Phil's Career Blog

Posts Tagged ‘benefit of the doubt’

After I wrote a recent post on whether it’s time to leave your current employer, a friend of mine made a great comment that I wanted to pass along. Their addendum to my list of factors was “have you lost the benefit of the doubt?”

My friend has gone through a gradual “falling out of love” at their firm. A few changes in leadership lead to subtle changes in vision and incentives and all of the sudden what was once a great, collaborative place has become fairly unpleasant to work at. When things change you can become “part of the problem” because you are aligned to the legacy culture and the new powers-that-be see that as an issue. Now the clock is ticking… Let’s talk about three implications.

First, at a personal level:

Well before you get to a breakup, there are little signals. The minor disagreement that people over-react to or the honest mistake that gets ascribed to lack of effort or caring. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about. The “canary in the coal mine” is losing the benefit of the doubt. Read the rest of this entry »