Our client Kyra took a job as the Finance Director for a professional association that’s been around for a hundred years.  “I had stars in my eyes,” said Kyra. “When I interviewed with the CFO, he was so excited about all the new tools and ideas I had to share. The association has been doing things in the most old-fashioned way since forever!  “When I first started the job, I was the golden child. I brought in about twenty major innovations that made a huge difference. I got at least one ‘Way to go!’ a week from my boss.  “Then things shifted. My CFO didn’t like to keep hearing new ideas from me, even though the association was still in the Dark Ages in many areas of its Finance operations and in every other area of the business, too. It’s amazing how little the infrastructure had changed over the past two or three decades.  “There was a point around Christmastime last year when I could see that my boss was done taking in new ideas. He had wanted to refresh the association’s systems — not to usher in a new era of evolution the way he assured me. I was suddenly persona non grata. My CEO resented my presence.  “I guess when he hired me he thought I’d be content to share a few new ideas and get new systems up and running, and then I’d be happy to hunker down and do things the way the association has always done them — how ridiculous!”  Kyra only stayed in that job for nine months, but in that nine months she accumulated some of the best resume fodder in her career. Now she gets to tell the story of dragging the association leaders, kicking and screaming, into the current millennium.  Kyra got a new job with a more forward-looking organization. She had to go – she was wasting her talent in the hidebound association that talked about modernization but couldn’t walk the walk!  You might be wasting your talent at work, too. Talent is a horrible thing to waste! Not only is it frustrating and discouraging to go to work every day and have your ideas ignored, your accomplishments unnoticed and your creativity bottled up and squashed, but it also doesn’t help customers, shareholders or the world in general for your talents to go to waste!  Watch for these signs that will signal you “You need a bigger sandbox!”:  Good Ideas Are Seen as a Threat  I had a boss who would react with a long-suffering sigh whenever I suggested making any kind of change at work, no matter how small. He would say “Put that idea in the Someday File.”  “Why?” I asked him. “Why can’t we explore this idea, which could really help us?” My boss would sigh and walk away.  I didn’t understand in my twenties that my manager didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to work any harder than he had to. He had already gone to sleep on his job and his career. He didn’t want to rouse himself to think about doing anything new. There are a lot of people like that in the business world!  They can see new ideas as threatening to their power or to the mantra “This is the way we’ve always done it.” Luckily I got out from under that guy. You can do the same thing!
How do you know when your sandbox is too small? Liz Ryan lays out seven unmistakable signs you're wasting your talent at work!