I am the first to admit and acknowledge when I mess up. However, I've had a couple of discussions with my superiors that my job is extremely difficult to accomplish to their standards based on the following:
- When I was hired there was chaos in senior leadership, a major player had just left and my boss was responsible for filling in the gaps. I was given minimal direction, zero one on ones (I was told to book them myself only if i needed them) and told to have my predecessor train me. It turns out she left due to the stress and impossible workload and had me do things differently than we're supposed to, as I found out later. I've pointed this out and it's just ignored.
- We had another shake up where I started to report to someone else who moved over from another department, who was very unavailable to me during that transition since they had to do their prior job and the current job simultaneously for three months
- I had a parent I was extremely close with pass away suddenly. They were very understanding during this but when I came back to work the empathy dried up. My brain isn't functioning like it used to, on top of that with the chaos (changing direction or direction I was never given but expected to know) is a horrible combination
- Overall a general complete lack of management despite them knowing this is my first foray into this particular sector and things are done very differently. For clarity I'm a senior manager with two levels above me. I guess I was expected to learn on my own or book them for consults over the weekends (the only free time they have)
- My employee has been in this position longer than my boss, I wrongly assumed they were doing everything correctly, it turns out they need micromanaging due to lots of mistakes. I could have done better checking this at the beginning so it took a while to right that ship.
- The work involves very tight turnarounds on deadlines due to a lot of factors and they don't start digging into the data until right before the deadline, forcing late nights and lots of last minute changes. They somewhat acknowledged that they could do better here. I have asked to change how we do things to avoid this and was told we can't. We have 48 hours to complete very complex information with constant input from various depts and constant teams messages asking questions about the data, what does this mean, why is this like this, etc and expecting an immediate response. My employee is also working nonstop during this time but I'm also expected to review all of their work while completing my own and meeting the deadline which is non-negotiatble
Despite all of this and having an informal discussion about how my output needs to improve a couple of weeks ago, where we completely changed the workflow so they could monitor it but they waited until the last minute, I was just put on a PIP. Apparently my new boss just decided they don't feel confident in the work. They spun it as a “positive” thing, intention is to move forward, but it feels awful and I don't trust them anymore, even though I really like my direct boss. They also cited lack of accountability because I told them part of the reason the work has lots of corrections is because of my report making a lot of mistakes – I never said “it's not me” I always acknowledge that it's my resp but I can't even mention him? They also want explanations and ways to fix mistakes, how can I explain if I don't bring that up?? I'm sure they don't trust me. Basically the large workload, impossible deadlines and their lack of involvement was skimmed over and I just have to figure out how to get it done.
edit: i’ve already updated my resume and started looking