But what will be my legacy? A few months after I am gone, will anything I have spent hours and days trying to accomplish be sustainable? Will it remain when I am gone or will it simply be a case of alot of dust left behind?
In terms of our EB, I really feel like we have tried doing things that I do not know if anyone else at our LC has tried. I feel like we have put in an extraordinary amount of effort in order to achieve something that we at least at times all have cared passionately about. However, right now, it all feels a litle bit pointless.
Only 3 people have applied for EB positions. Perhaps we will be able to get a couple more to apply, but this will surely include up to 3 new people. Now, clearly we have recruited and gotten these people to where they are today. Why have we not succeeded in putting in place an EB on top of our shoulders, to carry further what we so passionately believe in? What will happen to our LC?
As for my own team I have not been able to ensure a successor either. Of course, some of this has to do with allocation priorities. The EB made a decision that the TM team was not going to get the high potential future leaders in September, because we felt it could be strong temporarily and then get high potential leadership candidates in February. Then we decided that nobody was going to be allocated to TM in february, meaning that the team has absolutely no sustainable future.
Out of a total of 6 people allocated to TM in September, 2 left for exchanges through school in january/february. 1 has started working full time, and might yet leave on exchange but isn't going to be around next year in Oslo. 1 is travelling abroad, quite possibly through exchanage next fall. The last two consist of one person who feels that a leadership position at this point is simply too much work, too much pressure. The last person, who was going to be part of team specific recruitment just quit, citing school and time pressure - she wasn't going to be here next year though. In fact, out of the 6 allocated in september, 5 were never going to be in Oslo at all.
A last person, reallocated to the team in january, is also leaving next year.
In total my own team has nobody who has applied for a leadership role. It has only 1 person who is going to be here next year.
Sustainability?
Legacy?
Leadership?
What is happening, of course, is anything but good leadership. Believing in the future, without ability to plan for contingency. Inability to put first what should be first. What will happen? I don't know.
At this point the first week of April is going to be spent recruiting 3 people for Talent Management, specifically with leadership role in mind for at least one of them. Is this possible? I guess we will see.
Do I feel confident? Not so much.
What about our EB? Will our understanding and learning throughout 10 months at all be transmitted on? Again - do we care enough?
We had 4 priorities for our year. We are probably not going to achieve any of them to a greater extent. For a long time we were even refuting the push for more immediate results on exchange with the answer that building a strong and sustainable LC was a bigger priority...
Will we succeed? What will be our legacy?
1. The EB that tried, failed and stopped caring?
2. The EB that tried, failed, tried again, failed, tried again - and cared
enough to not let themselves fail?
I guess we will see. We have 7 weeks left.
