creative person spends more time fighting for the right to do something new, then spends more time proving that the newness will provide a measurable benefit (as well as all tools necessery to metricize the project). . . 'Nuff said.

Now, how can one be creative and avoid all the itizing above? Play by the rules for the corporate sponsored stuff, but do a little renegade stuf that adds value to someone's (or a bunch of someone'ss') life. That is how I started out many years ago. My ability to provide solutions outside the box got me a reputation of being a problem solver, so I became a "goto" guy. In my last position I got all the hard problems (read that as fun), when management was told by the experts that something could not be done, or would be wildly expensive, their answer became "let's ask John". Very cool position, I enjoyed it a lot. My current position is for a much larger Corporation (13000 employees). I started in an IT, DBA position, then began finding and solving problems (generally with technology) as a an aside to my main job. Over the years (note some patience is required) my position has changed several times, all technically involved, turning down promotions, because management is too political for me, and I would rather solve problems. In a meeting with upper management, my boss explained to them that we have a couple of project numbers to give John cover so he can go out, find problems and solve them. What is even better is that they aggreed!

Do I spend some time doing boring, paperwork? You bet! But while the paper is being shuffled, I am looking for the next cool thing to do.

My philosophy is that if I can save 50 Professionals 10 minutes a day with a tool set, I have paid my salary for as long as that tool is in place. Overlap that a few times and management smiles and gives more freedom.

Sound good? If this is what you want to do, all you have to do is work harder than expected doing what others think can not be done and making mundane tasks easier for others to do.

little hint - If you think of your job as boring and repressive, it will be, if you look at your job as a chance to do somethng fun to make others lives easier (and make the company more money), it will be. If not, there are other jobs.

On and on he rambles, but hopefully you enjoy the story!