our new boss is ruining the organization and is upset that I’m pushing back

by Alison Green on November 13, 2024

A reader writes:

I really need an outside perspective on somethings happening at my work. I am the assistant director at a small organization where there are 10 full-time staff (including the director) and two part-time. About a year ago, our longtime director left. She basically built the current version of our organization from the ground up and her management style could best be described as “trust your people to do their jobs.” She was pretty hands-off but would address issues as they came up, even though we didn’t have a formal system for reviews. Our vibe could be described as “Chaotic Good” (to put it in Dungeons & Dragons terms) and a place where we take the work seriously but not ourselves. We have done a lot of work in the community to overcome the negative feelings many folks had about previous iterations of our organization.

Once the director left, not being interested in applying for the director position, I stepped in as interim director while our board conducted a search. One of the things that the board made very clear to every candidate they interviewed was that the staff was great and did not need an overhaul — they were not looking for a fixer but rather someone to continue the great work that is already being done. Staff had an opportunity to meet the finalists and the board asked for our feedback. Every single staff member had reservations of some degree about the candidate they ended up hiring (mostly that she wouldn’t fit our culture) but were open to being proven wrong.

Well, Marcia has been here just under six months and the wheels are falling off. In this time frame, she has imposed a strict service desk schedule, changed the job descriptions of our three front-line staff members, reorganized all of our storage, updated our calendar system, and changed the workflow for several of our processes. Additionally, she demonstrates in small ways that she doesn’t quite trust staff to do their work and does not like the way we are used to doing things. Feedback I have received from many staff indicate that they are unhappy with the direction things are going and the speed at which change is being implemented. Change is not the problem — we are used to change — but it is being imposed without a lot of staff input and very quickly.

I have spoken with Marcia a few times about my concerns and the concerns of some of the staff and other staff have spoken to her as well. It finally came to a point where I sent her an email suggesting that we engage an outside facilitator to help us work through the communication challenges that we have been experiencing so that we can continue in a positive direction. I really do think it is possible to salvage this, but I know we don’t have the skills to do it ourselves.

After two weeks of radio silence, including in-person, I received an email 15 minutes before we closed on a Friday that said no to a facilitator because she does not trust my judgment. She then listed the reasons why she believes I have done more to tank staff morale and said a formal communication outlining my plan for improvement was to follow.

At this point, I have no idea what to do next. Mostly, I’m wondering if this is as weird as I think it is. Is her response reasonable? Was I out of line making that suggestion?

I think you’ve got two options here: start planning to leave or go to the board. Or both!

Your boss told you she doesn’t trust your judgment and thinks you’re responsible for tanking staff morale and said she plans to put you on a formal improvement plan.

These are very bad signs about your future in the organization. This is a manager who doesn’t want you around, doesn’t respect your work, and may be laying the groundwork to fire you.

You weren’t out of line in suggesting an outside facilitator, but I’m guessing Marcia took that as one more sign that you aren’t on board with the direction she’s taking things in. I suspect her perspective would be: “I see things that need to be changed, I’m changing them, the person who was doing my job on an interim basis before I got here is fighting me on them, I’ve heard her out several times, but when I didn’t agree with her, she wanted to bring in an outside facilitator to continue to push me to see things her way. Oh, and I think she might be stirring up discontent on the staff under the guise of ‘concerns.’”

Now, is Marcia wrong about all that? Very possibly! It’s also possible that some of what she’s changing are things the board asked her to change — or things she told them she would change and got their blessing for. The board stressing to candidates that things didn’t need an overhaul doesn’t mean they’d expect a new director wouldn’t change anything. It’s also true that while “Chaotic Good” may have been an improvement from how things were before, it’s not necessarily the place an organization should stay permanently.

I don’t know which it is — or whether it’s a mix of both — but what I do know is that the person in charge of your organization is telling you pretty clearly that she sees you as a threat to the organization’s stability, and that bodes badly for your future there.

Normally I’m not a big proponent of going to the board because nonprofit boards generally shouldn’t get involved in day-to-day staff issues, many will reflexively back the executive director and are judging them on things other than staff morale, and if it doesn’t work you’ll have a target on your back. It’s a high-risk move that rarely pays off except in the most egregious situations. But in this case, you were the interim director so probably know the board members and your word has some weight. It might be worth a discreet conversation with one or two board members about what’s going on, including that you think Marcia may be laying the groundwork to push you out.

I don’t know what will come of that. That way definitely lies drama! But it sounds like things may be at that point, unless you prefer to just leave altogether (which is absolutely a path you should be thinking about too).

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{ 346 comments… read them below }

  1. megaboo*

    Let me guess, library? Sounds very library to me. I would argue that the board might agree with staff that things are fine, but might have other private motivations for hiring who they did hire.

    1. Bird Lady*

      I read this and immediately thought this was a museum. But having done time in both, they are run in similar way.

    2. Phlox*

      absolutely not limited to one part of the sector, speaking as an employee who had to loop the board in after a similar very bad ED hire by the board

        1. megaboo*

          Yeah, sorry to label it as library when it might not be. I just feel like I’ve seen this cycle over and over again in my library career.

    3. not nice, don't care*

      OMG library gets my guess too. I never cease to be disappointed at how awful library badmin chooses to treat employees.

    6. Library Lady*

      I read the same! I went through a similar situation at my first job. The best advice I got was “if you and the new boss aren’t aligned, no matter how much you love your job, it’s time for you to go.” And, after a painful year of never quite adjusting to the new regime, I did.

      New directors will always want to question the status quo and put their own stamp on policies and processes. Often they bring in their own people. And though the OP might not see it now, very often the changes are for the better. I learned many lessons about management from the director who was my reason for leaving.

    7. All het up about it*

      Eh – I’ve experienced the almost exact same situation at a non-profit that was not library and had service desk, front line staff and items that need serious storage arrangement. Thankfully in that situation the Board took the Senior staff’s warnings to heart and let the bad ED go. I think in that case it helped that at least one of the alarm bells person was on our Finance team and that there was some really poor fundraising happening as well.

      I’m wishing this OP luck because whew – this does not sound like a good situation for them.

    8. Emmy*

      I thought that too. And unfortunately, the risk of not taking the big job is that the person who does may not do things they way you would have if you were in that spot. And unless she is doing something that goes against library ethics, there is probably little to be done short of doing as Allison suggested and going to the board. Though, I do wonder if the board likes you and the current staff, if they will support the director firing the assistant. At my library, a department head of higher would have to be cleared by the board, and honestly, likely a librarian too.

      1. Rafiology*

        Chaotic good doesn’t sound like a good way to manage any organization.

        If she wanted to continue to leave things as they were, she should have applied for the permanent director position. Now change is coming and she needs to get on board or leave.

        1. JoJo*

          I agree. It sounds as if the Board brought in Marcia to impose some order and professionalism to the organization. What’s wrong with performance reviews, updating job descriptions, creating schedules and reorganizing storage?

    9. Artemesia*

      The board hired this person — they are not likely to want to agree that they made a mistake or get involved in the nitty gritty. When a new boss comes on board, you have to go with their changes or go. Time for you to go. No idea if she is making needed changes or is a disaster, but I do know that they hired her, they are going to back her and she has made it clear she wants you gone. Nothing more irritating that. a former interim who wants to keep their ore in and resist changes the new leader makes.

      I have been an interim who didn’t approve of the choice made by the department for the new director and had a rough ride and I didn’t push back like the OP is doing. But even offers to help bring him up to speed on where we were were seen as attempts to undercut his authority (and I am pretty sure he was told I had not supported his choice)

      This is what happens when you decide not to seek the job yourself. Always ask yourself if you would be better off taking that job yourself or would you rather report to whomever they are likely to select instead.

  2. juliebulie*

    Did Marcia make any effort to learn about the systems currently in place before she decided to change things? Or is she just throwing her weight around?

    1. pally*

      Marcia may have assumed that improvements might impress the board as things they didn’t know the company needed.
      In which case, I would hope the board would be interested in hearing OP’s take on what is going on.

      1. Space Needlepoint*

        Considering the board told people they were interviewing that they were not looking for an agent of change, I certainly hope so!

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          I wonder if that’s what they actually told Marcia, as opposed to what they told the current employees they did. Because every single one of them wasn’t too down with her hiring and they went with…her.

          1. Mom of Two Littles*

            At my old job when the board hired a new CEO they made a speech about how the organization would be staying the same, with no serious changes and after the new person came on board that was not the case. Mass layoffs and huge programmatic changes happened and I never knew if the board had just lied to us initially or what.

          2. Ellie*

            She might have been the only option, or the best option given the circumstances, even with the negative feedback. Honestly, I think things look pretty dire for OP. Going to the board is probably the only option at this point.

    2. Annony*

      Was there a system in place? “Chaotic good” and “trust your people to do their jobs” suggests that they may have just been winging it.

      1. MsM*

        Yeah, I can picture Marcia asking for written procedures or clarification on how stuff gets done and getting a shrug and an “it just does.” Doesn’t mean that going straight to imposing new systems with zero staff input was the right response, but also doesn’t necessarily mean the organization couldn’t benefit from a bit more structure.

        1. M*

          I will say – if I come into an organisation where no-one can tell me what the existing processes are for basics like service desk coverage, the storage system makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t been there years, and there’ve been no formal staff reviews for at least a decade, I’d pretty quickly switch to “this is how we’re going to do X from now on” mode, and have a pretty skeptical view of the former interim director (as well as the person who ran the place for 10 years previously, for that matter). There’s a time to do staff buy-in, but if you quickly hit the maximum capacity for doing that when you’re finding out how things work, there is a point where a good manager really does need to just dictate how it works now and loop back to do staff buy-in when they’ve cleared the urgent chaos pile.

          I’m not saying that’s *definitely* what’s happening here – OP’s not clear on what the previous staff scheduling approach was, for example. And it could well be somewhere in the middle, where the organisation does very much need structure, but OP’s just picked some bad examples to illustrate the contrast between their new ED’s over-management and the previous culture. But those examples set off alarm bells for me.

          1. Malarkey01*

            Absolutely, new management coming in is often the place where fresh eyes meet “this is how we’ve always done it”. When on the receiving end of new management I’ve chafed at it but in the long run it’s usually been necessary because every organization builds up weird practices that gain lives of their own.

            Trusting your people to get work done works well with established people in highly specific rules but as a long term organization structure can be very bad when people leave or build their own kingdoms. These changes don’t seem that groundbreaking to me.

            1. Malarkey01*

              Let me also add the minute you suggested facilitation being needed to continue in a positive direction is the minute I too would have had serious concerns about how we continue.

              Facilitation can be great for meetings and offsites and working through projects, BUT if you’re telling me we need to bring in someone else in order to talk and it sounds like you think of them as a school monitor to decide who is right (and as the boss I have the final say), I’d be like we’re done here. I can’t have you continuing to undercut me and I can’t have a deputy who can’t talk to me or thinks we need outsides to continue positively.

              1. Original Bob*

                Yep this. Any place being run professionally would already be working on escorting OP off the premises with a hearty “good luck in your future endeavors.” You can’t undercut a boss like that even if you don’t agree with what they’re doing.

          2. a clockwork lemon*

            Same here. The one I could maybe raise an eyebrow at if I’m feeling uncharitable is rewriting job descriptions, but it doesn’t actually articulate the impact of those changes. I’ve been heavily involved in nonprofits of various sizes for years in addition to my day job, and I’m not sympathetic to anyone resistant to using a calendar system or organizing the storage closet.

      2. Observer*

        Exactly.

        Staff may not have needed an overhaul. But this sounds like a situation that has some real instability. And while they say that they don’t mind change, the idea that reorganizing storage is an issue is really raising my eyebrows. Same for updating the calendar system.

        1. Elbe*

          Yeah, this seemed pretty thin to me as well. The LW doesn’t really describe any actual negative outcomes, just that things are different.

          It would be a completely different letter if it said something along the lines of “No one can find anything in storage and our stock logs have been discarded” or “the calendar system is inefficient because we now can’t see staff availability” or something along those lines.

          1. A Person*

            Yeah, for a post about “ruining” the organisation I was expecting something a bit more egregious.

            All the changes mentioned are things which *could* be done badly, but are also perfectly reasonable in a lot of circumstances, and there’s no mention of anything actually going wrong. I am getting a bit of a vibe of “it’s not what I’m used to and it’s not how I’d do it and I can’t handle that”.

        4. cleak*

          I feel like this could have been written about my office and it’s sister program. “Chaotic Good” doesn’t scale well, it doesn’t train other employees well and it doesn’t update processes well. You get one bad hire in that place and the equilibrium goes so fast and there’s no foundation keeping it together. You get situations where protocols are only in place because “That’s how Joan told me to do it 10 years ago” but they aren’t practical under current conditions. Environments like this don’t change well and I think this is the crux of this conflict. LW is saying “Everything is perfect, any change (even as mild as storage) is unnecessary and interfering.” while the new director may be seeing issues that need to be fixed coming from her fresh perspective. And I’m curious how LW is voicing their disapproval and how they are interacting with coworkers regarding the new director and her changes. Are they attempting to understand the reason for the changes, attempting collaboration or are they fighting them all?

          1. Mary*

            Honestly? Valid.

            Someone lower (I’m on my phone & lazy) said that using “chaotic good” doesn’t mean literal chaos & I get that, but the LW used “chaotic” for a reason. Even if you wanted to use a dnd metaphor & didn’t want to use “lawful”, “neutral good” is also an option!

            1. Peanut Hamper*

              “Chaotic” means you tend to do things your own way. Think Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds.

              If LW really sees themselves in this way, then yep, this is a definitely problem. But Marcia isn’t the cause.

              1. Deejay*

                Another pop culture example I once saw to explain alignments was “In Doctor Who, the Daleks are Lawful Evil and the Doctor is Chaotic Good”.

                Space Nazis vs “To hell with the rules, I do what’s right”.

                Neutral Good is “Sometimes rules have their place, sometimes they should be broken. What matters is that good is done”.

            2. Taketombo*

              Sometimes I feel very fortunate I got my career start as a DoD consultant and then moved to a university that was hundreds of years old.

              There was a very specific way to do things, and to document the things, and changes had to go through rigorous testing (I can’t remember how many months it took to add two new charge codeS at the university – I ended up writing a full white paper about how our existing codes fell short and did not accurately track major expenditures, and that the two codes were in-line with the existing code purposes, and a responsible use of remaining codes (there are only 10,000 4-digit numbers! We might run out!) within our departments code-block (I tink we were using something like 20 of 100 available codes).

              So I got very used to documenting things. Now I’m in a slightly more flexible place I know how to develop, get buy-in, approval, roll-out, and fully document the changes I want to see. It makes what I do a lot more permanent than what my peers do, becuase although three first time I do something it’s by the seat of my pants, I’m keeping a record for the next time or next person.

      4. ubotie*

        Yeah, the second I saw those phrases, I was thinking to myself “I’m not sure that words like ‘chaotic’ should really be associated with any organization that considers itself well-run.”

        And hey, maybe things were fine and dandy before Marcia came in and now she’s just spoiling everything, it’s just Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, darn it!!!! Maybe the business was a complete dumpster fire (despite what the LW claims) and Marcia is just trying to clean things up *at the board’s request and with the board’s full blessing.* Maybe the truth is somewhere in between, as it so often is.

        LW, you were doing the job on an interim basis but didn’t want to do it permanently which okay, fine. But the way this letter reads, it seems like you’re maybe mad that someone else was hired anyway? For the permanent job that you supposedly didn’t want?

        Also, people are mad that Marcia, “has imposed a strict service desk schedule” and like, I’m finding it very hard to see why that is such a terrible war crime. Especially if this does turn out to be a library or museum and *especially* in the context of your comments that pre-Marcia, the vibe was very “chaotic good” and “everyone do whatever! yay!!!”. Service roles are all about *service* to the customer/client so like, that usually involves some kind of schedule and that’s usually a strict schedule. Do people want their surgeon or an ER doctor to be all “ehh I’ll just show up whenever I feel like it” if they had a surgery set for 1 PM or suddenly needed to go to the ER at 3 AM?

        IDK. I have come into jobs (particularly administrative support) where there is like, no documentation or official policies about anything for various reasons and surprise!! It’s a huge mess for everyone, especially me. And the customers/clients/students/etc I’m trying to help which was the whole reason I was hired. So I just…am finding it hard to believe that Marcia is the WORST here. I’m kind of thinking that maybe Marcia has been trying to make sorely-needed improvements (and at the board’s behest/knowledge), the OP has a bug up their butt about how they aren’t the interim director anymore (even though they didn’t want the permanent gig) and is purposely stirring the pot (even if it’s subconsciously), and that maybe some of the complaints from staff are related to “we can’t just do whatever we want whenever we want now, that is so unfair!!!”

        1. Strive to Excel*

          Even assuming that the department was running like a well-oiled machine, people were able to just slot in around each other, etc etc etc…that’s the sort of system that works really well. Until someone quits. And then, oh shoot, you can’t find someone with the same availability and patience for chaos as Jane. Training is super hard because all of these people have “just doing things” forever. There’s no written documentation anywhere because processes change on the fly to accommodate what’s needed in a given month.

          Yeah, chaotic good made me flinch a bit too.

          1. Hyaline*

            This, exactly. This system works until change happens, and change will happen whether you plan on it, want it, or like it–someone will retire or go on long term leave, the Board will decide to expand its scope and make new hires, technology will shift and disrupt operations and require new processes…so many things. And then chaotic good descends to just chaos.

        2. Aeryn Sun*

          The service desk was where I was like “hm, isn’t that a good thing?” Like I’m not sure what kind of organization this is, and maybe a strict schedule isn’t needed, but if it’s at all external facing I’d be shocked if any board was OK with that.

          I’ve also come into jobs in admin roles with no documentation and it sucks to try and piece that all together. It was especially rough when I was temping, showed up to a job, and no one has any clue what the admin was doing and I’m getting asked questions and I’m like “I’ve been here for a literal hour I’m sorry.”

          1. sparkle emoji*

            Yeah, I can’t imagine any workplace that needs a service desk where it would be ok to have no schedule for when there would be service at the service desk. That feels like a baseline requirement. Maybe everyone just figured it out before but that’s not a long term solution.

        3. Paulina*

          Yes. And when an organization like that has a new boss from outside — well, now there’s someone who’s supposed to be running things, and who is responsible for the organization (to the board and to the outside world), and they can’t find out what’s going on or how because the processes are undocumented. Coming in from outside to try to run a chaotic organization, even a chaotic good one, sounds like a nightmare. How is Marcia supposed to know what’s going on? Yet she’s required to, because she’s responsible.

      5. BW*

        “Chaotic good?” My gut feeling when reading this letter was that the department was in disarray, that the new manager was putting procedures in place, and that the LW was resistant to change (despite saying they weren’t) and was pushing back way too hard. I’m on Team New Manager.

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      *Every single staff member had reservations of some degree about the candidate they ended up hiring*

      This part of the letter had me thinking that it’s WHY Marcia was hired. Every single employee was “Uh, not sure about this one” and that’s who they went with? The board wants to make changes at the least, and clean house at most.

      That doesn’t mean Marcia isn’t throwing her weight around, of course, but it might be with the board’s approval.

      1. cleak*

        This statement about ” everyone having reservations” makes me feel like there’s been a lot of sitting around together and complaining about Marcia. Given how LW seems to be a cultural leader, I’m very much wondering if there’s a dynamic where they really are undermining Marcia to the rest of the team which would make Marcia real hesitant to want to work with LW.

        1. sparkle emoji*

          I think this is a good point. LW, if you do decide to stay, you cannot be a safe place for people to bring their Marcia complaints, and all your Marcia complaints need to be directed towards people you know outside of work, not coworkers.

      2. a*

        It might also mean she has toxic personality to people below. We had managers like that. They were disliked, because of how they treated people.

        Managers who do actual changes tend to be controversial at worst. Some people welcome the changes.

    4. Artemesia*

      I’m guessing a place the OP described as ‘chaotic good’ is viewed by many including perhaps some on the board as ‘badly managed’. Chaotic is rarely a positive description.

    5. niknik*

      None of the implemented changes mentioned (stricter time table, storage reorg) seem all too egregious taken at face value. LW mentions changed processes and job descriptions, but does not list any results, positive or negative. Hum.

    6. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      I had a similar question – is the problem that Marcia’s changes are bad (e.g., going to make things more difficult, going to cause errors, are actually impossible to implement) or is it that there’s a lot of change and people who are used to working in a pretty unstructured environment are struggling with there now being some structure imposed? Because some of the issues the LW raises don’t seem like bad ideas, like having a strict service desk schedule.

      In part, I raise this because I’m struggling with a similar thing right now. My team had no manager for about 8 months. To keep things going with our deliverables, we ended up with a fair bit of autonomy. I certainly felt like I really had a voice in the decision-making. Then we got a manager about 6 months ago. It’s been really difficult trying to adjust to a totally different way of working. And I’m still trying to figure out if some of the things I dislike about the current working environment are because I’m chafing at the new way of doing things and how much is “bad” change. Like, am I being micromanaged or am I just unused to being managed? (At this stage, I think it’s a bit of both, which is making it harder to untangle).

      That being said, it totally sucks being in a work environment where you feel (or have been explicitly told!) that your boss doesn’t trust you or your judgment. I also want my boss’ words and actions to show that they listen to me, take what I say seriously, and that if I make a good point about something, that will affect the ultimate decision that is made.

      Just something to consider.

  3. Heather*

    What metrics is she using as evidence for the changes? Has she made any changes that did improve the team or the program? What areas have her choices shown success, if any? Part of managing is space is taking time to change things after evaluating what is and is not working. What data did you provide in the interim role to help her see what was and was not working well that led her to make this many changes, this quickly? Are these her preferences or real changes that improve the system?

    1. PurpleShark*

      And really, how hard would it be to let the staff know why these changes are necessary and how they will improve the overall organization? What gets me is that if you want to come and make changes it can work much better if there is a buy-in from existing staff. In addition, you can provide evidence of how it will improve things.

      1. M*

        I agree it’s almost always better to get staff buy-in, but I can definitely imagine a version of what OP describes where Marcia would be *completely* justified in skipping past that. If the former structure was barely-organised chaos, and what OP means is:

        – “we didn’t previously have a desk schedule and now we do”
        – “no-one’s had a performance review for a decade, and when Marcia did them she identified that three staff were performing the same job/doing work that wasn’t accounted for in their job descriptions/not doing some tasks formally allocated to them/etc, so she changed their job descriptions”
        – “our previous calendar system wasn’t organisation-wide and standardised, and now it is”
        – “previously, everyone did their own storage, and now we have a central system”
        and so on…

        …well, I think we’d all be pretty sympathetic to Marcia, if she wrote in asking how to handle a long-time staff member and former interim director who’d responded to that by suggesting hiring an external facilitator to “fix communication challenges”.

        1. The Unfrazzled Project Manager*

          Yes. I was Marcia once. I was not the boss of anyone, but I was the only one who did the job, and mannnn people lost their shit. A huge part of what I did was tech support for a product at my job, and I was the *only one who did it.* There was no process other than ’email the person in that role’ before, and I was all, Immediately No. This place did NOT curate their email lists, so I got literally hundreds of emails a day that had nothing to do with anything I did, and I could not effectively filter them as I supported the entire organization, so if I filtered them, I might miss a problem. We had a ticketing system, and I started a process where people had to use it. The MOANS! The SCREAMS! The DRAMA! To submit a ticket, you could either go into the ticketing system..or you could E-MAIL TICKCT(at)MyOrg(dot)com. Literally you could still just send an email. People. Lost. Their. Shit. It took me nearly a year of sending back a template of “Please submit this to the ticketing system by emailing it to (address) or going to the ticketing system and (instructions.) Tickets sent directly to (me) will not be responded to.” to train people to do it, but I did.

          I got amazing reviews for keeping up with tickets better than anybody in my role ever had. So much praise! I identified patterns and got things fixed. I was able to put actual solid numbers to the ticket increase when Covid hit and I was able to get a part time helper for awhile because of the massive increase- and it was easy. I just added the person to the ticketing system. It was all centralized.

          When I left, they replaced me with several people. The new boss decided that a ticketing system was “impersonal” and went back to having people e-mail individual people. The job was high, high turnover. Tickets got lost. People quit and their emails were not turned off for months, so people were emailing a ghost and getting frustrated that they were not getting a response. The last I heard, that boss was trying to re-implement my centralized system, but she had bad mouthed it so much that she was having a hard time doing it.

          TL;DR- Marcia might have very good reasons to do what she is going. Is your team running on vibes? That is not always the best way. “We have always done it this way” is not a great reason to keep doing it this way. And as M pointed out above, sometimes metrics are important. The desk is staffed, the calendar makes sense, we can now find things in the central storage. These things are not necessarily there to ruin your life. I feel a lot of sympathy towards Marcia, and would love to hear her side of the story.

      2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        I had a similar reaction. It’s possible that Marcia is legitimately making bad decisions and ignoring anyone who tries to point out why the decisions are bad. It’s also possible that the decisions largely make sense and perhaps Marcia hasn’t done the best job of change management.

    2. Nicosloanicota*

      I agree that OP needs to focus on evaluating the metrics for the organization’s purpose, and not staff happiness, even though we do all understand how one can contribute to the other.

  4. I NEED A Tea*

    Speaking from experience, when a company gets new leadership there is always change, and they expect you to roll with it.

    1. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Exactly. Just because someone higher up asked for your input doesn’t mean they’ll always take it.

      1. Goldenrod*

        “Just because someone higher up asked for your input doesn’t mean they’ll always take it.”

        Exactly. In my experience, leadership loves to get input from the team to create the illusion of buy-in. But that’s all it is – an illusion. I’ve been on many hiring committees where they thanked us politely for our feedback, then just hired whoever they wanted. In the end, it’s not a democracy.

        And I also wonder if the board secretly didn’t love the chaotic leadership style and actively hired a leader who promised to impose order.

        I would start looking for other jobs. I think that’s the course of action that’s likely to have the most positive outcome for the LW.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          That was exactly my take: chaotic good may seem fun to the employees but it doesn’t translate well on balance sheets and public facing.

        2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

          Yeah, I have questions about whether the board was entirely honest with the staff about how everyone was great and they weren’t bringing in a change agent. Also possible that staff misinterpreted what the board said. They’re not bringing in someone to make massive changes, like a community centre suddenly becoming an art gallery. But they did want someone to impose some structure.

          1. Paulina*

            Also, the board might not think of these changes as much in the way of change. They don’t seem big, and don’t seem much like the sort of change that a board would care about (storage, scheduling, processes, a few job descriptions). They’d care about these lower-level organizational aspects being done well, but likely wouldn’t care what flavour of “well” it was.

            Meanwhile, the new outside-hire director doesn’t understand the current chaotic system and likely finds herself unable to report well to the board about the larger things that boards tend to care about.

      2. Eldritch Office Worker*

        This is so hard to get people to understand sometimes. Input is often 50 different opinions from 30 different people, there’s just no way to make decisions work across the board.

        1. MaxPower*

          From experience I can say that there’s also times when it seems like “nobody wanted this change” but really there’s a bunch who did, but didn’t feel like they could say it in front of certain people, but when asked by new management they will give their actual opinion.

        2. Rex Libris*

          And when you ask for input from staff on workplace improvements, you’re going to get a couple ideas to really think about, and a whole lot of “How about staff nap time! How about a Keurig at everyone’s desk! How about…” And the person who didn’t get their individual Keurig is going to spend the next year complaining about how management never listens to anyone or really wants their opinion.

          1. HigherEdEscapee*

            OMG, did we used to work together??? I literally worked at a place where there was a protracted fight because one person wanted everyone to be able to have a Keurig at their desk.

          2. greyling*

            Not a workplace but my HOA has been in turmoil recently and this comment hit the nail on the head. Our old management was chaotic good. Everything got done, mostly by a handful of super-dedicated employees who knew the building inside and out, but no one wanted to make big decisions (especially big $$$ decisions) so things got lost in a morass of “input.” New management is now fighting an uphill battle with urgent capital projects that should have been started years ago, compounded by the departure of employees who have taken decades of undocumented knowledge with them. I don’t want change anymore than my neighbors do but NO change isn’t an option. Now people are getting hung up on every little thing, just like your Keurig example. I’m sure the situation will stabilize eventually but this is a mess that could have been avoided with better organization and a willingness to make unpopular decisions when necessary. Chaotic systems can be great – right up until someone leaves, something breaks, costs go up, or funding goes down.

            Ambushing OP with a PIP after two weeks of radio silence is not cool, but like many commenters, I wonder if Marcia was hired to tighten up ship. Sometimes bureaucracy is necessary and can actually make an org more resilient.

            1. Jayne*

              I am suspicious of what was going on in that two weeks. Color me cynical, but I think that Marcie has already contacted the board to get permission to fire the OP, with the PIP is just a blind to CYA. Get out, OP. Having been part of many, many reorgs, you are seen at the old when the new is what they want. Doesn’t matter whether you are dedicated to the cause or what you have done for them in the past, Marcie has their most recent approval and you are on the outside.

      3. OrdinaryJoe*

        re: “Just because someone higher up asked for your input doesn’t mean they’ll always take it.”

        OR really wants it! which is my experience.

        My experience also tells me that, unfortunately, OP, you’re time there is done and you need to figure out how you leave. Get ‘laid off’ and hopefully a payout when they can’t legally fire you or want to risk firing you or job hunt now with the nice … ‘change in leadership, change in direction/mission/whatever’ as your excuse.

        It sucks, it’s unfair, it happens to A LOT of people

      4. goddessoftransitory*

        I mean, my imput might be “I want the new director to play Barbies with us every Thursday” or demand a pony; the board might say well, we’ll certainly–consider that. But that isn’t the same as going here’s a saddle, her name is Sparkles.

    2. Ella Minnow Pea*

      +1. I’ve been through this myself, OP, so you have my sympathy. When the leader of our organization left and the second-in-command took over, the company culture went almost overnight from warm, supportive, collaborative and encouraging to cold, impersonal, abrasive and invalidating. Loyal employees who were excellent at the jobs they had been entrusted with found themselves micromanaged to the point of burnout. And as noted above, new leadership declared it their way or the highway (as you can imagine, there was a mass exodus). Sounds to me like it’s time for you to jump ship, if that’s an option — from the details you’ve given it doesn’t seem likely to get any better. Best of luck and I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.

    3. LL*

      Yep! And it’s not always for the worst. My area at work got a new high level manager about 2 1/2 years ago. He wanted to make some big changes and had higher standards for our work than the previous interim director did. A few people who were at the level below him were either pushed out or left for new jobs/retired and the new people who were hired to replace them brought in new, positive energy and it’s a more pleasant place to work.

    4. r..*

      There’s purposeful change, and there’s … conduct not that different from a dog’s marking behavior. The problem with hiring new managers is that it can sometimes be hard to tell those two apart.

      Part of my job is to sometimes tell people with the authority to dissolve our contract (I’m a consultant) things they do not like, or at least would strongly prefer if they were different. My experience is that good managers will listen, as long as you bring good data or arguments. Always. Almost all the people I’ve ever run across who retreat onto the prerogatives on their position were the ones with the marking behavior.

      Of course just because they’ll listen to good arguments doesn’t mean they will go along with your argument; but even if they disagree to such an extend that they question whether you should be here at all, they would not let this fester in silence for two weeks despite regular contacts, then send an email about it on a Friday afternoon 15 minutes before closing time.

      Without a lot more information I cannot tell whether Marcy is in the right or wrong, but what I absolutely will say is that this email was extremely bad managerial practice. This is a discussion that should have been had promptly, with as little delay as possible to gather the information needed, in person, and not on a Friday shortly before closing.

    5. Peanut Hamper*

      I agree. I found this line interesting:

      Change is not the problem — we are used to change — but it is being imposed without a lot of staff input and very quickly.

      This is pretty much the definition of change. There used to be a joke in the UK that we would switch to driving on the right hand side of the road instead of the left, but that the change would be made gradually. But that’s not the kind of change that you can make gradually. It’s either everybody drives on the left side or everybody drives on the right side. There is no in-between.

      1. allathian*

        Sweden actually did that at the last possible moment in 1967. Today there are far too many cars on the roads to make this a practical proposition anywhere.

        I work for the government in Finland, and most changes have quite a long lead time and some types of changes can’t be implemented without asking for input from employees, or at least unions. Some changes (notably working hours) can’t be implemented without renegotiating the collective agreements, which can take literal *years*.

    6. Ellis Bell*

      Yeah, I thought it was almost naively optimistic; this idea that someone was going to come in and do the job OP doesn’t want to do, but they will be happy to do it OP’s way, or like the previous culture? Why would a leader agree to come in simply to babysit another leader’s way of doing things? Also, if the previous way of doing things is so appealing, why isn’t anyone else willing to hold those reins? If you pass on being the leader, often you’re going to have to get back in line as a follower. It’s basically telling someone how to do their job but from a subordinate position. Possibly Marcia’s ideas are awful and destructive, but if they’re just… different, I don’t get why this wasn’t expected.

    7. H.C.*

      This. At CurrentJob I’ve worked under 4 different directors over 9 years (who is just one or two level down from head of organization) who all have a different vision & strategy for our team, and I’ve been able to roll with the punches and adapt/implement them to the best of my ability. Ditto for my ExJob where I’ve worked under 3 VPs over 10 years.

      Where possible & relevant I’ll provide my feedback based on my expertise and experience (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t), but at the end of the day it’s the bosses’ calls to make.

  5. ZSD*

    “In this time frame, she has imposed a strict service desk schedule, changed the job descriptions of our three front-line staff members, reorganized all of our storage, updated our calendar system, and changed the workflow for several of our processes. ”
    None of that sounds like a problem to me. Unless she reorganized the storage from alphabetical to, say, in line with feng shui, these all seem like potentially reasonable changes.

    1. Dawn*

      Yeah, I’m kind of on Marcia’s side here. Your service desk didn’t previously have times it was guaranteed to be staffed? That’s not “micromanaging” or whatever OP is implying here, that’s “managing”, and it sounds like things were pretty haphazard before Marcia showed up.

      OP, I think it’s time for you to move on from this role. You say that you’re not against change, but that’s actually exactly what I see in your letter – and, maybe, against structure as well – and it looks like that’s not something that’s going to fly under the new administration.

      1. Myrin*

        Interesting, I read the “strict service desk schedule” as “before, the schedule was flexible regarding the specific day any one person would be scheduled for service desk duty and now it’s always Andy on Mondays, Beth on Tuesdays, Cecil on Wednesdays, no exceptions” but your read could be true as well!

        1. Dawn*

          I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the “specific person on a specific day” idea either; when everyone is floating that’s how you end up with things happening like the desk just not being staffed for several hours, or all three people claiming they’re too busy to be manning the desk at the same time. Schedules save a lot of grief.

          1. Myrin*

            Oh, I don’t think anything’s wrong with it, either (I’d personally prefer it but I’ve known many people who don’t), but I do think we’re talking about different things – I didn’t mean “floating” or any other kind of system where the desk can just be unattended but rather that, for example, it wouldn’t be a problem if Desdemona said “I have a meeting with Ms Important Customer on Wednesday next week, could you put me on front desk duty for Thursday so I can use Tuesday to prepare?” which now isn’t possible anymore. But who knows!

        2. Martin Blackwood*

          Yeah, I left a retail job and then came back, and found out that the manager who had coincidentally just started when i left had started implimenting strict rules for cash register, stocking, and unpacking/labeling incoming stock. So if you were in the back unpacking stock, you were back there, even if there was nothing to unpack and there were customers that needed help on the floor. (he was fired). I can imagine the desk people got used to doing stuff that needed doing where they could see if anyone needed help at the desk, but not necessarily being behind the service desk for 7.5 hours

          1. A Person*

            This was a thing that came up at one of my previous workplaces. Staff would be away from the desk because “there wasn’t anyone who needed help at the desk” – but then we got customer survey results where people were saying they didn’t approach the desk and didn’t know how to get help, because it looked like the desk was unstaffed and they didn’t want to interrupt employees doing other work! So I can see why a manager might insist on someone always being at the desk, even if it’s not busy…

      2. Chirpy*

        Or, the previous desk staffing was a collaborative effort, where people were free to swap as necessary to keep coverage while doing other things, and now it’s a hard and fast “Ann sits here 8-12 and Bea is 12-5”, despite the fact that Ann has a task best done earlier in the day, Bea has client appointments in the afternoon, and everyone preferred when Cam took a midday shift. We don’t actually know.

        1. Observer*

          We don’t know.

          The problem is that in the context of the other “big” changes, it’s easy to see that the first interpretation is most likely.

          1. DisgruntledPelican*

            Funny, in the context of the other changes, I would think it more likely Chirpy’s interpretation is correct.

        2. Dawn*

          The thing about collaborative efforts – and I’m not saying that this is what happened here, necessarily – but the thing about collaborative efforts is that they are unreliable in the long run.

          My guess here is that Marcia came in and actually saw (relatively) significant periods where the (customer) service desk was simply unstaffed because the collaboration didn’t quite work seamlessly, and this is intended to address it.

          Or, sure, it might have worked perfectly – but there’s no guarantee that it will continue to do so indefinitely, and when it fails, everyone has an excuse. When there’s a schedule, there’s an expectation it will be upheld and staffing will be consistent, and that’s best for the clients, who should be front and centre here, rather than the staff.

          1. Never Knew I was a Dancer*

            > the thing about collaborative efforts is that they are unreliable in the long run.

            I would push back on this. If the team is small or relatively small, with a healthy sense of responsibility and cooperation, a collaborative effort will be fine.

            It’s when things scale up that a change of process is likely to become necessary.

            1. Dawn*

              Oh, they can work, I just mean that they are unreliable over the long-term. Situations change, people change, employees come and go. Schedules remain consistent.

              1. M*

                They can also “work”, while very much not *working*. If OP’s workplace previously had an entirely coworker-negotiated-on-the-spot schedule, it’s entirely possible that – for example – that worked almost entirely because 1-2 staff members took on the bulk of the service desk time, and that that wasn’t a good use of those particular staff members. (For good or bad reasons! Perhaps it meant someone was stretching themselves way too thin trying to cover service desk shifts and therefore working unnecessary overtime. Perhaps it meant a poor-performing staff member was taking extra service desk time to get out of doing more important tasks they didn’t want to do. Either or any of those is bad – sometimes, you do just need to make decisions about how to use an organisation’s staff time most effectively.)

                1. Chirpy*

                  I mean, yes. I’ve worked in both kinds of places, one where people could switch as necessary (the week was worked out a few days in advance, not a daily scramble) and one where I got stuck covering the desk any time there wasn’t coverage, despite not being the best one to do it (we had a receptionist, who could absolutely do her work from that desk – I actually needed to be physically elsewhere to do my job. No, it didn’t make sense but that’s the tip of the iceberg of dysfunction.)

      3. Rex Libris*

        And, if nothing else, there are going to be restrictions and requirements with any job that you don’t actually love. It’s one reason you get paid to do it. If the new director was demanding time worked off the clock, or saying that nobody can use their PTO, or canceling Christmas, or whatever, that would be something to get upset about, but rearranging the supply closet and firming up the desk schedule just seems kind of… unremarkable, I guess.

      4. Samwise*

        SErivce desk — it could have been, we’ll figure out who’s on the desk daily rather than ahead of time, and it was a team that was good about stepping up — someone would always be there, but it would flow depending on who was doing whatever else that day. Which is great as long as you have a team that dependably makes sure that the task gets done.

    2. Bird Lady*

      They may not be as reasonable as you’d like to think. One of the reasons why I left a museum job was that a new ED came in, saw that I was managing two full-time positions reasonably well, so she fired two additional people and tried to roll those responsibilities into my job description. I could not do the work of four people, no matter how efficient I tried to be or how many hours a week I worked. When I pushed back against working seven days a week with no days off, working 12 hour days, she told the board that I was was not committed to the organization’s success. We don’t know how she changed those job descriptions and if the new roles have reasonable work expectations. I can tell you nightmares about reorganizing storage spaces where volunteers do some of the organization’s work!

      1. Dawn*

        Or they might be as reasonable as we’d like to think! We don’t have the details, which were, um, interestingly light, so we don’t know.

        1. Bird Lady*

          Absolutely! I’m only saying that because the details are light, the new ED could be making decisions that are negatively affecting quality of life in meaningful ways. We don’t know!

        2. ZSD*

          I agree with Dawn. The letter writer didn’t give evidence of negative consequences of these changes. If they had written, “She changed the job descriptions of our three front-line staff members so that they now spend 60% of their time back-of-house; reorganized our storage so that the heaviest items are now precariously on high shelves and in danger of falling on people; and reorganized our workflows so that every step requires her approval, resulting in bottlenecks,” that would be different.

          1. ubotie*

            Exactly this. Marcia implemented a calendar! Okay??? Was the new calendar so buggy and confusing that no one could properly use it and thus there was a lot of confusion about scheduling which then led to gaps in service desk staffing–and a noticeable effect on clients? Because that would be bad.

            Marcia reorganized the storage area! Okay? Did Marcia take things out of labeled containers and put them in unlabeled containers? Or move them into another room entirely and not tell anyone? Or just throw everything into the middle of the room into a big heap, shut off the lights, and close the door? Did Marcia come up with some kind of filing system that only makes sense to her AND she refuses to explain it to anyone else so trying to find anything in storage takes three times as long as it should? Did she get rid of items or documents that she wasn’t supposed to? Well, those are all not-great things to do.

            But the OP didn’t tell us so we don’t know. And if the OP goes to the board without that extra detail about the *actual effects* of Marcia’s handiwork, then the board is (rightfully) going to think that the OP is crazy and/or has a serious axe to grind about not getting the director job (that they didn’t even supposedly want in the first place). And the board is also going to think that Marcia’s PIP against the OP is probably overdue and maybe some more house cleaning needs to be done in case any other staff members are acting like the OP. Because honestly, that’s where I’m landing each time I re-read this letter.

        3. HB*

          Exactly. There’s a world of whitespace in the basic descriptions, and we also don’t know the field. Strict service desk schedule might be “There wasn’t a set time before and now there is” or it might be “Service desk must have someone physically present at all times during open hours” (which in a slow museum may be frustratingly inefficient if staff could be doing other things while in ear shot of a bell or something they have at the desk).

          And if all the other changes are significant, then 6 months seems unreasonable to roll out everything and expect everyone to just… deal. But if it’s just a lot of minor tweaks, then Marcia could be pushing it all through so quickly because sometimes it’ just easier to deal with a lot of changes at once.

          1. M*

            Or, indeed, it could be a bunch of pretty significant changes, because when Marcia actually dug in she found that OP’s “chaotic good” was actually just straight-up chaos, and the only way out is through.

          2. Paulina*

            She may also be pushing through the changes quickly because she’s expected to run this organization, and she doesn’t understand what’s going on. “Chaotic good” and “trust people to know their jobs” sounds nice but not when you’re being asked to take responsibility for an entity that you’re new to and whose inner workings you find disorganized and inscrutable. Even if the right stuff is managing to happen currently, is she supposed to do projections based on that?

            Maybe she’s not reacting well to not understanding what’s going on, but it shouldn’t be surprising that “chaotic good” was going to be on its way out, as soon as it was going to be an outside hire.

    3. Falling Diphthong*

      Yeah, each of these seems like it could be eminently reasonable. Without seeing the calendar or storage before and after, it’s hard to judge.

      Or wildly unreasonable, and the system that had arisen organically nonetheless worked well with the staff they had and didn’t need to be changed to fit some “if we expand from a staff of 17 to 170 or 1700 this system can grow with us” at this point in time.

    4. S*

      Yeah, if you go to the board, they’re going to want to know the effects on the org’s mission. These changes are all inside baseball. You can disagree with them, but I’m skeptical that this stuff is “ruining the organization”.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        It was interesting to me that this part was left out of the letter. “The wheels are coming off” would seem to indicate that they can no longer service the population that it is their mission to serve, but there wasn’t one mention of that.

    5. Hyaline*

      Honestly, I had a very similar reaction to almost all of the changes–changing job descriptions as the only thing that made me go eeeep, but in combination with the other things here, I realize that’s a change that could run the gamut from completely undoing what someone thought their job was to, like, updating language. She’s not canning people. She’s not changing large elements of what the work is. She’s not overhauling your operations. She…made some changes to workflow and storage and schedules, over the span of six months, which is not that speedy, actually.

      I uh…kinda feel like LW may be way oversensitive to any change and might actually be the problem here. The Board agreeing that you don’t need a major overhaul isn’t the same as signing off on never changing anything ever, and not giving a new director reins to improve basic processes as she sees fit.

    6. Not on board*

      I’m only half on Marcia’s side here – re-organizing storage, updatin the calendar system, strict service desk schedule (if it makes sense) all seem pretty reasonable.

      But changing job descriptions drastically for an employee does not. Changing the workflow of a process just for the sake of change does not – if it’s an improvement in efficiency / easier to follow / catches errors better, then it makes sense. Otherwise you are just asking people to learn a new process for no reason. It’s probably the suddenness and the sheer volume of changes that people are pushing back against. A good leader takes the time to figure out why things are done a certain way and then provides logical reasoning for the changes they make. It’s not that they have to justify themselves, more like it helps get people on board.

      1. Rex Libris*

        Depends on the job descriptions. I’ve rewritten a lot of the ones in my department, simply because half the stuff people were doing wasn’t in them. There were still a couple people who weren’t entirely convinced they weren’t being asked to do more work, simply because what they were already doing got written down. Sigh.

      2. Dawn*

        Who said drastically? Nobody said the job descriptions were changed drastically. Who said the workflows were changed just for the sake of change? The OP hasn’t told us WHY anything.

        I think you’re reading things into the LW’s annoyance with the situation which may or may not actually be the case – and more likely aren’t than are, or LW would have mentioned it by way of bolstering her case here.

        1. Not on board*

          That’s possible. It does seem like a lot of changes in a very short time which indicates that Marcia may not have taken the time to learn why certain things are the way they are. Also, it doesn’t appear that Marcia has given reasons for some of the changes – I know she doesn’t HAVE to, but a good manager wouldn’t want to rely on a “because I said so” mentality. This is, of course, pure conjecture. Overall, I’m more on Marcia’s side here because a lot of the complaints seem a little silly.

          1. Rex Libris*

            A lot of changes in a very short time could equally be because there were a lot of very obvious problems. There’s just no way to tell if it’s warranted or if there were reasons or not, given the lack of detail in the letter. I think what’s getting people is that if you assume the OP presented what they thought were the most egregious issues in their letter, they just don’t seem that alarming, as written. They could just as easily be someone trying to reign in an out of control staff culture.

          2. Dawn*

            I really don’t know. I hear what you’re saying, but I just don’t see it.

            It has been six months since she started – half an entire year – and she’s… modified a few processes (including service desk scheduling,) updated their calendar system, and made three job description changes.

            If anything, I’m surprised that she’s made so few changes in half a year in her role as a director, and it sounds like she’s definitely easing into the role.

            Maybe you’re right, but I just can’t convince myself that Marcia is being super aggressive with any evidence of that very carefully dodged in the original letter.

            1. M*

              Three job description changes in an organisation that hasn’t had a process for performance review in over a decade, and was a completely different organisational structure prior to that? On that information alone, I’d be going into Marcia’s job expecting to have to completely restructure the organisation, however much I might hope to be pleasantly surprised. Three staff getting updated job descriptions feels pretty minor in that context.

    7. Samwise*

      I do understand how this can be upsetting, however, if the team has always managed to get everything done to a high standard without formal processes and procedures. It requires a lot of trust, good communication, dependability, ability to see what’s needed and willingness to do it.

      If you are a person who chafes at externally imposed structure, then suddenly having such a structure will make you unhappy. If you have a team like that, even more so.

    8. Kevin Sours*

      Granted that we only have one person’s view here but if we take the letter at face value at the very least communication was lacking somewhere along the line. The expectation set by board to the current employees was “they were not looking for a fixer but rather someone to continue the great work that is already being done”. Sudden and substantial change doesn’t align with that.

      People are unhappy and it doesn’t sound like Marcia made much attempt to get staff buy in for the changes or to do much to explain why they are necessary and good. Implementing top down changes in a culture accustom to a more consensus based style is going to rub people the wrong way. And it represents a pretty significant change all it’s own.

      Even if every one of the changes makes absolute sense I’m not sure that I would hold Marcia blameless here.

      1. Mary*

        I guess my thing is this: it’s hard to tell if these are really “substantial” changes without more info from the LW. Without context, they seem incredibly minor to the point where the LW comes off as overreacting.

        1. Kevin Sours*

          Staff seem to think they are: “staff indicate that they are unhappy with … the speed at which change is being implemented”.

          Again the message when Marcia was hired was “things are going well and we want to continue that” not “change is necessary and we expect her to do that”. Coupled with a less collaborative approach from the top, I can see why there would be whiplash from that.

          It’s possible that this was necessary and the changes good but unless we are getting a slanted view of what happened it’s hard to think it couldn’t have been handled a great deal better.

          1. M*

            Well. *OP* thinks staff are unhappy, but OP’s a senior member of the team who’s very clearly pretty openly unhappy. How much other staff are mirroring that, rather than unhappy about the substance of changes for their own sake, isn’t going to be easy to tell from a letter.

          2. This one*

            The message when Marcia was hired might also have been a lie. That might just be the easiest answer to give a troublesome but otherwise valuable employee. They gave OP’s interim status an end date for a reason.

            Not saying that’s how it should be handled, just that it’s very plausible.

      2. Nah*

        It could also be that the board didn’t actually know how the organization was being run (or rather, *not* being run) and did actually expect little to change. then a fresh pair of eyes on the previous system opened up that, wait, there’s actually some things here that need fixed ASAP so the whole house of cards doesn’t come down in a slight breeze.

    10. Lemons*

      I agree, these all sound like things that could be put in place to root out the ‘Chaotic’ from the ‘Good’.

      It honestly kinda does sound like you and the staff have an issue with change, since you cite the red flags as being “speed” and “direction,” but not any specific new issues, such as the storage changes making it impossible or inaccessible to find things, job descriptions being expanded without raises, or new processes being too byzantine. Unless there really are actual business/process problems, I would really not go to the board about this.

  6. Paint N Drip*

    If the board was happy with the staff and the non-profit’s performance, chances are better that they would be receptive to OP’s concerns. This is a tough situation, and I’m rooting for you OP!

  7. Snarkus Aurelius*

    If you aren’t aware of Marcia’s exact job description and explicit expectations from the Board, then you need to entertain the fact you and the staff may be in the wrong. Just because you think nothing needs to be changed doesn’t mean the Board agrees. They don’t have to run that by you for approval either, although it’s nice if they tell you.

    I spent a lot of time in the nonprofit world with Boards of Directors. The only time a Board ever fired a CEO was when she failed to catch a major financial oversight that resulted in a top corporate donor being irate. The CEO was problematic from day one, but the Board never cared until she affected *their* bottom line. One of you is potentially affecting your Board’s bottom line, and you will not be the person who gets you decide that because they will.

    I mean well when I say this: I can see where Marcia is coming from a little bit. You had your chance to take the job, and you didn’t want it. That’s okay! But what is not okay is to approach the person who did take the job with the implication that all the changes she’s making are wrong only because you and the staff don’t like it and you want nothing to change.

    You both can’t do the director job simultaneously because you will sow discord among staff – something Marcia pointed out already. A facilitator can’t solve that problem.

    I think you have a lot to think about, mainly: whether you want to stay and cooperate with Marcia or leave.

    1. Dawn*

      Also if this is in the US, the incoming administration has made noises about trimming massive amounts of money from the federal budget, and we all know where that’s going to come from; the Board may be looking ahead to make some “efficiencies” of their own before they have to face that.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      Yeah, I’m in a nonprofit (academic library) and the board was perfectly happy with the person who was the head of my department. When that person retired, though, their successor was rightly horrified by the lack of procedure, outdated methods, and informal (everything) that had been the status quo for decades. Retiring Boss literally kept accession records mentally and we didn’t have a formal budget so nobody had any idea how much our parent organization should be allotting for our supplies, etc.

      Boards often don’t have a great idea of daily operations. Ours thought that if we didn’t have researchers we didn’t have anything to do and were, I guess, literally sitting there twiddling our thumbs? No idea. We have a 10,000 square foot warehouse of materials to manage.

      1. Some Dude*

        Also if she is more Type A, she isn’t going to want to deal with “chaotic good.” The fact that you can find the stuff you need on your desk full of papers doesn’t mean that having a filing system wouldn’t be a massive improvement.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          Former Head of Dept was definitely a chaotic good and it was a massive problem when we had to hand off everything to their successor. You can’t have all your institutional knowledge off the books like that.

        2. H.C.*

          Not to mention that if the org is growing (or positioning for growth soon) “Chaotic Good” is simply not going to suffice as the need for systems and structures increase exponentially to deal with complexities on multiple fronts (clients, vendors, staff, regulators, etc.)

    3. Annony*

      I agree. It is hard to say what the board told Marcia and what they told the staff. “The staff is great and doesn’t need an overhaul” can be true while also wanting to shift a little more towards “lawful good”.

      1. Double A*

        Also, I read that directive as, “We do not want you to fire people and bring in new people,” not that the staff doesn’t need to ever do anything different.

    4. ferrina*

      Yeah, at this point Marcia may just be a done deal. It’s Marcia’s job to make critical and strategic decisions, and that’s what she’s doing. You may not like the decisions she makes, and those feelings are valid. But it’s also not anything that you can do anything about. A facilitator won’t help the situation- a facilitator’s job is to cultivate communication, not to make Marcia change her mind (and that’s what OP seems to want).

      I’m also interested in what the impact of these changes has been. I’ve worked under some very impulsive leadership, and often the result is that the boss ends up breaking processes that previously worked (particularly processes that have legal/contractual obligations), or wasting ridiculous amounts of staff time, or alienating clients/donors. I’ve also worked under and been a leader who had a mandate for change, and the difference there is in the results. The process of change is always hard- there is always resistance along the lines of “but we always did it that way!” or “it wasn’t broken!” The thing is…people will say “it wasn’t broken” both when it really was working well and when it wasn’t.
      But even if Marcia is messing things up left and right, there’s not a lot that OP can do about it by being adversarial to Marcia. You can either 1) leave, 2) stay and accept the changes and try to ease the process, or 3) stay and play insane political games to undermine Marcia. Option 3 is often a bad option, and it’s closed now anyways, since it sounds like Marcia wants OP out. OP can inform the board either way, but don’t expect them to tell Marcia to change.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        Exactly. If I were Marcia, the facilitator suggestion would have done it for me. I’ve worked with a few people who think the reason I’m disagreeing with them is because I don’t understand or there’s a communication breakdown. No. Marcia understands perfectly what the LW is saying; she’s merely disagreeing with it. Bringing in an outside facilitator will only continue to push Marcia in a direction she has already refused, making it a waste of time and resources.

        1. Dawn*

          This is exactly like that letter the other day with the dude who was absolutely convinced that if someone was disagreeing with him, it was because they just didn’t understand what he was saying, and not simply because they disagreed with him.

        2. Peanut Hamper*

          This is pretty much where I landed as well. Suggesting to bring in someone from the outside (which will no doubt cost money) seemed like a huge over-reach to me.

        3. Not on board*

          Agree with you here, however, has Marcia communicated why she’s making these changes? I know she doesn’t need to justify what she’s doing but when she provides sound logic for what she’s doing, staff is more likely to be on board with the changes.
          eg. This process is changing because the new process is easier / more efficient / catches errors better.
          Implementing changes with a “because I said so” mentality isn’t productive and causes resentment among staff.

          1. sparkle emoji*

            This seems like it is a better way to do it generally, but LW seems primed to disagree with any reason Marcia gives. If the rest of the team is similar, telling them her process is faster/better/easier might just get people digging their heels in to prove her wrong.

        4. sometimeswhy*

          I’ve also been subject to changes that were given without reason, sometimes in the middle of a process, sometimes several times in the middle of that process. (I once had to submit a memo five separate times because they kept finding new and different things that they wanted changed about it) So I’m sympathetic, but if I squint at this and hold it up to the light just right, I’ve also been Marcia.

          I took over from a series (decades) of leadership who neglected really basic safety and documentation practices for my industry, stuff that could’ve gotten us shut down for good. When I made some rapid, urgent changes the senior staff lost. their. sh!t. about it. They went to HR. HR brought in a facilitator. When it became clear to the facilitator that this wasn’t a communication issue, it was a basic competence issue, the senior staff threw another fit claiming that HR had brought in a ringer for management and withdrew from the process. It took me several more years after that to dig out the problem people and attitudes.

    5. Sparkles McFadden*

      I know nothing about non-profits, but this comment sounds spot-on to me. The changes being made just sound like Marcia wants more order and less chaos. (The service desk people didn’t already have a strict schedule? That’s fairly basic.) I understand that this goes against how you would have done the job but…you didn’t want the job. You obviously have a relationship with the board so, yes, you can go talk to them, but, if I were you, I’d start job hunting first, just to be on the safe side.

      My personal experience from the other side of this: Getting “You’re doing it all wrong” feedback from the person who didn’t take the job is not terribly helpful. (In my case, I replaced someone who retired who could not let the job go.) Please consider that it is entirely possible that the board said the staff was great and they didn’t want any changes, but still stressed “We need things to be more organized and efficient.” I have no doubt there were conversations that took place when Marcia got the job offer and you really do not know what those conversations entailed. The real question isn’t “How can I get Marcia to stop making changes?” The real question is: Would you be OK with working under Marcia and implement her plans?

    6. MsM*

      I’ve been in a situation where the board replaced senior leadership over staff dissatisfaction – but it was literally the entire staff threatening to walk. If OP thinks that’s a real risk here, then get some other senior staff (or recently departed employees the board respects, assuming they don’t just want to stay clear of the whole thing) to sign on and present that case to the board. If people aren’t happy but not unhappy enough to put their jobs on the line without having something else lined up first, this may just be one of those points in the institution’s life cycle where there are going to be a lot of comings and goings.

    7. Anon for this*

      Yeah, maybe Marcia is doing exactly what the Board expected/wanted. At an ex-job (small nonprofit), I was hired at a department director level — first FT position in that role and was told by the newish Exec Dir I was supposed to professionalize the org, use best practices, implement policies and procedures that previously didn’t exist.* I asked during my interviews if the Board was supportive of this because it’s not easy to come in and do something like that. I was assured they were.

      Reader, they were not. The Board fired the Exec Dir less than a year after they started. (I was that person’s only hire.) When they finally hired a new Exec Dir, that new Director eliminated my position on their second day(!!) of working there.

      I would be careful going to the Board. And start job hunting.

      *And that were legitimately needed to conform to nonprofit best practices…like having an overtime policy, or an employee handbook.

    8. Rex Libris*

      Assuming the library theory is correct, the boards don’t normally communicate anything to the staff, in my experience. The staff reports to the director, not the board, and they won’t insert themselves into that relationship except in wildly unusual circumstances.

      It’s pretty much a given that the staff doesn’t actually know what the board thought about the previous director, or the workplace culture, or how much of this is coming from the board itself, because those are also things that wouldn’t be communicated to the staff, since it would undermine the director if it doesn’t look like they’re the final word on things.

      1. Dek*

        Alternatively, the boards try to bully the staff, if there’s been a political takeover.

        Our board bullied one director into resigning, illegally fired another direct (had to rehire him, and then he quit), and passed a new rule (I don’t know if it’s made it to law yet), that directors don’t need to have a MLS.

        If Marcia is actually as bad as LW is saying, it could be that the board is actually all about that.

    9. r..*

      If this genuinely is how the entire staff feels about it there is, however, a small problem with the whole situation:

      If you are left with no staff you may have a Board, and you may have a CEO, you may have donors, and you may have assets, but what you don’t have is a means to get work done; that requires (sufficient) staff.

      Then again the nonprofit world is littered with small/medium-sized organizations that collapsed (or almost collapsed and had a very painful recovery) over absolutely biffing their labor relations. :-)

  8. DVM*

    As a former board VP of a small nonprofit that fired the ED, I say go to the board because there is at least a chance they will help you out.

    1. Jules*

      As a former employee of a nonprofit who went to a trusted board member when the newly hired ED turned out to be incompetent, I agree.

      1. Lilia Calderu*

        That happened at my job this year. New ED didn’t kiss up (to the board) and kick down, he kissed up then goofed off on the internet while insisting other people do his well-paid job for him.

    2. RedinSC*

      And as a former non profit employee who went to the board when things got so bad, they were interested in hearing there was an issue. So, in this case, I do think going to the board isn’t a bad idea.

      But I do think OP should think about the changes being made, are they for efficiency and will they work to the better for your client population. Because they board, I don’t think will be swayed by “she’s making changes” in general but how those changes are negatively impacting clients or the work being done is what they want to know about.

  9. Delta Delta*

    I was on a board that had this happen about 8 years ago. The former ED was hands off and let the staff do their jobs. The staff liked it and were comfortable with how the process worked. The new ED wanted to add some structure and the staff Could. Not. Handle. It. Some of their complaints were legitimate and raised issues. Some of the complaints felt like complaints just for the sake of it. It felt like “well gee, Wakeen did it a different way and now that Lucinda wants to do something else we hate it.” We actually were able to get an outside facilitator to come in, which was helpful. We also implemented yearly reviews, which had never been done before. It may be worth it to go to the board if there are board-level changes that should be made (like doing yearly reviews, or authorizing a facilitator). Otherwise, just look for a new job.

    1. MassMatt*

      Lacking a formal system for reviews jumped out at me as more “chaotic” than “good”. None of the changes the new ED has brought in seem outrageous and if these are the best examples LW can come up with, well, it’s not convincing. Granted, the radio silence on her part was not great, but it probably took a while to figure out how to respond to the former acting director.

      It’s worthwhile for the LW to consider whether these changes are truly awful or are the staff just hating change. I’m thinking of the furor someone described when their company changed the number of speed dials on internal phones.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Granted, the radio silence on her part was not great

        Agreed, but radio silence goes both ways. If I emailed my boss about something I thought was important and didn’t hear back for a few days, I would definitely reach out to them again.

        This actually happened to me this week. I asked my boss about something on Friday and didn’t hear back from him right away, but when I had a meeting with him about something completely unrelated today I brought it up. His response was “Oh, yeah, sorry, lot of meetings this week, sorry I forgot, take off whichever week you want.”

        If it’s really important to me, you can be damn sure I’m not just gonna leave the ball in someone else’s court. I’m going to follow up. But that doesn’t seem to have happened here.

      2. A Person*

        It could be a bit of both, honestly. Sometimes it’s hard to sort the legitimate complaints out of a haystack of “But we’ve always done it that way! Harrumph!”

      3. M*

        >Granted, the radio silence on her part was not great, but it probably took a while to figure out how to respond to the former acting director.

        This stood out to me as the one bit of what OP describes that’s clearly bad practice, as opposed to dependent on more detailed context. But, that said: in an organisation with no established process for performance reviews, if Marcia had decided that OP had been white-anting badly enough to need performance management, it’s *entirely* possible she had to go to the Board to get approval for what she wanted to do in response (particularly when factoring in OP’s seniority). And there are Boards – particularly for small, “chaotic good”, NGOs – that’ll respond to something like that by telling the ED not to touch the issue at all until they get legal advice/decide what they want her to do about it.

  10. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

    It’s hard to tell what the situation is here. The changes listed don’t sound unreasonable per se (if you have a service desk, shouldn’t you have a schedule? The word “strict” is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. Were the job descriptions changed to match the actual jobs or to account for tasks that were not clearly anyone’s responsibility? Etc.). I have a little skepticism about the previous way of doing things, maybe given the “chaotic good” description. I dislike unnecessary rules but am in favor of clear processes and responsibilities.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      Agreeing – having a service desk schedule sounds like an entirely reasonable thing to me – how is anyone supposed to get service if they don’t know when the service desk is staffed?!?

      The other things sound more like style than substantive issues. Reorganizing storage – does that means Marcia reallocated the way physical things are stored or are you talking about data storage – and either way, is that really a big deal?

      I would talk to a board member to find out whether they are on board with Marcia’s direction. But I would also start an active job hunt, because I think that – whether justifiable or not – your expressions of concern have destroyed your chances of working with Marcia.

      1. Myrin*

        Oh, believe me, reorganising storage is a huge deal and, if done badly, can result in you never finding anything ever again. If done well, it makes people’s lives a million times easier.

        1. LB33*

          That might be true, but the bigger point is that none of the things listed to me are really at “must take this to the board” level. I do agree overall that it’s probably time to start a job search if you can’t work together with Marcia

          1. HB*

            Yeah but the LW isn’t really obligated to provide enough details to prove her case when they’re just asking for general advice and give the broad strokes of the situation. Taking the LW at their word that many staff are unhappy with the way things are unfolding, that *is* a board level problem. Directors aren’t dictators, and replacing staff is both expensive and disruptive. (In LSAT world many means at least 3 and if you’re even including the LW in that total, it’s still 25% of staff).

            And I’m not saying Marcia is at fault. If the Board told her to overhaul everything, then the Board messed up by creating a different expectation among the staff as to how the transition would unfold. Or if the staff had reservations about Marcia and the culture fit, then they could be reacting more negatively to her because they’re expecting her to fit in with them, and that’s affecting things. Or maybe the LW really is making a big deal about nothing, or tanking staff morale as Marcia thinks… either way, the organization has a problem that probably can’t/won’t be fixed by the LW simply leaving (unless they’re a lying liar who lies and it turns out they’re the only person in the org who has any issue at all, but again… taking LW at their word).

            1. Observer*

              Yeah but the LW isn’t really obligated to provide enough details to prove her case when they’re just asking for general advice and give the broad strokes of the situation.

              Obligated? No. But it would be helpful. Because right now it sounds like they are complaining about reasonable things and the way to handle that kind of situation is *very* different from a situation where their complaints really are valid.

              1. Saturday*

                Yeah, Marcia hasn’t been there long enough for the board to know if her changes are good ones, but nothing on the list seems so drastic that people should step in and stop her at this point – unless there’s more info LW can provide to make this point.

                I wouldn’t describe what she’s doing as an overhaul, and I think the board is likely to give her some space right now.

            2. Hyaline*

              I mean…I think quite a bit of the advice in a case like this rests on “is the LW making a big deal out of nothing” so IMO it’s pretty relevant. Even if others are “unhappy” you can’t expect a Board to get amped up over “Benji and Susie don’t like that we’re storing things in the hall closet instead of under the stairs now” or “George doesn’t like having a schedule”–the advice there is going to rest more on “you need to learn flexibility and adaptability at work” and “sometimes people make changes you don’t like but it’s not a federal case” not “continue to press and eventually go to the Board.” I think LW stepped in it and, Alison’s advice to consider looking elsewhere is spot on not because Marcia is terrible, but because LW has so thoroughly soured the situation. The LW says they needed outside perspective, and I think their judgment on “problematic change” may be clouded.

            3. Elbe*

              Yeah but the LW isn’t really obligated to provide enough details to prove her case when they’re just asking for general advice and give the broad strokes of the situation.
              I agree that they are not obligated. And I also know that people who submit letters aren’t professional writers, and they don’t always know what details are relevant for advice.

              But, that said, the quality of the advice you get depends on how accurately the situation can be presented. From the details included here, I think that there is a pretty significant chance that the LW is upset with these changes mainly because they enjoyed having a “chaotic good” workplace and are bristling at changes that will make it more regimented and professional.

              And if that’s the case, encouraging them to go to the board is actually very bad advice. It will put them in an even worse position than they are in now. Nothing screams “poor professional judgement” more than escalating non-issues to the highest level and undermining your boss in the process.

              1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

                This exactly. Part of the advice given by Alison and/or commenters can be suggesting the LW ask themselves if they’re seeing things accurately. We all have our perspectives and preferences and things. It’s not about the LW proving anything to any of us; it’s about offering a perspective that they might not have considered.

            4. Ellis Bell*

              I take them at their word that staff are unhappy (It’s pretty clear that OP has a very good read of the temperature on staff morale) but everything that they’re unhappy with are the kind of reasonable changes that new leadership will always be inclined to make. The fact that staff are unhappy is obviously a huge deal, but sometimes staff are upset at any and all changes, like losing their extra phone speed dial button. The descriptions that OP does give, like “chaotic good” and objecting to a calendar are more alarming than what they don’t say. I can see people getting understandably upset about job descriptions being changed, but sometimes when things have been on a state of chaos for a long time, the changes are always going to be overwhelming. I am not convinced OP understands that.

            5. M*

              >Yeah but the LW isn’t really obligated to provide enough details to prove her case when they’re just asking for general advice and give the broad strokes of the situation.

              Sure, but as well as what others have pointed out – it shows a bit of a lack of self-awareness to write out that list of seemingly pretty minor changes and not think to add even something like “some of these changes have been disruptive to our ability to get work done, because Marcia hasn’t asked key stakeholders before implementing them, or has ignored their input”. It gives the vibe that OP feels the changes are objectionable in and of themselves, or should have required extensive discussion and staff buy-in to implement, which doesn’t seem to match the fairly minor scale of the changes.

        2. Guacamole Bob*

          My first instinct was also that reorganizing storage is not a big deal, since the small nonprofits that I’ve worked in have been office-based environments where that would mean the office supply cabinets and where you keep the flip charts and envelopes – griping about that would be a sign that the staff just really can’t handle change. Then folks above mentioned museums and libraries, and yeah, changing the system there could have much bigger impacts.

          1. Myrin*

            Yeah, I’m an archivist – my whole working life consists of storing things, basically – and additionally work adjacent to the local museum currently, and from the combination of “service desk”, “front-line staff”, “board”, and “storage” in the letter, combined with my biased background, that’s the broad category of jobs I mentally landed on without really thinking about it.

          2. Whale I Never*

            True, but also I think you could sum up the history of 99.9% of archives and museums in this country by saying “for the first 50-150 years of this institution the collection was organized based on Vibes and then we sort of started to implement a system for new stuff only and then a few years ago we got a $5 grant to survey the old stuff and now we’re trying to apply the system to ALL the stuff.”

            So again. Hard to determine from the letter whether Marcia’s intervention is good or bad.

        3. Boof*

          I don’t feel like the LW really laid out of the storage reorg was good or bad or just a reorg with a lot of work for a net neutral impact.
          LW just seems to stress that all these things are happening but… what is their actual impact on final workflows and services provided?

        4. Nah*

          I feel that if that were the case though, LW would have actually brought the issues it was causing up in their letter to explain why the changes were bad. Same for the other changes implemented, it just feels like complaining about changes simply for being changes, rather than their effect on the actual day-to-day.

    2. Escapee from Corporate Management*

      I picked up on the “chaotic” part of chaotic good as well. Chaos in organizations may benefit the employees but be problematic to the people the organization serves.

      OP, you’ve focused very much on how these changes are impacting employees. Please look at the changes from the perspectives of (1) customers and (2) the Board. They may not be as happy with the old system. Or maybe they are. But please consider them before pushing forward any more.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        I think when chaos works, it’s often dependent on a very specific set of circumstances. Like the people who share help desk duties are in accord about how to divide that equitably. And when one person quits or is hired, or outside needs change, suddenly the solution that looked chaotic to outsiders feels chaotic to everyone inside it, too.

        1. Elbe*

          Agreed. It can be great for a while, but its success is often dependent on things that can change pretty quickly.

    3. ferrina*

      Yeah, I’d like more info too. Nothing OP listed is necessarily bad stuff. It can be bad if done poorly, or it can be good. I’ve seen leadership make all sorts of stupid changes, but I’ve also seen leaders make necessary but unpopular changes. I can’t tell if OP is having sour grapes over necessary but unpopular changes, or if the changes really are disruptive.

      Honestly, with OP being an assistant director, I’m a little unimpressed with their inability to provide relevant detail. I don’t know if they are obfuscating to get people on their side, or if they genuinely don’t know what details are important to include (not a good sign in an AD), or if they were overzealous in keeping things vague for anonymity.

      1. Boof*

        This is where I land – OP seems hung up on changes is happening, but not much info on why the changes are actually good or bad, just “but the board said they didn’t need change and things were doing well before!”
        I’d be pretty taken aback if fairly logical and necessary changes to decrease the amount of acknowledged chaos were met by a constant stream of pushback for no reason other than “I prefer not to” (I don’t know if that’s what the OPs doing but again, I’m not clear on why they’re opposed to these changes ) -and a request for a mediator probably would indeed be “oh heck no”

  12. RVA Cat*

    OP, Marcia has made it clear these is 100% her circus and her monkeys.

    Put all your energies into getting out. Look to the board members you are close to for references and networking. Or maybe they could negotiate letting you go with severance?

  13. LB33*

    I wouldn’t recommend talking to the board unless you have other examples of Marcia’s mismanagement. She may be truly awful, but things like changing the calendar system, the service desk, and reorganizing storage sound really mild and are unlikely to have the impact you’re hoping for

    1. Escapee from Corporate Management*

      And may have been directives from the Board itself. If OP doesn’t know for sure, she should check into that before complaining further. But then again, this relationship sounds like it’s already burned.

      1. LB33*

        Yes – I could easily imagine the board saying something like “Overall everything’s fine and no major overhaul is needed but there are some areas that are a bit chaotic and we’d love you to clean those up”

    2. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Unless you can directly tie any of these things to dissatisfaction from the *people you serve,* as opposed to employees merely not liking change, then I don’t see these complaints to the Board going anywhere. Maybe I’m missing some context, but I nowhere in the letter do I see any of these examples translating to poor public-facing outcomes. That is where the Board’s focus will rightly be.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        Or at least tying to negative operational results. “This new schedule has resulted in no changes in customer complaints but *has* resulted in things not getting done because Maria is now not allowed to leave the desk”.

    3. Saturday*

      Yeah, these things don’t sound unreasonable, unless they’re causing a lot of problems that weren’t mentioned. I think a member of the board is likely to think that the current employees just don’t like change.

      Are people trying the changes out with an open mind? If they are causing problems, those can be raised and maybe things can be adjusted, but it does seem like people are being pretty resistant to working with her on her plans for the organization.

      My advice would be to try not to be the person who says, “We’ve never done it that way. We do it this way.”

  14. Galactic Baseballer*

    I’m so sorry this is happening to you! I think Alison is right- there’s a lot here saying that, regardless of if it’s right or wrong, Marcia wants you gone. Since it hasn’t happened yet, use this time to get your ducks in a row.

    I see a decent amount of support for Marcia in the comments above, and I want to offer a counterpoint- I don’t think Marcia displayed evidence of being a good manager by sitting on a response for two weeks, then putting a PIP into an email. This is something that would be addressed better face to face for sure.

    1. WellRed*

      I’m also wondering how well she’s communicating the changes she making and why. Communication goes a long way with employees when things feel in flux.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      I think you make a good point about Marcia; Bunch Harmon says something similar below, and I agree that a warm and socially skilled leader who knows how to get buy-in would definitely have tried to have at least one last face to face push to get OP on board. I just think it doesn’t rise to the level of being the kind of unreasonable or destructive boss that the board would be horror struck to hear about. If Marcia was writing in, I might prescribe more communication and PR measures, but for OP’s purposes, they just need to figure out if they’re okay with following a leader who is more about getting the job done, than about making everything feel good.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        Agreed. Though I’m also open to the possibility that Marcia has tried to have that conversation with the LW, and they missed the seriousness of the situation. Even if you communicate clearly, some people can’t or won’t hear it.

    3. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      This is entirely fair. Personally, I’m on Team I Have some Questions. Regardless, if Marcia hasn’t previously had a serious talk with the LW about how their work relationship is working, it’s not great to drop that bomb via e-mail. Especially an e-mail that just promises another e-mail, rather than a conversation.

      The conversation should ideally have included the following points: There will be some changes that are going to happen and although there will be opportunities for input, things may not shake out the way the LW wants. Requests for input may be more about how to implement the change and specific tweaks to make things work, rather than talking about whether the change is going to happen or not. The LW should spend some time thinking about whether she can be open to these changes and try to move forward productively. If the answer is no, they should start working on an exit strategy for her.

  15. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

    I have done more to tank staff morale and said a formal communication outlining my plan for improvement was to follow.

    The writing’s on the wall, OP. Doesn’t really matter whether she’s reasonable or unreasonable. It’s time to get out on your terms before she fires you. All I can envision about going to the board is Drama. Look out for yourself here and find another job.

    2. Lily Rowan*

      Yeah, OP is definitely on her way out, whether Marcia is actually helping or hurting the organization (and I totally agree with the discussion about saying there’s no way to tell which from the brief description in the letter).

      Sorry.

      1. ferrina*

        Yep, 100%.

        Unless OP does a dramatic 180, they are going to be forced out. OP needs to think about what kind of exit they want to make- do they want to burn bridges or keep them intact?

  16. CubeFarmer*

    I think going to the board might be an option if you can approach a board member with whom you have a good rapport. Be ready to supply that board member with something tangible “We used to serve the community by doing XYZ, and now we can only do Z because we aren’t able to…” Or, “I’m worried that we’re not reaching as many people with [insert name of program or service] because the hours are reduced.”

    Make it about the organization’s mission or some kind of liability the organization could face because of these changes. Don’t make it about the staff not liking the changes or not feeling as if they’ve had enough input.

  17. Sara without an H*

    The Letter Writer seems to be grieving for the job and the organization as they used to be. This is natural, but it may be warping her judgement. I’m not entirely convinced Marcia is a villain, but she clearly has strong reservations about the Letter Writer. In LW’s position, I’d just start job hunting, with the former director and a couple of friendly board members as references. Why stay to get the last twinge of agony?

    1. Hyaline*

      I think this is a very charitable and insightful take–LW doesn’t like the new aspects of the job, whether they’re reasonable, unreasonable, or utterly brilliant, because they like their old job! But their old job isn’t coming back. And unfortunately, I think by not realizing that dynamic, LW may have fostered Marcia’s reservations–she may have come across has having a poor attitude and an inability to move forward–but end of day, I think you’re right. It’s time to move on, not dig in and fight and probably trash any chance of a good reference from a Board member.

      1. Adultiest Adult*

        I think both of these comments capture it perfectly. I am reminded of the beloved character Ducky on NCIS saying kindly but firmly to Jimmy who was struggling with a lot of changes: “Yesterday is over, and it isn’t coming back.” I agree that the LW misses their job as it was, but it also sounds like the changes Marcia has been making are well within her purview to make, and being the person who fights change at every turn isn’t a good look or a recipe for long-term job success. Sorry, LW, but everything changes eventually. Start looking for your next job.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          I actually have a lot of sympathy for the no win situation of people who love their job, who are almost-bosses, but who end up declining the throne when it becomes available. On the one hand, they like things just the way they are, so why would they take a promotion that would change their role entirely? On the other, leaving the promotion open to an outsider is going to change the entire company. I know OP was reassured no changes were going to happen, but I don’t think that was a reasonable expectation. It’s an understandable hope, though.

      2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        As someone who struggles with change, I totally get it. I’d probably be unhappy, too, in the LW’s situation. Which makes your overall conclusion – that the only path forward is to find somewhere else – extremely sensible.

  18. cat lover*

    When people apply for ED roles they generally expect to have leeway in the organization to make changes they see as necessary to improve whatever the deliverables are. This is not an unreasonable expectation. for better or for worse, they don’t want to be shackled too hard by the way things were done under a certain previous leader. Who’d want to be blamed for a state of affairs driven by a predecessor? I’m not sure your expectations were reasonable to begin with, even if people were happy before.

    1. Bunch Harmon*

      In my experience, people in leadership roles make far more effective changes when they get staff buy-in first. It may be Marcia’s expectation to be able to make changes, but the way she’s handled those changes is only making staff resistant to them.

        1. Bumpity bump*

          Agreed. Considering staff has the institutional memory, it’s really important to get buy in before making big changes. They may still need to get our.

          1. Mary*

            For example, I worked at a small theater that had a band play there a couple of times. The first year the assigned seating wasn’t enforced, people just sat wherever first come-first served. The second year, the assigned seating was enforced – if you bought a ticket for the back row, you had to sit in the back, even if you had gotten there early to get in line. Some people complained, but we also got emails from people thanking us because they had bought specific seats for a reason & appreciated that we were enforcing that.

            Now, this isn’t the exact same situation, obviously, but the vibes are the same enough to me that I’m not automatically on the LW’s side.

            1. Ellis Bell*

              I think this is often true. The rules are unpopular with those who have no need for them, but the people who really need, and are grateful for more structure, are not always obvious or vocal about their needs to the entire crowd.

        3. biobotb*

          I hope they and the LW can articulate what’s wrong with the changes Marcia’s made, beyond, “It’s different than it used to be!” Because right now that’s undercutting their argument that Marcia is a bad hire.

          1. A Person*

            Yep, this. For LW to have the best chance of having their concerns heard, they need to make sure they clearly describe what problem the changes have caused (other than “we don’t like it”), and that’s something which is missing from the letter.

      2. Peanut Hamper*

        Eh, we are only getting one side of the story here. Maybe Marcia did try to get buy-in and the staff dug their heels in because they were already resistant to change.

        I think LW left a lot of details out of their letter, so that it’s really hard to judge who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong.

        1. Paulina*

          Yes. And from what Marcia wrote to OP, she seems to think that being able to complain to OP is contributing significantly to the staff reactions. OP clearly is on the “change is bad” side, the staff can tell, and from the perspective of the director that makes OP a bad assistant director. Marcia has a second-in-command who is undermining her to staff, and that will block buy-in.

      3. Ama*

        This is a really good point whether Marcia or the OP is correct. Years ago I got a new boss who in my first meeting with her, announced that she was going to change a process I managed in a way that would have made so much more work for me with no change in the final outcome. I carefully explained the reasons why I did it the way I did and why her proposed changes would not improve efficiency, cost, or any other quality measure, but we had a hard stop on that meeting and I walked away unsure she understood.

        About a week later, she came to me and apologized. After talking with some of the senior colleagues I worked with on that process she now saw that I was correct and it wasn’t worth making the changes she had proposed. Even though she wasn’t my favorite boss ever (we ended up working together for about three years before I left that employer), the fact that she did listen to feedback and admitted she was wrong did a lot to make me respect her decisions on other changes that did go through. Not all of those changes were ones I agreed with, but because she’d listened that first time, I saved my pushback for changes which would make things worse for no reason, not things I didn’t love but which didn’t materially affect my workload.

        Even if Marcia is correct about certain changes she is not going about implementing them in a way that will increase staff buy in.

      4. Escapee from Corporate Management*

        Not to defend Marcia—she may truly be awful—but as long as OP is actively opposing change, Marcia may be right that OP is actively tanking morale. There’s nothing in the letter about what OP is saying to her co-workers. It may be nothing, in which case Marcia is inappropriately blaming OP. If, however, OP is complaining openly, Marcia may be 100% correct. That context is crucial to knowing where the fault lies.

      5. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        Yeah, unless there are huge problems, it’d make sense to sit back and observe for a while and prioritize changes over time. And then communicate the rationale for changes and let people provide input on how to implement.

  19. Anon for this one*

    I’m on the board of a small organization only a bit larger than this one.

    I’d want to know if the person I’d trusted as interim director clashed to this degree with their appointed replacement.

    I wouldn’t instantly side with either one, and I’d want to hear both sides, but I can’t do that if I don’t know the problem exists.

    2. OrdinaryJoe*

      Very good point! It does show a major disconnect somewhere and I can see a Board wanting to solve the problem before losing a valued employee with clearly a lot of institutional knowledge.

    3. PlainJane*

      I’ve also been on a couple nonprofit boards and I worked at a nonprofit where we had a terrible exec director. I would go to the board before leaving this job (because I still think OP might need to find a new job). As a board member, I’ve been involved with a similar situation where the ED just sort of ghosted the employees, and didn’t communicate things, and it took someone else telling us to really understand what was happening. I’m so grateful they did!

    4. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      Yes, I think there can be ways to have this discussion productively and respectively.

  20. CindyLou*

    First, whatever happened to believing what the letter writer says at face value? I’m seeing a lot of comments doubting what LW said.

    Second, isn’t this the second letter where we’re guessing that the board told the new director to do something, but didn’t share that information with the staff? Why would a board do that? How does not communicating with the staff help the organization in any way?

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Nobody’s questioning that Marcia has reorganized storage or imposed a service desk schedule. What they are questioning (and rightly so) is the impact of those things. LW says that the wheels are falling off. How? Did Marcia reorganize the storage and now nobody can find things? Did she create a service desk schedule that requires people to work days/times they already have other committments for? Did she change the calendar system to something you need a decoder ring to understand?

      We have no idea, because LW didn’t point this out. There is a very strong “Marcia is making changes and I don’t like it” vibe coming from this letter. But as LW has not told up how these changes are having a negative impact (or even that they’re having a negative impact) it’s very hard to view Marcia as the bad person here.

    2. LB33*

      I don’t think anyone is disbelieving the LW, but instead saying that Marcia’s transgressions as described don’t paint the picture of an organization in ruins. And so if she’s going to go to the board about this she needs to make it about how these things are impacting the people they serve (if that’s happening), not just staff resistance

      1. amylynn*

        Actually, I think a lot of people are disbelieving the LW, by dismissing her statement that the changes are a big deal. A lot of responders are saying, in effect, “because I don’t think those changes are a big deal they must not be a big deal and you need to provide proof that the changes are a big deal before I will address your actual issue.” The LW did not write in to ask if rearranging storage was a big deal, she wrote to ask about, IMO, an aggressive, over-the-top response by a new ED to her observation that staff was unhappy with recent changes. Agree with the commenters that LW’s days are probably numbered but not sure why so many people seem so eager to assume, based on no evidence, that Marcia has some secret instructions from the board to right the ship or that Marcia has a better understanding of the workplace, after six months, that the LW.

    3. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Because this Board already heard from staff that they don’t want anything to change. I suspect the Board disagrees with that overall assessment. It’s not their role to come up and implement those changes nor do they want to hear predictable grief from the staff. They already know how employees feel so they’re not going to change their minds. It’s the director’s job to handle everything that comes with these changes anyway.

      It’s a fairly good assumption that if the Board hired Marcia, then they’re going to support whatever ideas and changes she has, especially if she was hired on the basis of her mission and vision. (I’d wager she was because it’s a standard interview question.)

      1. AD*

        “Predictable grief” seems a little uncharitable here. Maybe Marcia’s mandate for change was communicated thoughtfully to her staff — or maybe she has sharper elbows and hasn’t worked to earn her staff’s trust or loyalty yet, and there’s understandable friction. I think some of the comments speculating that Marcia’s changes are reasonable as a new incoming ED probably have merit but it sounds like her approach has been less collaborative than her staff may have liked to see (mandates for change are important, but being an empathetic, communicative leader is as well – these are not mutually exclusive!).

        I’ve also seen new directors come into non-profits with little/less soft skills and rankle perfectly capable employees, so who’s to say a little of that isn’t happening here. There’s not much meat in OP’s letter — maybe OP is being more truculent than she should with any change, and maybe Marcia’s leadership skills are lacking in some areas. Both could be true! Either way….things are not looking great for OP

    4. MsM*

      Marcia may bear some responsibility for not effectively communicating that this is now a priority for the organization or getting team buy-in, but the board really shouldn’t be stepping in to tell the staff how to do their jobs when that’s the ED’s role.

    5. Observer*

      First, whatever happened to believing what the letter writer says at face value?

      The rule is that we take what the LW says at face value absent evidence of error, misunderstanding or something else

      What people are responding to is the evidence *in the letter* that the LW’s judgement is skewed here. It’s not fan-fic.

      As for the rest, we don’t know whether or not the Board told Marcia anything. And you could be right that *if they did* it might not be the best way to handle it. But it is a real possibility given that the Board went ahead and hired someone that the staff had reservations about. And that they seem to be seeing mundane and normal changes like re-arranging storage as a change so big that it properly belongs on a list of “Things that have been changed”.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        And, as I understand it, the rules are if you’re going to speculate, you need to include how your advice to the LW would change. In this case, some of my advice to the LW would be very different depending on whether the changes Marcia is making are good, bad, or neutral.

    6. Mary*

      I believe the LW that the changes are being made. Without further context, it’s hard to understand why these changes are a problem.

    8. Elbe*

      We’re supposed to take their account at face value unless there are indicators of another perspective in the letter.

      It’s a pretty big indicator to make a bold statement (such that the wheels are coming off of the org) and then support it by listing things that seem, frankly, reasonable. It could just be that the LW left out some details, but it could also be that the situation is a bit different than how the LW is reading it.

      I think it’s good that Alison’s response and the comments here cover both scenarios.

    9. Hyaline*

      It’s more that I *am* taking this at face value, and face value is that these changes don’t amount to much. LW said at the beginning they wanted an outside perspective, and I am putting that alongside descriptions of minor changes and coming up with “yes, your perspective may be skewed here.”

      1. amylynn*

        Why do you think, counter to the LW’s claims, that the changes don’t amount to much? Given that the changes were not the primary issue that the LW was writing about, “taking the LW’s statements at face value” would include taking the LW’s claims that the changes are a big deal at face value.

    10. Strive to Excel*

      Could be the title coming into play – “ruining our organization” is pretty strong. And Maria would probably be having more headway if she communicated *why* she’s making these changes.

      But when someone comes in to say “my boss is making life very hard for us” and then lists a bunch of relatively mundane changes, then it either calls into question the LW’s judgement or suggests there’s more information we’re not getting. “Changed the storage” does not compute with “ruining our organization”. Did the storage get reorganized to be terrible, or is it just a change and thus uncomfortable?

    11. Ellis Bell*

      I think there’s a difference between assuming the board has definitely given Marcia the green light, and advising OP about being prepared for the possibility. Marcia must know OP is against her measures and has sway with the board; it would be foolish of her not to have sounded out the board first, and to have pitched it in her own words. It doesn’t mean OP can’t bring up their objections to the board; they just need to have a response ready if the board says “yes, we’ve already approved that/know about that; what’s the problem?”

  21. GoodNPlenty*

    I so feel for the LW because I’ve been there myself. I lost a dream niche job that I did on an international level when a new manager decided I was a problem. I wore myself out shoring up support. The reality was that the default setting was high level managers protect their own.

    I’d be looking at an exit strategy. It’s not your fault but it may well be a dead end for you. I’m sorry,

  22. Not your typical admin*

    Sounds like this is a situation where there are two incompatible work styles. The letter writer likes “chaotic good” and it seems Marcia likes more structure, organizations, and systems. That doesn’t make either of them bad. However, Marcia is the boss. It sounds like she feels like the letter writer is undermining her.

    1. lost academic*

      This is something I noticed throughout the letter – the LW definitely has a clear expectation of how the organization should operate and it doesn’t appear to include the typical hierarchy of most organizations of various sizes – I didn’t get any feel that LW felt that she had an obligation to the person hired to be her boss (kind of the opposite with the statements about being the interim director but not wanting the job….) and overall a lot of ‘all change needs to be comfortable with consensus’ vibe. I would bet some money that the new director is perfectly well aware of LW being the recipient of staff griping and thinks, with or without evidence, that LW is at least supporting a level of negativity that’s interfering with the new goals (which…. sound pretty tame and basic administration to me…). And I would put some money on that being true, intentionally or otherwise.

      I notice this a bit more with people in nonprofits, that there’s a greater expectation of a flat structure and the expectation that many individuals can and should be heard on a variety of things. Might just be me, but I think that’s something that easily goes too far rather too quickly and is very hard to change. I can’t imagine hiring a director to be my immediate supervisor and recommending bringing in a mediator to deal with the issues I had with them over literally anything….

  23. TD*

    “Not being interested in applying for the director position…”

    If you have a potential chance to be in charge and don’t take it, you’ll inevitably end up with someone else in charge of you, in ways you don’t like. I learned this from Jim and Tim in both versions of “The Office.”

    1. Jimmy Montgomery Steinbrenner*

      All sitcom characters will inevitably end up with bad bosses, because that’s a relatable situation with comic potential. IRL, managers who don’t want to be managers are usually unhappy and bad at their jobs.

  24. Wallaby, Well I'll Be*

    None of these changes seem unreasonable, to the point where complaining about them feels petty. And if the LW has been going around complaining about the ED and the changes, then maybe they ARE doing more to tank morale than they think. It’s amazing how just a couple more complaints than usual can make a workplace intolerable.

    I used to work for a museum. Nothing significant had changed about daily operations in a decade or more. I dearly, dearly wish an ED who actually cared about the organization had come in, taken a look at our godawful vaults, and said, “This cannot continue.”

    I dunno. I’m suspicious of non-profits in general. So many folks have been in those jobs for so long that they are allergic to change, period, doesn’t matter if it’s reasonable change. Emotions run high, and drama runs rampant. From the nature of LW’s complaints, it really feels like there’s a good chance they are a driver of drama.

    1. Nah*

      Also, even if staff *are*complaining to her, how comfortable do you think the entry-level worker is going to be making positive comments or praying back on negativity coming directly from the former acting ED? that’s quite the power gap, and while I can’t say what the employees actually think, I know in that situation I would absolutely just smile and nod along rather than risk my position, even if I thought the new director was the dang second coming.

  25. CommanderBanana*

    LW, I think the writing’s on the wall, and you likely don’t have much of a future at this organization. I would not count on the board helping you, either. I worked at a small (less than 15 people) non-profit where the Executive Director became a falling-down drunk at events and his bestie/drinking buddy had been the cause of a slew of HR complaints, settlements, and lawsuit threats. It took 12 years for them to actually get rid of him by forcibly retiring him.

    It’s hard to tell from this letter who is in the right, but it kind of doesn’t matter. Sure, you can present your case to the Board, but the likely outcome is that you’ll be let go.

  26. LB33*

    I’m not in the nonprofit world, so can someone tell me what an outside facilitator does? It sounds like a really dramatic step to bring in someone from outside the organization to settle disputes about desk coverage or storage closets

    1. MsM*

      I don’t know exactly what OP had in mind, but usually if you’re spending the money to bring in an external consultant, it is for something major with long-term implications for the organization that nobody else has the expertise or bandwidth to manage, like strategic planning or a capital campaign. Improving internal communication isn’t completely out of line as one of those projects (although I do think it would be somewhat unusual for a small organization), but it does require the person in charge (and often the board) to agree that’s something that needs improving.

    2. Saturday*

      I don’t have experience with this either, but it does sound like a drastic move saved for when things are really broken. That could be wrong though.

    3. different seudonym*

      It’s a whole thing

      It’s a service that some nonprofits will provide to others (there’s a whole subsector of nonprofits whose explicit mission is org support for otjer nonprofits). It’s not like legal arbitration; more like a very very bureaucratically-inflected form of group therapy. The underlying assumption is that in a mission-driven field it’s more important to bring dedicated people into consensus than it is to enforce hierarchies. Sometimes it’s free of charge, or sliding-scale, and more often it’s a consultancy fee, though probably well below what you’d see in for-profit management consulting. A person or team will identify and talk to all institutional stakeholders and then try to resolve the conflict.

      I’ve heard of hideously touchy-feely variants, but in my own case it was just…a lot of talking to us like we’re stupid, and then eventually a shame faced admission that what we actually need is $300K, not to be nicer to one another. Thankfully we.paid very little for that BS.

      1. nnn*

        That’s one approach I suppose but among the communication consultants I’m familiar with, the focus isn’t on consensus but on improving communication. The idea is that people are talking around each other and not understanding each other’s point of view and priorities and the consultant can help improve that.

        Consensus and communication are two very different things.

        1. different seudonym*

          Hm. Thanks for that. The orgs I’m familiar with have a lot of formal and informal links to the Society of Friends (Quakers), so there’s probably a real skew in my experience.

  27. Galvanic*

    I agree with some of the comments about the changes not seeming so bad, but the final part about waiting two weeks and then coming back immediately with an emailed PIP seems to suggest that Marcia is the problem. I would have expected her to sit down with the LW, talk about the situation and hear LW out, and then react politely with that. Instead, it went right “I’m moving to get you out!”

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      A pip does not mean that you are going to be fired. A pip is literally an opportunity for you to get your act together.

      Which makes me wonder what LW has not told us about this situation. I honestly think LW was kind of out of line for saying they should bring in an outside facilitator. That seems like an extreme escalation since LW has not in any way indicated that Marcia’s changes have had a negative impact on the services they deliver. She says the wheels are falling off, but she doesn’t say how they are falling off. I think we are not getting the entire picture here.

      1. Pita Chips*

        A pip does not mean that you are going to be fired.

        Sometimes that is exactly what it means, and I think that is the case here.

      2. CommanderBanana*

        Yeaaaaaaaaah no a PIP means that you’re going to be fired, I would say….95% of the time. It’s part of creating the paper trail to fire someone.

        1. Ellie*

          Yes, I’d take this PIP as a final warning from Marcia that OP needs to either get on board with the changes, or get out. I can’t tell from the letter whether it is OP or Marcia that is the problem, but considering she was the interim director, and presumably has a lot of skills and value to the business, I think its worth going to the board to check where she stands.

          1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

            Ideally, yes. It’s a fair question whether the LW has a real shot of passing the PIP. A boss who wants you out can fail you no matter what you do. But we don’t know Marcia’s position on this.

    2. Furgig*

      I suspect Marcia spent those two weeks shoring up HER support to the point where she felt she had everything she needed to move against LW.

      1. Escapee from Corporate Management*

        This, 100%! This is a message that may have already been reviewed by the Board and/or an attorney. OP may be in for a bad surprise if she goes to the Board.

    3. Double A*

      It depends. This suggestion for an outside facilitator could have come after LW opposed every change that Marcia made and rallied support against those changes. It could have been the last obstructionist straw, and Marcia took a couple of weeks to get her ducks in a row.

      However, I have frequently seen leadership come in and not take time to get to know the organization they’re entering. It sounds like, at best, Marcia has not taken the time to understand how the organization functions and to explain the changes she’s implementing. And that is an incredibly frustrating situation to be in. Unfortunately, it’s a more common outcome than not after a leadership change.

      1. Pita Chips*

        You’re right. Sometimes new leadership comes on board and starts changing things for the sake of marking their territory. It’s smart to get the lay of the land first, but some people think more about showing there’s a new sheriff in town.

        1. LB33*

          Maybe, but Marcia’s been there six months and the worst we’ve heard is that she’s made a desk coverage schedule and rearranged a storage area.

          1. Peanut Hamper*

            I was kind of shocked by the storage area complaint. I have worked many places where storage areas were basically just a dumping ground and were in need of a good sorting out (and throwing out a bunch of useless junk). I would not be surprised if that were the case here.

      2. Paulina*

        The problem is, that coming into an organization as an outsider, when the organization operates under “chaotic good” principles, makes it extremely difficult to get to know the organization. It sounds like there’s a lot that’s not documented or set up in processes that are followed; just how is the new person in charge supposed to get to know this organization well, to the extent that she can competently lead it and report on it to the board?

        I’m part of a larger segmented organization that sometimes gets administrators from within, sometimes from outside. We’ve gotten used to the former enough that a lot of stuff hasn’t been documented well, which makes it painful for the outside admin hires, and it’s all the more critical to support them as they try to turn what we’re doing into something understandable by people who haven’t been here for 20 years.

    4. Snarkus Aurelius*

      When I put someone on a PIP, it takes a lot of work, and I have to notify specific powers that be because it can’t be a surprise to HR nor a unilateral move. It takes about…two weeks.

      I didn’t want to say this initially, but I bet Marcia used those two weeks to present her case to the Board to put the LW on a PIP.

    5. Hyaline*

      That’s coming at the end of a six month saga that we’re only getting one side of, though–it is possible that, in the course of the six months Marcia’ s been here, she has politely listened and attempted to redirect LW, and LW keeps doubling down. Honestly, emailing *your boss* to suggest *she has communication issues* and you think she needs *an outside facilitator* is pretty damn ballsy. I’m not reading a one-time overreaction to get LW out; it suggests the last straw.

      The waiting two weeks makes complete sense if Marcia’s perspective is “I have struggled with this person in large and small ways every day for the last six months; they have argued with every management decision I have made; they are sowing discord and malcontent; this level of disrespect and lack of awareness of her place in the hierarchy is the last straw” and needed to get their ducks in a line for a formal PIP. Clearly LW’s been there a long time and has Board support; Marcia may have been making sure she was within the right scope of what they wanted from her, and may have even sought legal advice.

      I think LW thoroughly dug herself into a hole and now she should move to find a new job before her references are beyond repair.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        I have to agree. It may be that LW has been having a negative effect on staff morale by arguing against these changes when most people are probably okay with them. LW is definitely seeing things through a lens of their own dissatisfaction.

        she demonstrates in small ways that she doesn’t quite trust staff to do their work

        She then listed the reasons why she believes I have done more to tank staff morale

        I think it is suspicious that LW makes comments like this, but doesn’t tell us what those small ways are, or what those reasons are.

        Every single staff member had reservations of some degree

        I think this is fair; any new hire is going to be almost a completely unknown quantity, and people should have at least some reservations. I have rarely ever hired anybody and felt 100% confidence in them. A few reservations are normal.

        I’m wondering if LW is feeling some sour grapes about not going for the position themselves. They certainly sound unhappy and I hope things work out for them, but I get the sense that if they don’t get on board with what sound like very reasonable changes, they will be shown the door.

        1. M*

          I wonder if the staff having reservations is confirmation bias. If LW is going around sowing discord towards Marcia, people listening, nodding or participating in her conversations on this topic doesn’t really mean they have real reservations deep enough to not actually go along with Marcia’s changes. It just means they don’t care to engage LW on a deeper level. Especially for 6 months.

          1. Nah*

            Or don’t want to jeopardize their positions by disagreeing with their superior (LW was acting ED for several months and I assume is still in a much higher position than the people working the front desk)

    6. Boof*

      My take on the “2 weeks” bit is Marcia actually really thought about this – if it had come back in 2 hours it would seem more like possibly flying off the handle rather than careful consideration
      I am perhaps projecting here that I try to 1) avoid responding to anyone when I am actively angry until I cool off (especially professional communications or 2) things that are really tough and unpleasant I sometimes just let stew a little; I don’t forget them, give myself some sort of reminder or something, but if I just do not have the bandwith to deal with it right then and there it will get put off until I do

      1. M*

        To be fair, Marcia should have sent an “I’ve got this, and I’m assessing next steps” in the meantime. I’d also like to know whether “radio silence” in person meant “Marcia didn’t talk about this one email” or “Marcia didn’t talk to me at all”.

        That said, I’m inclined to agree with others that this is a sign that Marcia probably has already spoken to the Board, who may very well have instructed her not to discuss it with OP until they’d gotten legal advice/assessed the situation and advised her on what scope she had to act.

  28. Pete*

    My impression is that it is not the changes that are the problem, it is Marcia’s lack of communication, Communication being a two-way street hence the need for a facilitator.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Communication is a two-way street. But that doesn’t just mean talking, it also means listening. It’s very easy to ignore things you don’t want to hear. That may be the case here.

  29. Kitty*

    Unfortunately, from the examples I’ve seen of this very situation, I’m not optimistic either. But empathize more than other commenters. It really sucks to watch a good situation go downhill and no one seems to care. Maybe it wasn’t the perfect work situations, but it sounds like the humans were treated and valued as humans, so to watch that go away is really hard.

    One thing that hasn’t been addressed much so far though is the role of your organization in the community and whether there’s ways to leverage community feedback to help make your case. Kind of a tightrope of a route though because now you’re definitely undermining the director. I think it really does depend on what the board actually values.

      1. Kitty*

        I’m probably projecting from my own situation, but there’s a difference between a boss who comes in and makes an effort to learn why something was done the way it was and coaches staff through making updates while clearly presenting the reasons why an update is necessary vs. someone who comes in and makes sweeping changes without consultation because their way is best and everyone else who came before is an idiot.

        I’m dealing with someone who is making what seem like very small changes, but speak volumes in terms of how much respect they have for the other people who are affected by those changes. Even something as small as file names can have a ripple effect that results in hours of work for other people. Maybe dehumanizing is strong but this kind behavior sends the message that they don’t value their staff.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          Yeah, I feel like pre-Marcia there was a huge consensus culture (which would align with the description of ‘good chaos’) and everyone’s raison d’etre was contributing to an enjoyable workplace environment. It’s the only way to explain how OP felt a facilitator was an appropriate suggestion. Marcia on the other hand seems to place more emphasis on efficiency and trackable systems and probably balked at the idea it needs so many votes and so much diplomacy to pass her ideas. I’ve definitely worked for consensus strong happy workplaces and oh, is that fun. I kind of feel for OP too. But it’s not necessarily sustainable.

  30. Lifelong student*

    I worked for a NFP headed by a wonderful ED. I was Director of Finance and my input was sought on many things. I established procedures and offered insight on many issues which were valued by the ED and other senior staff. When the new ED came in, I was treated as if the only thing I was there for was to do accounting- my other business related knowledge was ignored. I was only informed about things after they were decided. I stuck it out for a while- then left for another opportunity. If OP does not have any respect from her ED- time to get out.

  31. VP of Monitoring Employees’ LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

    OP should not only leave but also encourage other staff members to leave.

    1. gyrfalcon17*

      Why should OP undermine the organization (not Marcia, but the *organization* and the clients they serve) by encouraging people to leave? That surely would be tanking morale.

      Other employees can make their own *independent* decisions to leave, if that’s what they want.

    2. Whale I Never*

      Given that Marcia has already accused LW of tanking staff morale, I can’t imagine that would be beneficial for LW’s network, including future references from the board.

  32. Strive to Excel*

    I’m coming at a situation from the Marcia end of things. I started in a job where the company has had significant growth over the last ten years, with nearly no process changes in that time. Work was being tracked on paper, Excel, and Quickbooks – manually. No one was reviewing contracts. No one was reviewing employees, really. It worked because our big boss was working almost unreasonable hours and had incredible connection with both our clients and staff.

    Now, big boss is trying to pull back from working 70-80 hour weeks and we’ve grown to the point where the existing system is insufficient. So for the first time senior management is seriously beginning to implements controls, KPIs, restrictions, signoffs, QA reviews, etc etc. And there’s parts of it that are driving staff up the *wall*, because from their perspective everything was working totally fine. But from the top-down perspective, the company could barely figure out if it was breaking even on a quarterly basis.

    I don’t know what Maria is doing and how, and it’s very possible she’s just not gelling with how the company has worked so far. But I will admit to flinching at the description of Chaotic Good. Especially if the company is a NFP, which may or may not need to fulfill some required regulatory standards.

    Maria could and probably should be communicating why she’s making the changes. “We’ve had 4 different customer complaints that no one is at the front desk”. “It took me an hour to find the file because the previous filing system was sorted by last name… of the owner of the vendor”. But from what the LW has described I’m hesitant to class these changes as ‘bad’.

  33. Voodoo Priestess*

    Obviously there’s a lot we don’t know, but what about going to the Board as a group? It sounds like there’s a lot of discontent. If OP leaves, it will likely get worse.

    But let’s say that Marcia is acting under direction from the Board. Approaching it as a group allows the Board to communicate to the whole group and reset if needed. If she’s not acting under the Board’s direction, then it will be clear to them they need to act quickly to retain their staff.

    Good luck OP. This sounds stressful.

  34. Elbe*

    The LW describes “the wheels coming off” but the only consequences listed seem to be stricter/more defined policies and lower employee morale.

    In itself, that doesn’t really strike me as a huge issue for an org described as “chaotic” where people are just trusted to do things well without formal process. It’s hard to tell if this is a situation where morale is low because employees are simply used to a lax environment or if the changes are actually bad.

    Ultimately, though, if the LW had strong opinions on how the org is run, they should have applied for the director role. Marcia is who they hired, and she gets to make decisions about roles and process. If there are drastic issues, the LW can take them to the board. If it’s more a matter of comfort and preference, then the LW will likely just have to adjust to a new way of doing things.

  35. Lily Potter*

    It finally came to a point where I sent her an email suggesting that we engage an outside facilitator…… After two weeks of radio silence, including in-person, I received an email 15 minutes before we closed on a Friday that said no to a facilitator…… and said a formal communication outlining my plan for improvement was to follow

    It occurs to me that Marcia may have spent those two weeks updating the board on your situation and that your proposed PIP already has their blessing.

    Marcia may have also already consulted outside counsel during those weeks on how to document your perceived performance issues.

    I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think this is going to end well. Please update us and let us know what happened.

    1. KOALA*

      My thought was that she may have spent those two weeks checking in with the some of the staff and finding out that the LW’s concerns were influencing their thoughts instead of actually being their concerns. Or that yes they said something offhand like they can’t stand that the storage got reorganized but only because they meant it will take them a few days/weeks to get used to it again. Not that they have a real issue with Marcia making the change. LW could be unconsciously doing or saying things that did impact staff morale, not doing it on purpose. Or all the staff could be viewing Marica with the filter of “we all thought she wasn’t a good culture fit” and therefore looking at everything she does as counter to the culture.

      1. El l*

        That too. I was once in a small org where the CEO fought with the Board over software and like LW claimed he was speaking on behalf of staff. He wasn’t, and that became clear after a couple discreet phone calls. He got fired.

        Either way, I’d bet Marcia has covered her bases on at least 1 level (board) and possibly 2 (employees). Time to go.

        1. M*

          Not quite the same circumstances, but I had a middle-management employee reporting to me a few years back who became increasingly disgruntled with a set of strategic direction and management decisions, and was *very* insistent that the rest of the department all agreed with her. Not only did they – as best I or other senior leadership could ever work out – largely not, but her (quite specific) predictions of a staff walkout to follow when she left entirely failed to materialise. Indeed, one staff member who’d moved on about three months before her, whom she was very insistent had secretly quit in disgust, asked to *come back* within a few months of her leaving, very happily stayed until his position was abolished in a restructure, and still checks in every year or so to let us know he’d love to come back if we find we need someone to do that work again in the future.

          She wasn’t sufficiently manipulative to be making it all up, so my conclusion ultimately was that she was taking the very reasonable day-to-day irritations of her colleagues and blowing them out of all proportion, plus getting a certain amount of more junior team members feeling they needed to agree with her. It absolutely happens.

  36. Manic Sunday*

    The problem I see here is that a top-down management style is being imposed on people who have put years of effort into improving their organization through a non-hierarchical, collaborative approach. That’s not likely to work well. Before Marcia, the staff had reached a place where they trusted one another and felt heard by their boss, resulting in a deep sense of investment in and ownership over their work, both individually and collectively. That sense of ownership is key to people’s job satisfaction and motivation. Then Marcia comes in and “change is being imposed without a lot of staff input and very quickly.” In this kind of situation, no matter how good the boss’s ideas are, they’re not going to be executed well by people who are 1) used to working collaboratively and 2) suddenly no longer feel heard or valued. Maybe Marcia spotted real operational issues that needed to be solved and had ideas to solve them. Maybe the board told her to come up with ideas for improvement. But frankly, if I were newly in charge of an organization, I would want to talk through those ideas with my staff because they have the institutional knowledge to tell me why X might not work but what about Y which will accomplish the same goal, etc. I’d want my team to contribute to problem-solving with me, not only because it makes people feel good, but because they know stuff. Like how to make the team dynamics work for me instead of against me.

    Six months is not a lot of time to be in charge of a long-running organization, even a small one. My org’s current director started here a couple of years ago, and he didn’t try to reinvent us in his first six months or even his first year. He took the time to understand our work before making major changes that affected our day-to-day. We are evolving rapidly now. Every single staff member here has had the opportunity to contribute to the decision-making for every single big change. Morale is high, our parent organization has increased their support for us, and the people we serve think we’re doing the best work we’ve ever done. Kind of like how OP says things were going at their organization *before* Marcia arrived.

    1. Manic Sunday*

      Also, I think people took OP’s use of “Chaotic Good” and interpreted that to mean “everything at this workplace is total chaos,” and that’s not necessarily what it means.

      1. Anon for This*

        I have pulled three times into teams that desperately needed structure. At all three, at least one person used the word “chaotic” as a positive. It was NOT a positive. Especially to Boards.

      2. Parakeet*

        Yes, with half these comments, I’m thinking “people don’t know what ‘chaotic good’ means in a D&D context, do they.” I mean, it’s an inexact metaphor regardless and could be a bunch of different things, but I didn’t interpret it as there being actual chaos, anymore than describing a workplace as “lawful good” would just mean “they follow the law.” More that it was relatively informal, casual, and non-hierarchical.

        We don’t have much information about what’s going on here. But just as it could be how many commenters are interpreting it, it could as easily be one of those situations where an ED comes in to play visionary and make their mark just for the sake of it.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          Hmm, I mean the fact that it’s an inexact metaphor says it all really. Someone at the top needs to be able to track what’s happening using proper performance measures; being told that everyone has good intentions is not going to cut it. I didn’t take “chaotic good” to mean people are drowning in their own piles, but that people are doing what they want, when they want and solving things in their own way. Any IT department who’s had to bring in a ticketing system will tell you that’s all well and good unless you’re responsible for certain things getting done.

    2. Lizard Lady*

      That’s the impression I got too! That kind of disconnect is not going to foster good work from either side.

      Given the OP’s history, I think talking with the board and saying that she has observed that Marcia and the rest of the employees- herself included- do not seem to be on the same page about the direction being taken is not a bad thing. Based on their history of inviting employee feedback on the selection process (regardless of whether or not they honestly considered it), ask them to do a follow-up evaluation. If they refuse, or if they do and find that they prefer Marcia’s changes, that gives the team the information they need to know that their former work culture is no longer an option and they can either go with Marcia’s way or find somewhere that is a better fit. And then it won’t be an utter shock to the board when there is a mass exodus, nor can they claim “but no one told us there was an issue!”

      1. Lizard Lady*

        I will note that Marcia will probably count that as another, even bigger strike against the OP when she gets wind of the request, but I feel like her job is already dependent on her accepting Marcia’s way and abandoning prior practices. The OP will be job hunting either way, unless the board input brings the two parties more in line.

      2. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        I really like your and Manic Sunday’s answers. This could be a situation where nobody is awful, but there’s a big disconnect between people’s expectations. Culture change is hard and stressful, even at the best of times. I’ve said this elsewhere in the thread, but I’m currently in a situation where I used to have a fair bit of autonomy and now have very little, in the same job, and it’s hard. I’m doing my best to adjust and ask myself if things I’m mad about are reasonable. And try to figure out what I can reasonably push back on / express dissatisfaction about. And remind myself that my employer chose my new boss to be the decision-maker about stuff. But I’m not super happy at work right now and I don’t know how it’s going to end up shaking out.

        1. Lizard Lady*

          It sounds like you’re being fair in your approach. Work culture is one of the elements that allows us to play to our strengths, so to suddenly change that… ugh.

    3. spiriferida*

      I think this comment is where I land on it. There are almost certainly some things that could do with being changed, but getting staff to buy in or at least trial a new system is important for morale in a small group, and if things are unoptimal, then understanding the why of the current system is important to explaining what should be done for the new system. And if it’s simply a matter of preference, then telling people that they need to change systems to ones the new Director likes better just because the director prefers it… that would have me grinding my teeth a little.

      I’m reminded a little of a group I was in during my college days. Our normal director went on sabbatical for a year, and the new director they signed on for a year was a lot more strict. Each instance of the new director’s changed style wasn’t a big thing in and of itself, but cumulatively, the effect was treating us like we were children instead of adults with autonomy, and it was that more than anything else, that built up such resistance.

    4. Gamer Girl*

      Agreed. Chaotic Good doesn’t necessarily means total chaos, but that is what is tripping people up.

      In my case, I’m comparing this situation to my own, where we had a great department on a shoestring budget and did a lot of great work because of the support and trust of a great manager so fwiw I tend to see the LW’s situation through the same lens:

      I had an excellent manager who, after he saw he could trust members of our department with various types of tasks, had handed off complete ownership of those portions of our responsibilities to the most qualified people to do them. We were responsible for reporting the progress every week, any roadblocks to completion, and check-ins. Other than that, he trusted us to do our job and do it well so that he could focus on true interdepartmental planning and problems rather than daily line by line validation of our work.

      We also knew that if he started managing someone very closely and check in very frequently on tasks, that was a sign of trouble. That person had demonstrated that they had not only not done their job but had tried to cover that up or blame others instead of bringing him the problem issue so that he could, you know, help to manage it for them as the dept manager. If we saw we’d gone in a wrong direction and needed help, we simply told him asap, and he helped us find a solution, simple as that.

      Well, we had a new person from the project management dept come in to manage formation of a new interdepartmental team. This PM stood up and started making a big speech about trust: Trust isn’t given, it’s earned, I’m not going to trust anything you do until you prove you can be trusted, etc etc. Laying out a heavy reporting process so that he could “trust” we were doing our work that we would have to email to 40+ people daily! We started looking around the table and catching each other’s eyes to see if everyone was as alarmed as we were–this team was setting up for a year of work!

      My manager interrupted this tirade from his seat and disagreed quietly but firmly, saying that he operates from a position of trust, that anyone who works for you should be someone you manage, of course, but with an eye to support and help, not an eye to the whip, unless and until they show they cannot handle the work or, even worse, that they cannot be trusted, which would be serious and probably lead to a swift firing rather than some kind of elaborate emailing system!

      He then asked the young PM, who was 25, to sit down so that he could lay out how he had pitched this team to C-Suite and that they would further discuss the matter after the main meeting.

      My point is: a lot of people didn’t know how he managed us without being severe and top down. There were two department managers who ruled the roost and made a big show of dressing people down in public, getting angry over small mistakes, and had a very “my way or the highway attitude.” They saw my manager as permissive. In comparison to their management style, he was. He allowed us to do our jobs instead of insisting on hall monitoring our work, and he would change his mind if we brought him compelling information rather than digging in his heels. I’ve got nothing but respect for him, especially compared to other management styles at that company.

      If that’s what is going on for the LW, especially if the new director refused to even speak with LW for two entire weeks after they raised the consultant idea, I would note down the impact of the processes: how much time is now being allocated to the processes rather than the work? What are the hourly impacts on your day and how much time and money does that eat up? Morale is subjective, but wasted money speaks volumes.

    5. HonorBox*

      Your point is something I was thinking too. Marcia’s changes, highlighted by the LW, seem to have been done without discussion and input from staff. It could very well be that the calendar system that was in place was working perfectly well, but Marcia liked a different one. Staff is going to see that as a heavy-handed change when there wasn’t reason for it, nor conversation about it. The storage thing seems minor, but if there’s a system in place that was working for everyone, why would a change be necessary. Within the first six months, especially in an organization of this size, the new leader should be meeting with staff, collectively and 1:1, and just listening. How are things functioning? How do processes work? How are processes not working? Then you have some conversations about changes. Those changes are informed by the conversations with those who know the organization far better than the new leader does.

  37. Office Plant Queen*

    I can definitely imagine the new director’s perspective on this one. One of the parts of continuing the good work might be expanding, and “chaotic good” can just become “chaotic” over time as the amount of work or the amount of staff expands. Every one of the changes sounds like it might be about improving consistency and organization. “Imposing a strict service desk schedule” sounds like “ensuring we can meet the needs of customers during the hours we’re claiming to be available to them.” Changing job descriptions could either be changing the official description to make it more accurately reflect what they’re doing, or it could be having them fill a need the organization has that nobody has noticed to this point. Changing processes could be lots of things, but I could see it being something like adding manager approval, moving tasks done by 3 separate people to just a single person, or requiring files to be put in a shared space instead of someone’s individual computer.

    I don’t know the full situation, obviously, but this kind of sounds like a “go with the flow” workplace being met with someone who wants to bring them in line with more typical professional standards. Which may or may not be necessary, depending on the bigger goals for the org

  38. Luna*

    The Board may be directing her and trying to correct “organized chaos”. Are her suggestions really that out of line? Just something to ponder. She may have been hired intentionally as an agent of change.

    1. Kevin Sours*

      In which case the board should have better communicated that instead of saying “they were not looking for a fixer but rather someone to continue the great work that is already being done”. That sets a pretty clear expectation that they were not looking for an agent of change.

      1. nnn*

        Except what’s described in the letter is probably the minimum amount of change any new ED would make. You’re not going to get NO change with a new leader coming in.

  39. LaminarFlow*

    So, LW is extremely intent upon keeping things the way they have always been, but didn’t want to take on the role of permanent Director, which would have given them two things: the power to keep the status quo, and/or keen insight into the board’s long term direction for the company.

    Things aren’t always going to be the way you want, LW. And, you may or may not know the reasons why. But, you can choose to keep doing your job and align your vision with the Director & Board, and care a little less (ie stop engaging in negative conversations about the changes). It really is just a job, and everyone is replaceable.

  40. RagingADHD*

    “The staff doesn’t need an overhaul” means not to fire them wholesale. And she hasn’t – she has changed processes, organization, and scheduling. You seem to have interpreted that phrase to mean that the board did not think anything needed to change, but it doesn’t mean that at all. It sounds like the sort of thing orgs say when they don’t want people to panic.

    LW, I think you should look at your situation through the lens of assuming that the reason the board hired her over staff reservations is that she made a case for change and they agreed with her.

    I think you should also assume she has already been in touch with the board about your PIP, so if you decide to complain to them, they will likely not be surprised.

  41. el l*

    If you’re going to fight with those above you, you HAVE to be right about the issue at hand.

    Are you absolutely sure you’re correct that the changes of calendars, the storage, and the service desk schedule are disasters? Are you willing to bet your career you’re right?

    Because honestly, these all sound like moves Marcia is entitled to make. Even if there truly was a “don’t fundamentally change everything” message sent to her, which there may not have been, she may see “missing stairs” that you do not. No changes here sounds toxic or lacking in logic, the complaint more seems to be that people don’t like how it’s being done.

    Suspect the 2 weeks of radio silence were spent on some combination of (a) Polling the employees about the concerns and hearing a different message than you did, and/or (b) Getting the board’s blessing to get a senior with an incompatible vision to resign. I mean, if you put them to it I’d bet 10-1 the board will at least respect (if not outright bless) these moves. That’s what “not trusting your judgment” and immediately taking a former interim leader to PIP says.

    Think you’ve already overplayed your hand and lost. Time to move on.

  42. Elizabeth*

    ****
    If I had to pick sides based on the letter, I’m for LW; Marcia doesn’t sound wise in her approach.

    Pretty please – this is a question I’d love an update on!
    I’m very interested in if LW went to the board and what their response is.

  43. FunkyMunky*

    so the board ignored every single reservation the rest of the staff had about her and now she wants to put YOU on PIP? oh boy!

  44. Literally a Cat*

    Having worked in a few places with distinctive “work culture”, and I’m trying to be as neutral I can with this term, my experience ranged from it worked really well and changes to be more inline with industry would be detrimental, to that the place is so severely dysfunctional that the only reason people accepted it is because they don’t know better.

    I don’t know where on this scale OP’s place falls into. I’m concerned about the term “chaotic good”, though it might be far more innocent than this letter indicates. I think Marcia will be prioritised no matter what, and most likely scenario is either everyone else get used to her way, or everyone else just resign and go elsewhere.

    Whether Marcia is a benevolent or malevolent force for the organisation, I don’t think it will change anything.

  45. Seal*

    Change is not the problem — we are used to change — but it is being imposed without a lot of staff input and very quickly.

    As a librarian who’s been in the same situation as the OP, I don’t see this ending well for anyone. While some change is inevitable when a new director starts, making as many changes as the OP describes in less than 6 months is a lot. Doing so with little staff input is at best tone deaf and more likely indicative of a lack of leadership skills of the new director’s part; the fact that the new director chose to respond to the OP’s suggestion and chastise them via email rather than talk to them in person underscores this.

    I think the OP should go to the board with their concerns, if for no other reason than to go on record. While they will inevitably side with the new director and twist themselves in knots to justify a bad hire rather than listen to a long-time employee, the next time someone complains (and there WILL be a next time), they won’t be able to blame it on a disgruntled employee.

    In my case, despite the objections of most of the staff, a number of excellent candidates were inexplicably passed over in favor of someone who didn’t meet the minimum qualifications.. Rather than using me and the department heads as resources or even ask what we did, the new director viewed us as threats. Within weeks, everyone had a horror story about getting screamed at or otherwise bullied by the new director. The environment became so toxic that people who had been there for decades were job hunting. A number of people went to HR, who did nothing. Things got so bad I finally went to the administrator I reported to as interim director. Despite having what I thought was a good working relationship with them, I had become persona non grata; clearly I was the problem, not the new director.

    Eventually, the new director managed to find a loophole to force me out that didn’t require justifying or defending their actions. By then, the mass exodus was well underway; half the staff left within the new director’s first year and a half. With no one left to blame for their own incompetence, from what I hear the new director is panicking. About damned time!

    1. Waving not Drowning*

      That statement from the letter writer jumped out at me too.

      I’ve been there – worked in a high performing team, where true collaboration happened, and they were exceedingly welcoming to newcomers. On the downside, we had few written processes, but, you did pick up as you went along what needed to happen, and how to resolve problems. We had a Marcia come in as a new Manager, we were told that she had “turned around an ailing team” in her previous management role. Within months, she was making sweeping changes without discussion, and when we (I) tried to point out that the new process wouldn’t cover important checks/balances we needed to to, I was told I was the problem, and not a team player. There was also continual change, she was forever changing a process – even while we were using it during crunch times. There were times where she’d sit and do our work, and we’d just have to watch her do it. Funnily enough, we’d make suggestions for improvement, she’d knock them down, saying it was inefficient, and her process was MUCH better – only to tell us off a couple of weeks later saying we were working inefficiently, and why didn’t we do x – which was the improvement we’d suggested weeks before (and in cases argued passionately to her as to why it was an improvement), but she’d have no recollection of the discussion.

      It was the worst 18 months in my professional life. She was very good at kissing upwards, and kicking downwards. Management were wrapped around her little finger, she could do no wrong. I raised as many concerns as I could, but, in the end (after a breakdown), I left for my own mental health – luckily able to transfer to another team where the manager wasn’t a micromanaging control freak. I had asked team members to help speak up, but, for a variety of reasons, they didn’t want to. After I left, they had no choice but to either blindly follow whatever convoluted process she dreamt up, or to stand up to her. They started to, but it was a bit too little, too late. She did have some good ideas – unfortunately her communication style and her insistance that she was the only one who could make changes got everyone (not just our team, but the admins in other teams) off side. Out of an original team of 10, there were only 4 original staff left at the end of her little over 2 years of chaos.

      She eventually moved on to another role, and did exactly the same there, on a larger scale however – managing a department of around 120 staff, this time, she spectacularly crashed and burned. There were enough strong people to speak up and say no, thats not right. She was in the role for 12 months before she was moved to another area (managing 6 staff…..and still tried to do the same controlling, and then eventually made redundant), but by my estimate going on email lists, at a minimum, 50% of the original staff in that 120 person team resigned or transferred to another department within that 12 months – not including staff that came in to replace the departing staff that saw what an absolute shit show the department was and very quickly left.

      My suggestion to the Letter Writer – raise the issues with the Board, be factual, not emotive, but, be prepared that nothing will change. Make a decision – is Marcia likely to stick around for a long time, or jump after a year or two – are you able to stick it out for that period of time? My Marcia said that she only stays in a role 2 years, then she moves on – one of the reasons I had my breakdown was that she’d excitedly told me that she LOVED our team, and that she was going to stick around longer – I was so depressed, not realising how much I’d been hanging on to the thought of her leaving, until she said she wasn’t. Ultimately, she left a couple of months after being there 2 years. In hindsight, I could have stuck it out, but, I had completely lost trust in management at that point, so I was glad that I moved on.

  46. Banana Pyjamas*

    At first I was leaning toward the “These changes aren’t a big deal” camp, but I’m bothered by the ED being hyper-focused on entry level tasks like the front desk and filing. The ED should be focused on strategic planning and KPIs. Front desk, calendar, and organizing should have been delegated to administrative staff. Changing job descriptions and workflows could fall under strategic planning and KPIs, but is 6 months enough to know? For some cyclical roles that would absolutely not be enough time.

    Ultimately it doesn’t matter. Marcia doesn’t want OP there, OP needs to act accordingly.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      It really depends on the size of the org and how it is organized. It’s quite possible the calendar is a low-level thing that should be delegated to other staff, but if this is an organization that lives and dies by its schedule (and its KPIs are linked to how timely it can deliver its deliverables) then the calendar is a very big deal.

      These could all be high level things, in which case Marcia is perfectly correct to address them. Or they could just be low-level things, in which case, why is LW complaining about them?

    2. Whale I Never*

      I agree with Peanut Hamper that it really, really depends on the org.

      Marcia is only managing 11 people, two of whom are part-time. My department at my job is a similar size, and I’d say a solid 50-70% of the job is making sure that the calendar is up to date and full, and certain desks are staffed. Making sure the desk is staffed in particular is absolutely the purview of my director (on top of strategic planning and managing KPIs), particularly because it means making sure staff is assigned to it, and making those assignments is the purview of managers, not administrative staff, who can manage particular types of work but don’t have authority over people.

      As for organizing, there are some jobs where this is absolutely crucial to the work, and it could involve implementing industry-wide systems that are, in and of themselves, indicators of the health of the institution. Or it could be Marcia getting bogged down in details that didn’t concern her. Or it could be stuff that should/could have been delegated to admin, but it bugged Marcia so much that she decided to just plow through it and it ended up being only a one-time, half-day task that nobody had bothered to implement before, so it didn’t really detract from the work she should have been doing. The director at an archive I used to work at would ask staff to save all boxes in a particular closet because she would break them down for recycling as a form of stress relief. Could that have been assigned to an intern? Sure, but it wasn’t that big a deal.

      1. M*

        Agreed. With this size organisation, if your ED isn’t in the weeds of organisation, something’s wrong. And if the staff are resistant to pretty basic changes like “we’re definitely due a spring cleaning of the storage area”, Marcia may feel she just has to power through a set of changes that otherwise could be delegated, in order to actually do her job. Or she’s a micromanager and a genuinely bad hire, of course – but there’s definitely some flags in OP’s letter that it’s not that simple.

  47. Caleb (he/they)*

    I’m seeing a lot of people take a very strong anti-LW, pro-Marcia stance here in the comments, with many of them citing this—

    “Our vibe could be described as “Chaotic Good” (to put it in Dungeons & Dragons terms) and a place where we take the work seriously but not ourselves. ”

    —as evidence Marcia is just trying to create order in a disorganized workplace and LW is throwing a tantrum for nothing. And honestly, that really surprised me, because I did not interpret this sentence like this at all—I read it as the LW trying to use TTRPG shorthand to convey that the overall vibe of the culture isn’t super strict and is one where the employees value having the freedom to manage their own tasks (particularly given that this sentence also includes LW stating that their workplace does take the work they do very seriously!).

    I’m also seeing a lot of assumptions in the comments that, to me, feel really baselessly negative about the LW—that the LW just hates all change (despite saying in their letter they don’t), that during the two weeks of radio silence the LW made no effort to contact Marcia again (they never said that), that the people this organization serves must hate it (LW explicitly states the opposite), etc. I think it’s important to give LWs the benefit of the doubt unless there’s clear evidence they’re in the wrong. While there are obviously people in the comments who disagree with me on this, I just don’t think there’s enough here to warrant that assumption. And to be clear, I’m not talking about Allison’s response here—which did a great job of acknowledging that it’s impossible to tell from here who’s wrong—but about people in the comments who seem 100% convinced that Marcia must be right.

    I’m also seeing a lot of takes on the changes Marcia is making that assume these changes are actually good and that LW is being petulant, and I want to counter with possible negative takes on each one (and yeah, I know I don’t have proof that any of these are true… but neither do the people assuming that the changes must be good):

    – “Imposed a strict service desk schedule” could mean “Previously, employees assigned to the service desk had the ability to do other tasks nearby if no one needed their help and they stayed close enough to see if someone did come up, but now employees are required to do nothing but sit at the service desk even if no one needs help, and it’s making people a lot less productive”
    – “Changed the job descriptions of our three front-line staff members” could mean “She changed people’s job descriptions in a way that doesn’t make any sense with the employees’ level of experience/seniority and the organization’s needs”
    – “Reorganized all of our storage” and “Updated our calendar system” could mean “We had existing systems that was working great for our needs, but Marcia decided she’d prefer something else, so she spent a lot of time and money that could have been better used elsewhere on changing to another system that doesn’t work as well”
    – “Changed the workflow for several of our processes” could mean “These processes had really solid workflows that let us do the work both quickly and well, but Marcia changed them so they now have less QA and lead to worse results/have an unnecessarily increased amount of QA and take too long/no longer loop in critical people/loop in too many people and take too long”

    I have personally experienced some version of all of the above examples, so I do not think those are inherently unrealistic assumptions. I am aware that they’re just assumptions and I don’t know for sure if they’re true or not, but that’s my point here: we just do not know enough based on what the LW included here to be 100% certain about who is in the wrong or if the LW & their coworkers are right to be upset about the changes.

    LW, if you see this, I would be really interested to hear more about how this situation turns out, and I hope you consider sending an update at some point! I don’t know for sure if you’re in the right or the wrong here—if you haven’t already, I would recommend giving serious thought to the idea that you might be, and maybe consider running this situation by a friend/colleague you don’t currently work with who may be better equipped to give a nuanced take on your particular situation. One thing that may be useful to consider: if your org had already had all of these policies in place when you started, would you still be frustrated with them?

    But still, regardless of who’s in the right or who’s in the wrong here, I do think working on getting out of there may be a good idea. If the person who decides whether or not you keep your job thinks that you’re a bad fit for it, then on a practical level, it doesn’t really matter if you’re right or not—your job is still in danger regardless. And even if your job isn’t in immediate danger, it seems like the organization has changed its culture in a way you don’t enjoy, and it may still be smart to cut your losses and find somewhere you’ll feel more at home.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      The main takeaway is still that OP needs to communicate exactly what is problematic about these changes, especially if they are going to go to the board. Even in an informal conversation with the boss you need to be able to articulate what effect it will have on actual outcomes. I appreciate OP will not need to be so anonymous when communicating in real life, but they definitely need to shift focus from “too many changes” to the effects of these changes.

  48. Limmy*

    100% Team Marcia.

    Marcia was obviously hired to clean house and make the org not complete chaos, and LW has done nothing but undermine her.

    You can’t undermine and be hostile to your boss, and you can’t just refuse to do what your boss wants you to do because chaos feels nice to you. Of course workers enjoy chaos if chaos means they get to do whatever they like.

    I’d be astounded if LW isn’t fired within 6 months. Going to the board to complain that you don’t want to go along with very minor changes implemented by the person hired specifically to make changes won’t end well.

    1. Lizard Lady*

      I don’t think it’s inappropriate to advocate for yourself and your colleagues when administration communicated that their goal was not to hire an agent of change. What may seem minor to someone on the outside could be significant on site, and if this person is doing what the board said they did not want (and they may not have been honest with the team, I realize that), they should be told. Marcia may not have told them anything, or that they are just resistant to the change in leadership (as opposed to what she is doing, specifically).

      If it turns out the board likes the new way and supports Marcia’s methods, then the team knows where they all stand and can make the appropriate changes. That may mean changing their expectations or their place of employment.

  49. Anne Elliot*

    I think what this letter shows is that being in the interim leader position but not choosing to go for the permanent leader position, is a very delicate situation that has to be navigated carefully.

    Like the OP, many people in that position may have strong opinions about how the org should be run. They may be a natural landing place for venting and legitimate concerns from the staff (because they used to be the boss, albeit temporarily). They might feel qualified and/or designated to “speak for the group,” and they may assume the Board will or should take their feedback especially seriously as a former interim director. I mean, clearly they value your opinion and skills — they put you in charge!

    All of these can run you into trouble. Your opinions about how the org should run may not align with the new director’s (or with the board’s, for that matter), and it’s not your job — literally not your job — to decide what’s best for the org. You should decline to be the person the rest of the staff crabs and moans at, because it doesn’t improve anyone’s attitude/work conditions/work day, and you can’t (or shouldn’t) do anything about it anyway. You are not the Ambassador for the staff and should decline to serve in that role, precisely because of the high potential that it will put you at odds with your own boss. You would be unwise to assume that the Board will line up behind you and your opinions against the candidate they have chosen to take on the job, especially given that you could have thrown your hat in the ring for the job but chose not to. They will consider your concerns to be mere Monday Morning Quarterbacking, and frankly with some justice.

    The director has fired a clear shot across your bow. Since you asked, what you need to do next is reconsider what it means to be a deputy director and not the person tasked with saving the org from what is in your opinion bad management. How do you support your director? How do you align your communications and actions with the goals for the org that she has set out, regardless of how your privately feel about them? Once you have communicated to her “I’m not sure changing the calendaring system is a good idea for [reasons]” and she says “I’d like to do it anyway for [reasons]” — or even if she doesn’t share that with you — your role with staff is to say, “I hear your concerns and have communicated them but this is how it’s going to be so we need to figure it out” and after that, “I have heard you but this is not something that is going to be rescinded and so our path forward is clear, so I need us to concentrate on working out the kinks, not rehashing the decision.”

    Refocus on what it means to be a DEPUTY director. Consider how best to support your boss and her decisions, regardless of your private opinions. Resign your role as staff Complaint Department/Complaint Ambassador. The org will improve and the director will be proven right, or the org will go downhill and the responsibility will be hers, not yours. But, having declined to take on the role yourself, if you continue to be the locus for criticizing how she does it, you will be placing your own job in serious danger, and IMO rightfully so.

    So make a decision. Be the deputy director if you can. But if you can’t — move on.

  50. HonorBox*

    OP, I think your only option is to go to the board. It seems as though Marcia is making plans for you not to continue with the organization, so what do you have to lose? Have the conversation with at least two board members present, and make sure they’re both members you trust AND have the respect of other board members. I’d tell them about some of the more major changes Marcia has made – not things like the storage reorg unless that is hugely impactful to operations – and how others have come to you. Explain the overtures you’ve made with Marcia, including the suggestion of an outside person coming in, and how she’s responded. I’d especially suggest pointing out the two weeks of silence before the reply she sent.

    Maybe they know what’s up. Maybe they’ve given her the nod to make the changes. But they may also not know, and realizing that they might be losing a member of the team valuable enough to have served in an interim role might spur some action. I might also suggest using the phrasing, “normally I wouldn’t go over someone’s head like this, but since it seems like Marcia already has a plan for me to not be here long…”

  51. Public Library Trustee*

    Public library trustee here and evaluating the director can be tricky because we’re not involved in day-to-day operations. We started hiring a 3rd party to administer a 360 evaluation from staff on the director. It’s been fantastic to get honest, anonymous feedback so we can see areas the director is doing great and where we need some improvements (or different approaches). We are thoughtful about what we ask staff each year, so we’re asking them for input on management style, organizational culture, and things like that.

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