What do you do when your manager keeps stealing your ideas and presenting them to uppermanagement as if they were his own?
Unless you have a patent pending or documentation on email you don't have a leg to stand on. I suggest documenting all ideas via email. What idea did your manager allegedly steal?
The sign of a great manager is someone who gets promoted quickly or gets his reps promoted. Either way it proves that the manager has talent or can recognize and groom talent. If your manager is stealing ideas and still can't get promoted, maybe your ideas sucked. Or he is completely inarticulate. Either way you are screwed.
I know that some managers would interview candidates over and over, up to 10 times. Each time they would have the poor naive interviewee prepare a different presentation which the manager would steal and present to management with no intention of hiring the candidate. Because Biogen was so small was such a high potential company reps were pulling out all the stops just to impress the hiring manager having no idea that there was no intention to hire them. Does this still go on? If so, it's the greatest scam ever.
Unfortunately there are a lot of self centered hollow suits in this industry. Believe me these people are quickly figured out by upper management. We call them the "I" guys. Every email starts with I did this or I did that. The people that get promoted have strong teams and their emails tend to start with "I would like to point out something one of my people has put together". Leaders lead their people to do big things under their guidance. "Managers" or "bosses" tend to steal ideas, micro-manage and stifle their peoples will to succeed. It wouldn't surprise me if this "manager" calls every shot in their region. These shots tend to lack the input or market knowledge of their people and this RD probably ranks near the bottom but thinks they are a great manager because they call all of the shots and are control freaks. My advice is we know who these people are. Take your ideas and shoot them to marketing or other management looking for input on the idea. Let them know you are working on something. When you receive input you can put together a proposal and start to copy in marketing and your manager. Good luck with the "I" guy. I would have a guess at who this is already. They are always up in Boston with a "great idea".
How many times can a manager be in Boston with yet another original idea before uppermanagement calls him out. How can a manager work for years without a single fresh idea coming to him from a field rep?.... Or wait... Out of 9 reps any and all initiatives and ideas come from 1 person!
