Dangerous Ambitions

Many years ago, a friend of mine who was a midlevel administrator told me over lunch that he was about to get a big promotion.

“You know Vice President Bigwig at my institution? He told me that he’s going to retire next May, and he wants to recommend that I be promoted into his position. He’s given me a couple of new tasks to complete as a test for my ability to do his job. It will make life horrible for the coming year, but when I land his job, it will be easy street. He makes a ton of money and doesn’t have much work to do. He just entertains alumni most of the time.”

I congratulated him on his good fortune and watched him begin to work bodacious hours trying to prove his mettle.

A couple of weeks later, over a table in a different restaurant (I eat out a lot!), one of that guy’s colleagues leaned in to tell me a secret: “I’m going to let you in on something: I’m about to be promoted. Vice President Bigwig at my institution has told me that he will retire next May. … “

You get the picture. It was no wonder that VP Bigwig was a person of such leisure: He had an office filled with ambitious young workers whom he pitted against each other!

Ironically, when VP Bigwig retired, neither of my lunch partners was rewarded. Instead, the university’s president appointed a well-connected alum into the position!

There is a lesson to be learned in this: Ambition can be helpful in providing energy, but it can also become a narcotic that blinds you to reality.

Does anyone have a good story or two about poor decisions you may have made or seen made that were based on overeager ambition or its near cousin, gullibility?