By now, sports fans (at least of the basketball variety) are well aware that University of Florida coach Billy Donovan was released from a five day old contract with the Orlando Magic and is staying on as coach at Florida.
For those who haven't been following the story, Donovan is the coach of the Gator basketball team that has won the last two NCAA championship. By anyone's standards (or lack thereof), Florida is a major program (i.e., a basketball factory), and Donovan was paid plenty to coach there.
Still, there was the lure of coaching in the NBA, and, like a lot of successful college coaches (Rick Pitino, anyone?), Donovan was lured. His 'see-ya-later-alligator' deal was worth $27.5 million dollars over five years, which would have put him at least vaguely in league with what the non-superstar players manage to bring down.
Immediately after signing the deal, Donovan had a change of heart and asked to be released from his contract. He was. And he's now back at Florida, looking for a 3-Peat of his NCAA back-to-back championship seasons.
Predictably, the sports blogosphere (and, I'm sure, the radio shows) have been full of criticism and praise for Donovan's decision.
Well, whatever the combination of personal, professional, and emotional factors that went into his decision to ask out of his not-so-Magic contract, I've got to give Billy Donovan some props for doing it. In asking out, Donovan put himself in a position where he was going to be vilified, ridiculed, and second guessed. He may also have put himself in a position that will restrict future opportunities to coach in the NBA, if he has a re-change of heart. (Supposedly, one of the parameters of the deal repeal states that he can't coach in the NBA for five years.)
That Donovan woke up with coach's remorse and decided to reverse it is something to think about for anyone who's ever started a new job and on Day One realized that they've made a Big Mistake.
Of course, most of us who've quit one job for another don't have any re-entry visa that will get us our old job back, as Donovan apparently did. And most of us aren't working with multi-million dollar, multi-year contracts.
Still, if you know that you've made a mistake, the best thing to do is unmake it.
I'll have to admit that, on the several occasions when someone insti-quit the company I was with, or the team (no, not that kind of team, work team) I was on. In one small company I worked for, one long-awaited hire spent his first morning on the job figuring out how to use the e-mail system to send a resignation letter to his boss. Figuring out the e-mail was no small feat in those mainframe days, but this fellow was smart enough to do so. His resignation letter included a scathing criticism of the company, too. Pretty amazing, given he'd only been there half a day that he was able to make such a detailed criticism of our technology and products. I can no longer remember this fellow's name, but I remember exactly what he looked like. For years, he and his e-mail were brought up when us old-timers were swapping Dynamics tales.
On another occasion (also at Dynamics), a much vaunted techie was coming in from our parent company (Interactive Data Corporation) to join the team working on my products. I wrote a very nice, "Please welcome Steve S" memo, and was a little pissed when his first act in our office was to announce that he was leaving. (I can't remember what he was doing instead, but it was something noble or brainy.)
(A few years later, we both ended up working at another company together. He was great to work with, by the way.)
At least both of these guys had the presence to not stick something out to save face, or because they felt guilty, or whatever. (I still wonder why e-Mail Guy ever joined our company to begin with. At least Steve S. had a compelling reason to take off. I just wish he'd told me before I'd sent out such an effusive welcoming memo.)
I have had two jobs where I knew immediately that it wasn't going to work out.
One I quit. At the other, I stuck it out.
After graduating from college and spending an abortive year in grad school, I worked as a waitress. The tips - never reported in those days - financed a long camping trip cross-country, and an extended bum-around-Europe adventure with my college roommate.
When Joyce and I got back from the cross-country trip, we decided that we'd had it with waitressing at Durgin-Park (the historic Boston tourist trap, working at which had financed that trip). Instead, we took jobs at Vallee's Steak House, a small, now defunct New England restaurant chain.
We showed up on a rainy Saturday morning for training, and when we were given our lunch break mid-afternoon, Joyce and I decided to head down the road to Friendly's.
I don't know what there was about Vallee's: the almost military regimentation which was in such stark comparison to the Durgin-Park chaos; the head waitress, whom we didn't like; carrying heavy trays, which we weren't used to. Whatever it was, we sat down at Friendly's, ordered our Big Beefs, looked at each other and burst out laughing.
We flipped a coin to see who would use the pay-phone to call Vallee's and quit. They were, predictably, pissed. Even more so when we showed up a week later to pick up our $8 paychecks for the training shift.
We went back to Durgin, where we knew the ropes and the meshugas.
Fast forward a few years to my first day at Wang.
I don't know what possessed me when I took the job, given my strong a priori sense that a hyper-bureaucratic organizations with a centralized command and control management structure was not going to be a good fit.
But, having called a head-hunter in a snit at my boss, and having landed a position that came with a hefty salary increase, I was out the door of Interactive Data and in the door at Wang.
On Day One I knew it was a Big Mistake.
For starters, I was used to a private office. Here I was in a cubicle maze. Worse, there was a paging system, and the speaker for the area was right over my head.
Office ambience aside, I got my first reality shock when I told our group's that I was going to go down to New York City later in the week to introduce myself to the group I'd be working closely with down there.
She produced the travel rules and regulations, which required that I get the signature of my boss (who was out of the country for the week). Plus his boss. Plus his boss. Plus the EVP who ran the overall development group (which, as a product manager, I was part of). The only one who didn't have to sign off on my trip was Dr. Wang himself.
I was in a 30,000 person company. An EVP who had thousands of employees under him, including all the product managers who traveled very frequently in support of sales, had to sign off on what was a less than $200 trip to New York. If I went ahead without his signature, I risked not getting reimbursed for the trip.
Oh, boy. I knew then and there that, between the cacophonous paging system and the mind numbing bureaucracy I wasn't going to like it much at Wang.
I was right.
I tell people now that, if my PC had been operative on Day One, I would have used it to write my resignation letter. But it wasn't, and I didn't. I didn't want to admit that I'd made a mistake. I didn't want to piss off my boss. Or the head hunter. I didn't want to see if I could get my old job back. I didn't want to just quit and be in no-man's land without a paycheck. Etc. Etc.
So I came back for Day Two. And Three.
I ended up staying about two-and-a-half years, but pretty much loathed the experience. As always, the people I worked with were great, but I disliked the company and its modus operandi so intensely that those two years, seven months, and fifteen days were pure misery. Sure, places I'd worked before and after Wang were screwed up, but they were screwed up in ways that it was easier for me to live with. Never in a million years could I have made peace with the bureaucracy and authoritarian structures at Wang. (I will say that it was pleasure to subvert them, which is how a lot of people survived in that environment.)
Whatever it was Billy Donovan realized about taking a job in the NBA vs. staying at the University of Florida (which I'm guessing is every bit the pressure cooker that a professional team is - maybe even more so: it's not a chicken-out move), he didn't let any feeling of embarrassment get in the way of getting out.
Good for him.
This is not, in any way, an endorsement of the University of Florida pre-professional basketball team to win next year's NCAA championship. I follow college basketball very lightly, but I always take a look at the ladders when they're published. Romantic that I am, I am always rooting for the lower-seeded Cinderella teams. The ones that seem to come out of nowhere. Extra rooting points if they actually graduate their student athletes.
No, it's just to say good for Billy Donovan for figuring it out sooner rather than later. From The Magic's viewpoint, I'm sure that sooner looks a lot like later. But better a little discomfort and embarassment as you wriggle out of a decision that's not quite right for you.
Good for him.
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