Well today, I gave my notice with my current employers. Considering I have a wonderful relationship with my boss, the management, and the people I work with, it’s a very emotional time for me. Sometimes you need to make a leap out of your comfort zone to do what is right for your career and your future. For me, this is one of those times.

It has been a roller coaster ride these past couple of years. It has been a great experience to learn yet another industry, that is the healthcare information technology (HIT) industry. I have also had the privilege of trying to help establish and develop an organization to be ‘the one to beat’ in the HIT industry. Also, I have had the opportunity to work with some of the most intelligent and dynamic people I know.

With my departure, I have spent some time reflecting and analyzing the past few years with this employer and I have come to the conclusion that although I gave my best effort to bring organizational practices and strategies to this rapidly growing organization, when I leave so does its momentum.
There are things that I might do differently if I had the chance to start over again, but I guess that presents yet another opportunity to learn and grow.

I could have appreciated the politics a little better and have been a bit more diplomatic and sensitive in the early stages of this company. I could have reached out more to the internal clients who I was intending to serve. I could have tried to settle on just one or two initiatives to focus on, instead of eight to ten.

Would doing these things have made the company more successful in nurturing and developing organizational effectiveness?

Maybe. Maybe not. I guess I’ll never know.

My next stop in my career is something I am very excited about.

I’m not sure of how comfortable my new employers are with me being open and public about such matters so I will not mention who they are.

Let me just say that it is in the technical industry. In fact, it is from a new perspective than anything else I have experienced thus far in my career. Also, the team seems like a great group of entrepreneurs passionate about what they are doing and they are embracing agile organizational effectiveness strategies, among many other items that I have been pursing and trying evangelize over the past two years.

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So in my unique and usual cynical style, I’ve created 6 ways you shouldn’t resign:

1. Timing is Everything: not just a saying in musical comedy.
   I know it’s obvious, but don’t quit your job when you have nothing else lined up. Unless, of course, you are financially independent and can afford to not give a sh#t.
2. Don’t announce your departure by way of email, fax, phone or post-it note.
   This is a perfect example of ‘how to burn a bridge.’ Your boss won’t appreciate it, and your chances for getting anything that remotely looks like a favorable reference will be next to nothing.
3. Don’t leave with a dramatic exit.
   If you want to be a Drama Queen, do community theater or get on Project Runway. There is no room for DQs in the corporate workplace. It’s lame! And I doubt anyone would like to be audience to a drawn out, emotional departure from a co-worker. It’s a great way to get blacklisted in an industry as a “challenging” or “unstable” employee.
4. Avoid emotion of any type.
   For the same reason as with being a DQ, it’s embarrassing to be anything but businesslike in a professional setting. Keep the tears to lonely nights watching the blurred reality of Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
5. Don’t just pick up and leave without any warning.
   Not only is it stupid and unprofessional, it is also immature to ditch your job without fair warning. Again, this is an excellent way to ruin any sort of track record. A proper resignation should be granted to an employer just out of respect and courtesy.
6. If you go, don’t take other colleagues and DO NOT take the company’s clients.
   Simply put – it’s unethical. However, it’s not uncommon in certain ruthless/cut-throat industries for this to happen. It was such a practice when I worked for the packaged goods industry for a Marketing Director to take his/her Brand Manager and Marketing Associates with them when they left.

Also for your viewing pleasure you might want to take a look at these true accounts of people quitting their jobs.