I started my career as a systems engineer at a large multi-national financial and healthcare corporation. I identified a vulnerability in how one of the major back office systems was designed and had an idea for how to mitigate it. I went to my new manager at the time, described my idea and sketched it out on the whiteboard in his office. He wasted no time telling me that it was a horrible idea, that none of the business unit heads would ever agree to do something so drastically different that had never before been done, and that they would likely view it just as more work for them. So I explained how it would actually be less work for them, after which he literally yelled at me, “Stop! Your idea is bad! Quit wasting my time!” I considered quitting that day, but didn’t. Two months later at the IT-wide quarterly meeting the IT Director announced a great new innovative idea that my manager had proposed to the business heads, who embraced the idea and were already doing actions to get it implemented. They also announced my manager had been promoted and would be moved to a different department for his fabulous idea, which they described…and turned out to be my idea, right down to the drawings I made on his white board. I learned many valuable lessons from that situation. I have often wondered since then how often similar types of situations have occurred. (more…)