When I signed on for a six month contract with a very large corporation, I wasn’t really looking for a job. What was going on there sounded intriguing to me and a friend of mine was already working there on the project. So I jumped in. Their hiring practices were quite lengthy, even for contractors, so by the time I actually could report to work, the project for which I had been hired was not only well underway, it was almost completed.
The first project they gave me to work on was a complex training manual put together by a former military person. They asked me to go through it and make suggestions. So I did. The author didn’t appreciate my comments on his work. This was the first taste I had of this company and I was less than impressed.
I kept thinking soon I would be led into some sort of “war” room where there was an overall project plan taped to the walls and shown what my sliver of the plan was and when I was to deliver it. When I asked the lead contractor what the plan was, she seemed confused and finally said “You just need to calm down.”
Now I realized there wasn’t a plan just an overall objective statement. It was surprising to me that a company of this size, that had the number of employees they had (well over ten thousand worldwide), did not have a plan to accomplish that objective.
That conversation left me wondering exactly why I was there and what I was to be doing. Not being one to sit idle and wait for something to do, I went out to their learning hub and started taking their available training. I learned about their industry and whatever else I had access to while I awaited my assignment. They actually had some pretty interesting online training, but I knew I wasn’t there to learn necessarily so I kept asking for something specific to do to forward the project to which I was assigned.
I noticed there was a large gap between what they were producing at the corporate level for generalized training in their training hub and what they were providing at a more departmental level. It left me intrigued even further.
I also noticed at a corporate level they had a fairly sophisticated content management system they used to produce their department manuals with a detailed manual for how the departments were to structure their changes to those manuals. Yet the manuals for the department in which I was working were significantly outdated. That led me to believe they didn’t have a sufficient structure in place at the department level to keep the manuals up-to-date. When you’re left with nothing to do, you observe. And observe I did.
Miraculously, my boss came to my area in the large arena-style office and asked me if I knew how to write procedures. Finally, something productive to do! I was joyous. Of course I could write a procedure. So after two months of learning about the company through their online learning system, I went to work. Turns out all the knowledge of this job I was going to document was locked in the mind of one individual who was now leaving the department for a different job. That led to yet another unexpected adventure being in a company this size.