American Dreaming - 1990's / Part XIII

Despite the successes outlined in the previous sections of this story, my professional career in the first half of the decade known as the 1990’s wasn’t without some huge setbacks.

One of the most prominent setbacks had to do with my reporting relationships within that organization after I lost the manager I had in 1993. The last three years that I was with that company, the average life expectancy of my reporting relationships was about 30 –45 days. I seemed to be relegated to a manager of the month pattern. To some extent this was due to the fact that I never really needed a manager (except when I truly did need one due to conflicts in shifting priorities). I’ve always been very much a self motivated force within any organization I was affiliated with (still am). It was a de-motivating factor though because I never got any kind of performance review, little encouragement, and no support.

What I got in the form of direction was deadlines. I managed to the deadlines as well as I could and dealt with the manager of the month when I needed to (didn’t help but, I’ve always tried to be a “team player” and play by the rules even when it wasn’t easy to know what they were)

It was around the middle of 1993 when I was confronted with a “crossroads” decision in my career path (such as it was). I had been involved in developing the networks and telecommunications infrastructure to support the three operating units in the northeast and involved in a very interesting project regarding statistical analysis of episodal data from medical records and claims data to develop software that would evaluate outcomes. In essence it was taking the universe of data that we as a managed care company collected through the course of dealing with both patients and care providers with the intent of deriving patterns (or outcomes) based on the type care being provided and the symptoms that were being reported within the claims. In this manner, theoretically we would be able to “predict” outcomes. We could also produce patterns based on general area population that might point towards the need for better education or proactive means of curtailing those kinds of problems for that population.

It was a fascinating project and involved crunching a ton of data from disparate sources. I was working with some really great consultants out of Cleveland, OH and flying back and forth to that area on and off for about 6 months.

Unfortunately, it was apparent that I couldn’t pursue both paths. It was apparent to my manger at the time (the last really great reporting relationship I was to have in this organization) and she basically forced my hand. She gave me the option of which path to pursue:

1. I could pursue the data analysis path and continue with the development of the outcomes software project with the consultants in Cleveland or…
2. I could let that project go and then direct my full attention to the network design and eventual management tasks that I also was very interested in.

Well, I pondered the question and eventually came to this observation / conclusion. I felt that from the company’s perspective, it was going to be easier to find someone to do the data analysis chores (and that the consultants in Cleveland were doing much of the “heavy lifting” in this regard anyway) and there was no one within the company that had the breadth of skill to deal with the networks and integration work that I was doing.

So… I told her that I would be sticking with the network chores and that they would need to define who I was to pass off the materials and meeting notes that I had accumulated with the data analysis project.

Well, the adage of “no good deed goes unpunished” is relevant here because the company decided to hire “outside” and brought in a gentleman to work on the data project. Within three months, that project (which had a fair amount of interest from upper management) flourished and the gentleman that they hired became one of the many folks to become my manager. It was painfully apparent at that point that with the changing management, the project I had abandoned (though small in scope and importance to the organization.. it only had any relevance to one operating unit) somehow seemed sexier than developing the networking infrastructure of three offices supporting 67 books of buiness.

I can’t win for losing….