Lessons and Regrets from My First Job
By: Christopher Pierznik
Tags: Regret, Careers, Nonprofit, Business, Work

“It is never wise to discourage youthful idealism,” Stephen Kinzer once said, but that’s exactly what happened.

I wasn’t raised in the Not-My-Child Generation. When I was a kid, everyone didn’t get a participation trophy. I was cut from teams and left out of cliques. I knew I was new and young. I didn’t make demands. I had worked in manual labor and the service sector. I knew what was what.

We didn’t want to take over. We just wanted to have input. We genuinely wanted to help. Instead, we were blocked at every turn:

We appreciate your taking the initiative, but we’ve done this way for years and we see no reason to change.

That’s not a bad idea, but we would prefer that you allow senior leadership to come up with the vision and then you can execute it.

You’re too young.

You’re too inexperienced.

You don’t know anything.

Maybe one day you’ll learn.

Just keep working hard.

Stop asking questions.

We’re going to do it our way.

Naturally, this led to frustration and disillusionment.

Sure, there are things I wish I had done differently. I wasn’t as professional as I should have been. I know that. My ego (and my mouth) were out of control, particularly at the beginning. While I respected the hierarchy, I don’t think I fully appreciated it. I didn’t know how things really worked, particularly from an optics standpoint. After working in multiple places of varying size and success — from healthcare facilities that lose money on a yearly basis to corporations that generate hundreds of billions in revenue annually — over the past two decades, I’ve learned things that would not only have helped me back then, but have also changed my perception of what they were trying to accomplish.

Still, they could have met us halfway. They didn’t have to give us the Heisman and push us away to the point that we jumped ship. They could have given us projects or even indulged our ideas to the point of explaining why they wouldn’t work. Instead, they treated us like unwanted stepchildren that that they tolerated. They didn’t even pretend to care.

This wasn’t bothersome from a personal standpoint — business is business — but we truly felt we could have improved the place and, as a result, improved people’s lives and the city. This was one of the biggest nonprofits and fundraising enterprises around, so any improvement would have been a win for the entire community. We were committed and determined.

We were the future.

They didn’t see it that way.

True visionaries update and change their vision based on reality and circumstances. Plans can change. People can adapt. Driving towards your goals while ignoring everything else isn’t vision, it’s tunnel vision. There’s a big difference.

Of course, they got their way, ultimately resulting in a completely revamped organizational structural and eventual merger with seven other chapters, so it certainly worked out for them. It worked out for us too, but reading those articles, I couldn’t help but dwell on the ideas and dreams we had, the plans we made, and, ultimately, how almost none of them came to fruition.

Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s not. But it would’ve been nice to have at least had a chance to try.