It was around the late evening, maybe 7:45 pm and the sky was dark, The impressive Hong Kong skyscrapers were towering over the peaceful Victoria Harbour over a cool evening. We had just crossed the harbour into Hong Kong island from Kowloon, but my mind was not beholding the sight that was infant of me. Instead I was deep in thought when I sat in the upper deck of the ferry with the family.
I was deep in thought – reflecting on my conversation that I had just had minutes ago with the HR of my former company. I was planning to make a comeback to my former workplace at the invitation of my former boss who personally met up with me earlier in the month to share with me the scope and opportunity.
But there were issues surrounding my potential move back to my former place. From challenges to matching my current pay to company policies on hiring ex-staff, there were hurdles that needed to be overcome.
“I wonder if this move is even worth it” I admittedly told my wife who was seated beside me. Thoughts of me staying on in my current place began forming in my mind – after all, it wasn’t a bad place to be.
But to move, I was still itching for it. There was just some under currents in my current place that was bothering me. Minor intolerances, one might say, but little by little they add up. At that moment, I couldn’t put my finger to it, although the issues were prevalent – from resourcing and quality of work, to the kind of work we did and how we sold our work and value to the customer, I felt very unfulfilled, even though the money was decent. There was just something about my work that was unsettling.
I had work for months at end to pursue deals for the region. I think in the last 12 months, I had probably developed more than 10 opportunities, but nothing clicked, nothing got hooked. I found it discouraging at times, and more so at how cheaply my colleagues were pricing these solutions. It was as though, we were just so desperate to win we would undercut our price significantly to secure the award. This rattled me deeply – why were we doing this? Where was our value and our worth?
While I can’t comment much on the performance of the Bid and sales team prior to joining, ever since I joined, I felt the sales team was mediocre at best. It further got worse when the Sales Director decided to quit in May leaving the sales team in shambles. I had not thought well of them for some time, and now with the lead gone, everyone was just updating their weekly updates for the sake of updating.
I briefly shared this concern with my boss and the response I got was typical – the issue laid with external environmental issues. While that may be true, I still felt something was not right.
I couldn’t understand our GTM strategy (go to market). We pride ourselves by being the expert of the solution, yet that didn’t come out strongly – it wasn’t a well sung value proposition when it came to delivery. I shared this also with my boss but I didn’t get any satisfactory response either.
In the midst of all this, while on that ferry, on the way back to Kowloon, I got another message from my work line – we had finally one a long bid! Congratulatory messages were making its rounds and as I scanned through them, part of me felt relieved, part of me amused – was this a sign from God? – finally this would be a small deal I would have won! My thoughts went to feeling some sense of relief that I had finally delivered something, albeit it would be a deal of a small value.
I was not happy it was a small deal for the team, but as my boss liked to say – “something better than nothing!” . I told my wife about the win and she encouraged me on.
“Isn’t this the sign you wanted from God on whether you should stay?”
I shrugged. She had a point. For a couple of weeks now, I had been wondering whether I should move. Apart from the issues above, I felt I had achieved nothing, until this win announcement.
And so I messaged the sales lead to congratulate her on the win and enquired whether the customer also invoked the optional scope that we had proposed.
“Actually even the base scope has been removed – we had to keep the price very competitive” was the reply I got.
I was flummoxed. So even the base small deal was removed! I was vexed and appalled that the sales team would do this – without even having the courtesy to inform me or my boss that our scope had been removed!
That night I shot a long message to my boss calling this very unprofessional and unacceptable. It was my last straw. I couldn’t believe they had acted that way and I was extremely disappointed.
I think that moment was the turning point for me. In a twist of irony, I did get my answer and it was enough for me to make up my mind to move on. I felt there was no point staying in a company that didn’t know how to price and influence the customer and instead was just pandering to the customer’s demands to lower the price. We were shooting ourselves in the foot and it seemed to me, all management cared was meeting their sales numbers….at the expense of delivery quality.
For some weeks now, as the opportunity to work out something with my previous firm was cooking, I began reflecting on my time in my current place. I go back to what I wrote above – that I couldn’t put my finger on what was troubling me, but I think it wasn’t a matter of just putting a finger to it, there were too many issues at play, some at our team level, some at the structural level that was hampering our ability to win and also deliver.
Resourcing in my team was bad, and not carefully considered. I had to work (and I am still working) with a very low quality consultant to deliver work for one of our customers. What annoyed me was that don’t tell me my boss didn’t know of the quality of our consultants? It seemed to be the case, but I find it hard to believe, truth be told. I felt it was a matter of just looking away – don’t make it a problem if no one brings it up – kinda attitude.
Our quality of work was another issue I struggled with. The team was used to just copy and pasting, without much analysis and original thought. And what surprised me the most was this was encouraged by my fellow senior manager peer and to some degree by my boss too – I knew where they were coming from – its more efficient to just follow what’s already in place – but I think this was going a little too far and breeding crappy practices.
Next was the leadership – what can I say except I found them lacking inspiration, apart from the usual cliche platitudes of assuring the customer that we know our stuff and adoption was key and we had the know-hows to help them succeed. I didn’t buy a word of it – not because I didn’t think the team was bad, but I was just appalled by the grovelling that my Leaders were performing. I have seen leaders in the past exude confidence and hope to fellow prospectives. You knew you were in good hands. Not my leaders. And I am sure the customer senior leadership that sat across the board could also sense it. Was this the team I wanted to be part of?
And finally, and probably this factor hurt the most – my role. I had jumped at the opportunity to be a Regional Lead, hoping that I would focus on driving opportunities and working closely with the bid team to solution good adoption proposal strategies – alas that was not to be – I found myself instead copy pasting proposal write-ups, and often being directed by the Sales Lead to also just copy what was written in a previous proposal. I found that an insult to my intelligence. As regional Lead, I didn’t even get a chance to travel as 95%) of my work was done remotely with a 5% travel just to the customer site in downtown Singapore on a weekly basis (something I had initiated and proposed as my boss didn’t even expect me to do that! I found myself more like a regional call centre agent over time – taking calls after calls with sometimes no break in between as I had to handle multiple requests at one go at times.
I didn’t like it at all. I was getting demoralised by the day. Jumping from one zoom call to another, I struggled at times to keep track of the different opportunities I was overseeing. I was tanking everything. Its just the same template – rinse and repeat – copy a proposal, beat the price down and make it competitive (cheap) and do the writeup and prepare for the proposal presentation.
I think on the human side, this set up also affected me deeply. Over time, I realised it was all just transactional, I was just a machine churning robot (to some degree we all are), but this felt more pronounced due to the isolation and working remotely. I found myself working from home more frequently – It didn’t help that the office was an hour’s commute from home – one way. Also, my boss was not based locally, so essentially I couldn’t really have face to face conversations and I had not built enough trust with my boss to confide matters virtually either (this is real – trust in person is so different from trust in virtual settings). While I had my IM on, I felt isolated. There was no opportunity to drink a beer with a colleague from my team.
All these points above made me question myself. What on earth am I still doing here?
