Invisible Employee
Did you ever had a collaborator or subordinate (if you are “director” for 20 years now, the first word is not so clear for you, probably) who would be invisible?
Meaning to accomplish his attributions– formal and non-formal ones– so good that you have the feeling that all things come together by themselves? To be so efficient and pro-active that you wouldn’t need to actually put him to do something? “Some things” are there, always, already done. Have you ever thought that you don’t need him/her (the collaborator), that you don’t need the small things he/she does? Wrong thinking.
He/She takes a week of leave. Suddenly all telephones start to ring at once, e-mailbox fills (or, 20 years ago, correspondence map) and colleagues yell at each other. Yes, attributions have been taken over by somebody else – in some cases even by more that one person, if these attributions are from different areas of activity.
So what? Chaos is at its place.
You are stunned. Planets must have aligned in an evil way and a black moon is watching them.
It’s just that the key may not be only to one person.
Yes it may.
Nobody is irreplaceable. It’s true.
Some collaborators though are ire-price-able. (priceless)
Don’t lose such a collaborator if you have the luck to work with him/her. He/She needs simple things as motivation – to be visible once in a while. To recognize in front of everyone how important are all the things he/she does in the same time, all the deadlines and various activities he/she is juggling with, like nobody else does.
