upwards and onwards...

It's official: I am a Person of Talent.

I had a half-year performance review a few months back, and my boss mentioned that I was being put forward for some development programme or other to whisk my career forwards at an even greater pace and to even dizzier heights.  Yeah, whatevs.  I'll believe it when I see it, etc.

Sure enough, this marvellous news was followed by a deafening silence.

Then, when I was at the awful departmental ra-ra session on Monday, I noticed on one of the displays in the exhibition (yes, there was an exhibition, and yes, it was as interesting as that sounds) that the leadership programme for people at my level within the company was due to start in November this year.  Waiting for my boss to give me news was clearly a waste of time, so I decided I'd go and ask someone else instead, and went to go and chat with a friend of mine on the leadership team.

The development programme is indeed, it seems, starting this month....  but I won't be on it.  Out of the 70 people at my level in our department, I am apparently one of four to be singled out as a Person of Talent.  A good thing.  Unfortunately, the department can only put forward two people for the programme in total, and I didn't make the grade.  The key deciding factor, the thing that made the difference, was whether or not it could be clearly identified what role we would do at the next level up within the department.  This is apparently a crucial part of the programme, as they look to develop you into that specific role.  In this, as no doubt in so many other things, I am apparently problematic.

"Well, you're clearly never going to do your boss's job, are you?"
"OK"
"But we're not sure where you do actually fit.  The key asset you bring to the table is intellectual horsepower, and the plain fact is that we don't know how that fits into the department.  But anyway, they've outsourced the whole programme and it's not very well-defined, so you might well be better off not on it this year anyway...."

Yes, folks.  You did read that correctly: there appears not to be a role further up the department for someone with my kind of brains.

I suppose, in a way, that's sort of flattering. There's an irony here too, as I'm actually putting my "intellectual horsepower" to work at the moment designing the "Talent Management Pipeline" within the department.

Ha!

It's not all bad news though: as a Person of Talent, people are meeting to discuss "WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH ME".

Exciting, no?

....And so my brilliant career lurches onwards, if not exactly upwards.

In other breaking career news this week: my clever wife has been promoted.  Again.

I do like the phrase "intellectual horsepower" though.  It sounds gloriously, inappropriately yeoman-like.