I was a twenty nine year old corporate fast tracker, by far the youngest officer at a mutual insurance company that was merged out of existence about fifteen or twenty years ago.

The touchy-feely consultants arrived. Like vampires, consultants can only enter if they are invited. That provides little protection, because every castle and every company has at least one dipstick who invites the blood-sucking fiends to dinner. It happens every time.

It all started with a couple of seemingly harmless two day seminars taught by a retired professor highly respected in the academic world of Social Work. The officers and managers sat around a giant U-shaped table in a rented conference room in some local hotel. The professor gave a few presentations and we broke out into smaller groups to do the usual exercises that were in style in the post- EST era of interpersonal dynamics.

I gained a lot of useful skills from that training. On the surface, the course was about some basic Social Work Interview skills. I use those skills almost every day. The skills I gained improved my relationship with our sales force almost immediately. Unfortunately, I only had a few weeks to exercise those new skills at that company.

Changes were happening. The  game of Survivor had started. The bidding was already closed and the first few tricks had been taken. I wasn't even at the table. I didn't even know there was a game.

A cabal made up of some but not all of the company's upper management had been working with the same consultants for months. They produced a “characteristic personality profile” of corporate management Ubermensches who would certainly guarantee the company's success.

My performance at the two seminars convinced the consultants I was the wrong kind of Ubermensch. Perhaps they didn't want people who focus on gaining new abilities and finding ways to apply them to improve performance. That was too old school .

The next few weeks at work totally sucked. They finally got around to firing me. I agreed to stay a month to complete a couple of reporting and development cycles. That cost the company six months severance pay. It was hard to get work done that month. It seemed like everyone wanted to sit in my office and moan about how much working there sucked.

I found a better job at a leading professional firm in my field. I was more suited to an environment where professional achievement and effort were rewarded rather than conformity. About a year later I worked on the sale of my previous employer to a larger insurance company. After two years, the larger company fired the last of the “legacy workforce” from the smaller company.

The moral of this story is that there are rules in corporate enterprise.

Rule 1: There is a club, and you're not in it.

Rule 2: If you look around the room and don't see the patsy, just look in the nearest mirror.

Rule 3: Change happens and it usually sucks for you.