Illustrative Image: Business people shaking hands. (Image: Freepik) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca) 
Looking back on your career, have you ever gone to a new job because your old boss was there? Because they called and said come along.
It’s happened to me at least once: an old boss called, there was a very quick coffee and I suddenly realised that my life was about to change.
I’ve sometimes wondered why I was so quick to say yes. And I know I’m not alone in this.
This week it was reported that yet another two more executives at Standard Bank are following their old boss, Kenny Fihla, to Absa.
Much more important than that, Daily Maverick’s Craig Ray reported this morning on the intense speculation that the Springboks’ attacking coach, Tony Brown, might leave his job.
All of this is based on one simple fact: It looks likely that the All Blacks are about to appoint Jamie Joseph as their new head coach. And as Craig writes, Joseph and Brown have worked together for many years in the past.
As strange as it may seem from the outside, following a boss that you know to a new organisation must make sense.
Most of us want to work with people we align with. When you go and work for someone you’ve worked with for years, you know each other. You know what irritates them, they know how to get the best out of you.
And it can make your move to a new company virtually seamless. They show you where the coffee is, give you an email address and a parking space, and boom! Off you go and get productive.
That’s not the case when you come into a place and you don’t know your boss. You wonder if they mind if you take your coffee into their office, or if you really can put up your hand with a strange idea that you know is going to work.
As a reporter, I’ve often seen someone moving into an organisation, whether in government or business, and wondered who will go with them.
If Rassie left the Boks and became the coach of a provincial team, how long do you think it would be before Siya got that WhatsApp?
You’ve seen it in our politics too. When a big leader leaves a party you can often predict who else will leave and join them.
When Fihla first went to Absa there was already speculation about who might go with him. Over time several people have clearly followed him. This week’s movements are just the latest.
I don’t think you necessarily have to know a boss very well, or even to have worked with them face-to-face to want to follow them.
Sometimes I’ve been in an organisation and I’ve known that under this CEO it is going to go in a particular direction. And if they’re successful in setting a tone that you enjoy, well, why not go where they are?
I think the other thing that might make this more prevalent in our society is that there are often so few ways to change your job.
As Kevin Lings once explained so well on The Money Show, what has really held your salary growth back is a “lack of prospects”. And because it’s quite difficult to go from job to job to job, your salary doesn’t get many chances to increase in real terms.
Put another way, how many organisations would pay you more for what you are doing now? And the more specialised you get, the more senior you become, and the fewer options there are.
So when your former boss comes knocking (or WhatsApping), you don’t know when the next opportunity will come. And to get a new opportunity in such a safe way must feel like a godsend.
But this also leads to something I’ve never really understood.
Often someone works at a company for a long time without being promoted. Then they go to a second company and work there for a while. A couple of years later the first company offers them a job that is much better than the one they had there before.
To me it seems much cheaper if the first company just recognises their talents in the first place and promotes them.
But in real life it doesn’t work like that. It seems you have to leave your first company and be valued by someone else before your first company will give you the job you really wanted.
Perhaps it’s just a sign that your career is not often linear. That to really make progress and move forward, you have to zigzag a bit.
And while that might be frustrating, it might just have made your career a lot more interesting over the years.
What I do know is that if you get on with a boss and they leave, make sure to stay in touch.
You never know when that WhatsApp might come. DM