When Patience Pays

It's been four years since I began planning for ways to prepare for the retirement of one of our staff members.

Some of the job duties were transferred to other people, which had some pain associated with it, but we made it through.

Other duties were not as easy to transfer. A big part of it is that there is not enough staff on the team to simply absorb the extra duties that the retiree will leave behind. Our attempts to do so anyway resulted in more pain.

It was clear that we needed to hire a mentee, and soon, given the need to transplant as much of 40 years of experience as possible in a relatively short period of time.

I needed the permission of two managers in order to be able to move forward. We'll call them Hank and Frank.

I asked Frank for permission, who said yes.

Asked Hank, who said no. Actually, who said to provide more detail behind the need, which I compiled into an e-mail and sent.

Hank said no, or at least, not yet.

Pushing is a lousy way to sell, so I waited.

I happened to be in a meeting with Frank a month later and brought up the subject softly, and said yes.

I wrote an e-mail explaining to Hank that Frank had said yes, enclosing the previous details of the need.
A couple months later I brought it back up and Hank said maybe, let him talk to Frank.

A couple weeks later Hank said that when he'd spoken with Frank, Frank had been reluctant.

I figured it was time to move to plan B, which turned out to be one of the lesser, painful plans.

A couple months later Frank sent an e-mail to Hank and me asking what our plans were to replace the retiree. Hank wrote back to say that he wasn't sure that we needed to replace the retiree, asking for details. I forwarded the old e-mail with the details.

Out of the blue a few months later Hank said that we should just go ahead and hire the successor staff person. Within the half hour I forwarded the old e-mail to Hank and Frank pointing out that Hank had said yes, should we proceed?

Yesterday morning, Hank poked his head in my door and green lighted the hiring!

Patience is rewarded a lot faster than impatience. Ironically, it was impatience on this subject that led to my minor outburst of frustration on Friday, which I ended up kicking myself all weekend about. I suppose I felt more like Job than Joe at the time. And then, I was given yet another undeserved gift to be thankful for, and fueled the first day of a great week.