By young in this case, I’m referring to two specific professionals I have encountered in the last two years, both ten years or so younger than myself. So, not young, but younger. I’m not sure where these two people learned about leadership or even about self-management. I’ll paint them in broad anonymous strokes to protect them, but I’ll try no to pull any punches in making my point.

Amazing Woman Assumes the Close

Our LinkedIn connection was established five years ago. We’re both marketers, I’m just ten years further in my career. She’s a consultant who is brilliant, animated, and missing some key ingredient that wasn’t clear until the project was launched. Here’s how our friend-to-working-partnership story unfolded. She messaged me on LinkedIn about getting together for coffee maybe defining a project we could go after together. I was unexpectedly back in the freelance market and looking for fractional CMO work implementing AI for Sales and Marketing. So, why not?

During our coffee at a nearby organic grocery store, she said, “I’m not dateable.”

Um, I wasn’t asking or pursuing. But, “Okay.” I thought about what she must be thinking. “Me either.”

That was easy. Tension disbursed. On to the project. She’d gotten interested in my work with AI and wanted to help me set up my AI for Sales and Marketing Training Channel. Okay, cool. She claimed to have a lot of experience with a platform I was not familiar with, Kajabi. She would do the setup, and use AI to generate our first course outline on DEMAND. I would come behind, edit the text, and build the interactive demos. Cool so far. As we were leaving the meeting she again said, “I’m not dateable.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“And I’ll send you an invoice later tonight after I get my workout in.”

I was quiet on that one. She was so enthusiastic. And sure enough, about 10 pm I got a Venmo “request for payment.” Um, we hadn’t even started and she wanted $1,500 as a pre-payment for services to be rendered. No contract. No outline. Just a Venmo request. “I got you the invoice, and now I’m going to enjoy some relax time with friends,” she texted at about 10:30 pm.

We had a single Zoom call the next day to set expectations and a plan for the work she would be doing while I was on a musician’s retreat in upstate New York. Perfect. I was not clear how we got to INVOICE before I saw any of her work product or creative value for the project. I mean, I’m the one who’ll be creating the course. But, I suspended my doubt and went off the grid until last weekend. On Saturday morning, before I rejoined the living world on Tuesday, I sent her a simple email request for an update.

Paraphrasing here, she said, “I’m so behind. I’ll get you a status update Wednesday afternoon.”

And that was enough for me. Quickdraw payment request (assuming she saw me as a fat cat for the plucking), ongoing “dateable” defense in response to zero flirting, and did no work on the entire two weeks I was away. I wrote her the “settle up” email. I was not going to move forward on the project.

The last email from her was amazingly blind. “Okay, but let’s keep the project open, September is only two weeks again. I’ll get my part done at a slower pace… I’ll give you an update Wednesday afternoon.”

Um, no. This is not a negotiation. I will not be moving forward with you on this project. If cash flow is the issue, we can settle up later.

Wow, I was stunned by her audacity. Deflecting a firing with a “no but, let’s do this…” I have not heard back from her in 24 hours. Sorry.

New UX “Designer” Joins the Team

When my manager added his executive assistant the leaders of our team were asked to be part of her interview process. She was hired. A few weeks later, we were just told about the new UX designer. She was previously a digital artist for medical illustrations. Even has a master’s degree in process. She worked for Johns Hopkins or did a graduate degree there, I think. Wow. And her medical illustration portfolio was massive and wonderfully complex.

She was a recent job switcher and had moved from medical illustration to UX design. It’s a common path for creatives to find a new track within the design and marketing teams. She had one year of experience doing the UX design for an app that looked interesting. It was a self-employment consulting thing, we all do between jobs. She’s landed a killer gig with this new company. So, “Well done to you, rising star.”

I think her degree was in medical illustrations again, but I don’t recall, and I’ve blocked her on LinkedIn so I can’t go refresh my memory, that’s fine. Suffice it to say, that she was NEW to the UX design field and highly skilled in digital illustration skills. She was fun. She was creative and delightful to work with. She lit up the Zoom calls, joining from coffee shops and clubs across Miami. She shared her new guitar and guitar lessons. She even treated us to a song on Zoom. Cool. I could see why my manager was enamored with her. And perhaps this was the reason she got a pass on some really bad UX design. I am talking EPIC FAILURE UX and UI for a global website. Inexcusable.

But her manager and my manager approved all of her work with little pushback. As I was the Sr. Manager of UX, Content, I pushed back on the designs for the dropdown menus, still live on the site, that broke all UX usability rules. I did a PPT doc outlining the issue. Our QA of the website before it launched also flagged the mega-menus as a problem. We sailed on. The UX/UI consulting company also turned an easy eye on the broken navigational path. This is what UX is about. When it’s broken you fix it. You at least address the elephant in the room. These consultants, with years in UX, sided with my manager, the one paying their invoices, and approved the broken GLOBAL NAV system. A month after the site launched with the dysfunctional menu system, our team had a Next Innovation Project List as part of our reorganization to lead the website beyond the launch and into the run-of-the-business process.

We created a Miro board of ideas for “next-gen” features and ideas. The consultants contributed half the ideas. The UX designer submitted two ideas. I submitted 8 ideas. One of my ideas was my case against the broken global nav megamenus. Of the 23 articles submitted we agreed on 11 new projects and optimizations for the website, now showing a 25% uptick in “engagement” since launch. The MegaMenu Issue was approved as one of the optimization projects. Everyone agreed that there was an issue with the finding of content on the 2nd level, and we should address the Global Nav System in the next round of changes. Obviously, the UX designer who’d owned the megamenus defended her designs to her boss and the UX consulting team from Utah, was not all that fired up to have to revisit a system she’d struggled with for months prior to launch. It got backburnered as we began putting the projects into SPRINTS for August and beyond.

Several of my other “innovation” projects got kicked off and I didn’t push on the global nav system. I had other motions that were giving me some new traction within the company and exposure to leadership above my manager. This was good for me. As “AI” began to emerge as the biggest business discussion since “digital transformation” our team proposed a AI landing page, to focus the incoming content requests, and random articles being generated all over this global company.

I can’t talk about specifics of what happened next, between the UX designer and my manager, but her LinkedIn profile was updated to reflect that she was now the Sr. Manager of UX Design. Um, really? Two days later it was announced that she’d been converted from a contract worker to a perm. This was great for her. The new “Sr. Manager UX” looked suspiciously like my title. Something was happening that I was unaware of. (I am prohibited from disclosing any further details on the advice of counsel. Perhaps in the settlement, I can ask for permission to write a book about the experience. Wild, is all I can say.

The very next day after her wonderful news, the UX designer, now “Sr. Manager” who’d not managed anyone according to her LinkedIn profile, took an unexplained leave of absence. For obvious reasons the team was not given any information. We regrouped without our UX designer, and all her work flowed back to the Utah consultants.

I did raise the megamenu issue a few more times after the designer went on break. It was an obvious concern, with heatmap data to support the issue, but there were so many priority issues that needed to be fixed. I let the global nav system rest and focused on launching the AI Landing Page and getting my Online Community project launched. Two of my big motions were picking up momentum and I was enjoying the energy and excitement on all the ways we could make this global player’s website even more efficient for the incoming potential customer as well as the current client, even the executive leadership. The menus just don’t work. And the SEARCH system is an even bigger issue, that I’ve addresses anonymously elsewhere.

Both things are still 100% Broken on this website. The Sr. Manager UX Design has returned, but I no longer have any unmediated contact with my manager or any of my old team.

Leadership Is Earned Not Given

If either of these young people had gotten good leadership or management advice, they could’ve grown their skill to earn their authority. As it was, these two young people assumed “Sr. Manager” roles without climbing the ladder of teambuilding and team organizing. One last little tiff that still makes me giggle is our team’s new Agile implementation.

In the launch of the new website, I put an Agile board, sprints, and daily standups together to complete the content for a 3,000+ page website in six months. I showed the entire group my Agile leadership experience by leading with Agile. When my manager organized the new “run-of-the-business” team guess who he put in charge of our AGILE  process? Yep, the Sr. Manager UX Design and the Sr. Manager of Project Management. The two new hires. And guess how much actual agile experience they had? Zero. My manager, also had zero experience actually setting up an Agile time. Here’s the evidence. They started the process by setting 1-week sprints, never advised. There were never any retro meetings, nor time for them, because the sprints were too short. But the bigger tell on the entire team responsible for our new process: the story cards had NO ESTIMATED TIME/EFFORT. You can’t plan a sprint or calculate VELOCITY without story points and accountability.

So how did my colleague go from “designer” to “sr manager” and mess up on something as essential as the global navigation system? Then our manager assigned her the Agile Leadership role for the team? Well, let’s just say it was not earned. Her manager can’t lead what he does not understand. He relied on consultants and vendors to lead for him, doing the scheduling and planning for him. When I brought up the time/story points issue, I was shut down for being a negative nelly. Um, no, this is just Agile Project Management 101.

Learning Leadership

We learn leadership within corporate structures by working for great leaders. My manager at Dell was a master of making the complex simple. “Focus on what you promised to deliver this quarter. Do not get distracted by what other people are asking you to do for them. Just get your deliverables done and focus on what I am telling you.” I didn’t weather the last massive RIF after the 2009 economic meltdown, but my amazing manager was not able to save any of us from the mercurial Dell staffing and hr strategies.

If you serve under a great leader you may learn to lead. If you get promoted from “designer” to “sr. manager” without ever having managed, well, I believe the “sr” part was a stretch. And not a badge you earned for arriving at your new career, but by proving yourself in your previous work experience. I’m gonna guess this “leader” has Agile Project Managment now prominently displayed on her LinkedIn profile, along with her Sr. Manager level employment. It’s not a lie. It’s not true either.

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
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reference:

• Mega Menus Work Well for Site Navigation – Nielson Group
• Mega Menus Gone Wrong – Nielson Group