7y
Sorry you didn’t enjoy your time at Pink Elephant. Not everyone fits into our culture, which is rooted very much in our values – to be Courageous, Open-Minded, Responsible and Enterprising. So, if you aren’t prepared to do the right thing and take risks now and again; or if you don’t have an open-mind to the views of others, who may be more experienced or who bring interesting ideas; or you do not take responsibility for how your work affects our customers or your co-workers; or you are not prepared to put the right amount of effort in when time is tight – then you’re probably going to be a misfit, and this is not the right place for you. We think these are reasonable expectations we should all have of each other, and so we like to “goose-honk” when noticing co-workers demonstrating these values (learn more about “goose-honking” in Ken Blanchard's book "Gung Ho!")
I doubt anyone at Pink is truly fearful to “make a mistake”. It’s just not true that you could be fired for a mistake. In all our history that has never happened. Not once. People are usually asked to leave because we need to re-structure from time to time. Sometimes poor performance and/or poor attitude over an extended period contributes to that decision. If anything, we are criticized for having too much patience with people who aren’t fitting in! Anyway, there are many happy people working here and the average tenure is over 7 years. There are still quite a few people here who joined in our first year, over 20 years ago.
I am sorry that a role at Pink Elephant was not for you. We’re proud of what we’re trying to do here, and it’s simply not true that we don’t change. After all, we have been successful every single year of our existence, so we must be doing something right. That means we have to change when necessary, and we have been through a lot of change during that time. But change for the sake of change is not a good goal to have
Good luck in your next venture. It’s a shame you did not fit in at Pink, but who knows what the future brings. As you might know, we have had quite a few Pinkers (13 at the last count) who left for one reason or another over the past 20 years, and then later came back. We affectionately call them “Boomerang Pinkers”! Sometimes the grass is not as green as you think on the other side of that fence.