A conga line of employees fail in their attempt to succeed in a troublesome role. Each new hiring attempt focuses on securing the person with the right skills, the right temperament, the right influencing skills to turn things around. There is an all-consuming monster just behind the door that devours them with relish.  He uses a toothpick after each satisfying meal.    

These cursed roles fall in the same failure-to-thrive category as a corner store in which a pizza parlor becomes a 99-cent store, a real estate office, a laundromat.  Or the part of a garden where nothing grows.  

There are some roles that come with dependencies that are largely out of your control; behind-the-scenes politics, dueling senior managers, inconsistent budgets, or insufferable internal clients.

For those of you in this situation the Navigator urges you to get off the pity pot.  He is reminded of a time when he complained to his manager about being in this situation and was told, “if your job didn’t come with any complicated bullshit, than I’d get my two-year- old to fill it”.   (The navigator’s mentor often gave him the much-needed verbal slap) This now becomes a lesson on how to leverage tough situations in corporate America:

• If the job wasn’t hard someone else would have already filled it

• A no-win position is often the portal to opportunity.  It’s like buying a fixer-upper that appreciates into a multi-million-dollar home.

• Don’t get tripped up by the current trend of discarding a situation in which you do not have control.  You still have influence which is the key to navigating within these environments

• View the challenge as though you paid $50,000 to enroll in an immersive business simulation as a learning experience

• Even if you cannot deliver what was promised, people will remember your behavior under duress more than your accomplishments.  The deliverable will be shortly forgotten, but your intrapersonal skills are timeless

• Leverage your experiences for your next job interview.  Hiring managers want to know the obstacles you faced and how you handled it