june for juggling

Remember Butterfly from Bokyo? She had flown to her hometown, the Muddy Estuary, having landed herself a seemingly good job.

June has been quite a month at work for Butterfly. The A1* consultant in her team had been rolled off to another client, and the A1 project manager was seconded to an internal project based in Africa. Butterfly was the only consultant left within the A1 team, until they brought in an A1 analyst to take over some of the roles her colleagues had left.

Together with 2 other recruiters and 1 HR admin support, they were the motley bunch taking care of the transition before the setup could be finally realised. Technically, they were due to roll off in March, having put in place plans and processes for the shared service centre. I guess they liked the team so much they decided to extend their stay till August.

Tired of anything routine, by end May Butterfly was bored out of her wits since the learning curve was no longer there, and the adrenaline rush associated with the initial challenges had already died down. She kept wondering what her next project was and what it would be like to work with another set of people.

Butterfly was not complaining though, since she enjoyed working with this team and they were more of less peers even though the PM was not there anymore. Butterfly even got more air time since the other 2 more experienced consultants had left, which could be a good or bad thing depends on how you look at it!

One day while trying to balance the workload of the 2 junior team members, Butterfly was asked if she could lead this team. The Centre Head thought it was the most logical thing to do, since Butterfly was the most senior consultant left in the team.

It's really quite a strange arrangement since to her, Butterfly was technically not from A1, but in the absence of the A1 PM, was asked to step up to manage the team, in addition to also overseeing recruitment activities.

Butterfly had to stop herself from showing what an incredulous idea that was - not only were the recruiters more senior than her in this area, but any incoming A1 team members were to look up to her as their line manager from then on. Butterfly did try to protest at first, and said that she would think about it. But before Butterfly knew it, the Centre Head had already talked to the PM, following up with an email to all concerned to clarify roles & responsibilities within the team. @.@

Now how does Butterfly ask for an increment from her own company A in light of her dual role in an A1 project + being manager to these people whose work she's trying to familiarise with?!


* For background story on A1

*Any resemblance to real-life characters is purely coincidental. Excerpts from this story may be reproduced by acknowledging the writer.