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I know that I, as a technical writer, have often encountered control
issues. As a contractor, I found that these issues were easier to
negotiate and, therefore, work with contract by contract.
As an employee, I find myself constantly struggling over issues of
control. I could list a series of incidents, but in my usual pedantic
way, I would get caught up in the specifics.
I'm looking for insights, and for this I'm looking for input from
employees rather than consultants and contractors. I'm engaged in an
on-going battle with the forces of evil, oh, sorry, no I mean with the
concerns and attitudes of those I work with (both within the tech pubs
team and without). I know it can't just be that I've landed in an evil
empire, because I haven't. I think that some of it resides with me, and
so I'm looking for strategies for enabling myself to identify the
battles to choose and those to, as gracefully as possible, step away
from. I am so frustrated with my job that I was considering taking a new
job, ANY new job.
So, how do you deal with the control issues that come up where you work?
How do you determine which issues to fight for and which to step away from.
I'm hoping that the broad range of people on this list can help me. I am
also hoping it doesn't degenerate into another place where I find myself
feeling attacked where there is no attack intended (I don't mind as much
if I'm sure the other person is attacking me, then I can just bite back).
Some background, maybe, I have 15 years in the field, and for the past
year I've been quite ill, and unreliable in my employer's eyes. Some of
the frustration I feel is an outcome of having spent a year in and out
of medical treatment (but, I'm better now!!) and the long-term effect of
illness is worse than I could have imagined. I am not the happy-go-lucky
girl I was a year ago, I'm much more of a curmudgeon, though I know more
adept curmudgeons.
The employer is a not-too-recent merger of several companies. Some of
the tension I'm experiencing is felt by all as upper management tries to
turn a group of companies into a single well-oiled machine. Some of the
tension is from the struggle to have *our* way be *the* way. So, there
is cross-group mud-wrestling going on. Pile onto that, senior
management's search for the perfect corporate way, which means that,
ultimately, it isn't going to be any way we've done it before. So, we're
all crabby, now.
Some of the tension is from a lower level of management, where the folks
stuck between me and the machinery are not up to the constant shifting,
they are 25 year veterans of one way of doing business. They aren't
managing any more. My immediate supervisor hates confrontation, so it is
up to me to determine what the *right* way to do things, during this
period of transition, which has been going on for a couple of years now.
We made some progress on the integration of processes (the review
process) but we're constantly strapped for resources to handle issues
outside of *getting the manual done*.
Well, a lot of wind and tree shaking, but, there you go. I'm looking for
generic strategies to survive my time as an employee.
Wanda
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