What qualified as moral harassment? Aka. How to kill innovation in China.

 

Here is the story I need some external judgement here.

In Dec. I submitted a project to deliver in May to my boss, he thought it was interesting and said I can start working on it. I designed a plan and start collected information about it to educate myself.

In Jan. my boss was on business trip but still presented the project to a potential partner who was interested. He asked me to follow, which I didn’t but I haven’t hear back from the partner until now.

In Feb (last week) my boss call me in his office to ask me how much confident I am on this project (I answer 200%!) and finally tell me for the first time that he is not sure if we will do the project of not. First surprise for me! I ask him what he needed and said I need to convince the whole team that the project is worth it.

I did and feel like it was a “kill the witch” meeting. But I defend myself, I had some supporters and after popular vote, the project passed at 1 vote! Seems like I was safe and we keep doing it.

The next day my boss call me in his office with his assistant on his side and challenge me for 20 min about the feasibility of the project. I answer everything and we decide we need to formalize everything in an agreement which I send to the designated person.

The next day I am again called in his office, with his assistant on his side to challenge me again about 20 min about how sure I am that the partner we will work with is reliable, will deliver… At the end he ask me to set up process to follow up this project, make a detailed budget, find solution to all problems upfront… I ask if other project has provided such document so I can use it as a template. But no, other projects didn’t because they are no new projects.

I answer everything and say ok I will deliver all requested documents. Finally I ask my boss to talk to him one to one and let him know I feel he is being a little bit unfair towards me. He answers random stuff, say he trust me but just need to be sure I am working 100% on this project.

I love my boss, he was a great heart, I know he is a very sensitive person because I went on business trip with him once and he told me he was hurt that the American partner didn’t take time to have a drink with us! He is this kind of person, very human.

But he also has progress to make in term and giving up control and trusting people he recruited himself for his team! And I am just sick to be the one to always be patient.

Am I wrong? What would you do (and don’t answer quit because it is not an option).

 

Updates: After a good night of sleep and relax a little talking with a friend, I took preventive action and wrote to my HR to suggest a “Communication Process”. I was inspire by “Rework” a book recommend by Huang Tao ( a iWeekend friend of mine) about passive communication. That is also the informal process we had when working at Naver.