Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The rest of the story....

Well it's official, the paperwork is signed and most of the people who need to know now know.  I am the new Program Manager for MCOT and ICARE (our 24 hour crisis line)!  And it all happened less then 18 hours!


The program manager  for ICARE left at the end of December.  My boss has been interviewing since that time and I have been able to see the whole process.  He along with 3 of the other directors were conducting the interviews and they didn't really feel comfortable with any of the candidates. 


Over the past few weeks I have really come to a place where I was feeling more and more comfortable with where I am at.  Most of you know my desire to work with troubled teens and I really began to process that.  I got to the point where I really did not want that desire to be filled within my job.  I decided I would have more freedom to walk alongside these girls in the way I want to if I'm not held to the rules and law set forth if I were to do this within a job.  I was so excited about where God had placed me.


While I was loving my job and at such a peace of where I was at, my job was becoming very frustrating.  A lot of what my team (MCOT) does depends on the ICARE staff doing their jobs correctly.  Well over the past couple of months about 80%-90% of what they have sent us has been incorrect, which just makes our job all that much harder.


So last Wednesday I was on-call with one of my staff.  We had gotten a referral and I was headed to meet my staff at the clients home.  On the way there I realized that once again they had done the assessment incorrectly.  I was fed up!  This was the 4th referral of the day and they were ALL incorrect.  I called my boss and just started yelling about his "stupid crisis line!"  He was meeting with the CEO to recommend his candidate for the program manager position and promised things would get better.  I got off the phone and continue to drive to the crisis call.  On the way the thought crossed my mind that they really needed good leadership and I wish I could just whip them into shape.  And then I thought about it more and thought, "why couldn't I do that?"  I began to think of how this could work.  An hour or so later as I was driving home from the crisis call I called my boss and told him my idea.  If I could bring a staff up into a lead position who could do some of my day to day stuff I could easily run both programs.  He loved the idea!  Long story short, I interviewed at 9:00 the next morning and by 11:00 was offered the position! 


I told my staff yesterday and they are very excited as am I!  I think this is going to be a very good move for me.  It's going to be a challenge but I'm so excited about this move!  I have a lot of vision of how to train and guide both of these teams.  It's going to be a good transition.  Crazy to be running two programs but still good.  


One of the neatest things in all of this has just been to see how smoothly it all went and to know without a doubt that this was part of God's plan!  My boss and the 3 other directors were totally supportive of me and it's encouraging to know that they believe this much in me!  I'm looking forward to see where God takes me in all of this!  


So that's the rest of the story.... 

1 comment:

Les said...

Yay, Jen! I'm so proud of you! You'll be great, no doubt.