I've Fired Myself!

I love the Harvard Business Review.  It's normally my first "go to" for management related articles and I've just finished a great one.

Why You Should Fire Yourself by Ron Ashkenas explains that the beginning of a new year is a great time to fire yourself in your mind, think about what you would do to reapply for your new job and then think about whether you'd hire yourself again.  I love this exercise and it really got me thinking about my department, our goals, my performance and my career.  So, I've fired myself!

I took a long look at my own performance and behavior and found one his statements to be very true of me, which is, "Even when we intellectually understand that the world has changed and we need to do things differently, it's difficult to let go.  We become invested in what we've created and how we've learned to do things."  In my case, I may dig my heels in even deeper.

So firing myself to achieve some distance was a good first step and now I'm in the process of reapplying.  In taking a look at our department and the company as an outsider, I see things very differently.  The things that frustrate me as an "insider" seem very cool and progressive from a fresh perspective.  Knowing what I know now, I probably would approach my application process a little differently than I did the first time and talk to more people before accepting the job. 

Hey, that's something I can do now!  Imagine that...re-interviewing so to speak.  I think I'll go out and do that over the next couple of weeks and I'll let you know if I get the job.