I need some advice on a complicated work situation that could potentially end in getting let go after a very long time for an inexplicable reason.

I need some advice on a complicated work situation that could potentially end in getting let go after a very long time for an inexplicable reason.

I work as a medical writer for an online database that physicians are supposed to use as a resource (it has "topics" on various disease states, management and evaluation of them, general information on drugs and procedures, etc.). I've been working for almost 5 years with few apparent issues, with high productivity and demonstrating ability to write very very large expanses of content with really relatively few issues until now. I think I have improved my ability immensely over time and have come leaps and bounds in the time I've been here with what I can do (and have been told as such). Last year I got promoted to a senior writer. I used to get "ok" performance evaluations when I first started, which got better, and my last performance evaluation was very good (my best one yet, administered just a few weeks ago). I would say I have very few (if any) interpersonal issues, though obviously not everyone gets along with everyone else at work, I would say I get along with just about everyone pretty well and am fairly agreeable. I get along really well with my current boss especially, and the people that I work with on my immediate team. No other issues that I would note, particularly in the last 6 months. In fact, things were going so well that my boss recommended me to start training to become an editor.

To add a little background, my organization works in "publishing groups" which all handle topics among different medical specialties, and we function fairly independently of one another, but I recently wrote a topic that was very difficult with very little guidance, and it didn't come out as "good" I would say, as some of my other topics (although not my best, certainly not my worst - see my comment about how much I have improved since getting here). It's relatively normal for topics to undergo a decent amount of editing (or, at least I had thought so). Every topic gets reviewed (usually internally, within one's own publishing group) by a first editor, then another clinical editor, then an external clinical editor (the latter two usually dictate the scope and direction of the topic to the writer). It turned out that this topic that I did went to a different group for "first editing" under a different (perhaps more particular) editor who ended up wanting to go in a completely different direction with the topic. They ended up taking the topic into their own publishing group, getting a new external editor, a new internal clinical editor, in order to try to redo it (they are still trying, I believe). It has never happened to me in the past that a topic has been completely redone, unless something happened to it like the concepts got completely outdated before it was able to be reviewed.

Needless to say I was a little upset for a couple reasons - first, that they took it upon themselves to do this without working with me directly (which is normally the protocol). Then, they reached out to my boss to tell him that I shouldn't do the editors' training (based on this ONE topic, which they didn't deem worthy - they had no other evidence, to my knowledge). I had voiced my opinions about the topic because I had tried to wrap my brain around what had gone wrong, and I could not come up with anything that I would have done significantly differently. They did cite a few issues that I was made aware of, but I did not think it warranted deletion of the whole topic, as there was a lot of usable information within it. But as you'll see in a few minutes, that's not even the point now. By the end of the week I was just floored about the turn of events, and I'm sure I probably said a few things that I shouldn't have said but nothing egregious, and my boss had written me a strongly worded email saying that I needed to make sure that all my topics were up to a certain minimum standard. Even though I understand he couldn't take my side, he also didn't really validate my opinions other than to say that the situation was handled really poorly. I have the feeling he wrote it (and possibly put into place the actions I describe in the next paragraph) in an angered state.

Before a couple weeks ago, I had gotten a great performance evaluation and recommended for the next step toward another promotion (becoming an editor). Now this week (about a week and a half later), my boss comes to me and says that in order to move on from this situation he has to put in place a "performance improvement plan". I don't know exactly when in the course of these events this was decided. It is my understanding that normally you see these types of things coming, and they come after continued warnings and coaching. He did spin it in a positive light and say that "everyone" is pulling for me to just get through this and has every confidence I can do everything in the plan. I don't have the plan in hand yet, but my boss has described the things within it. He even mentioned that he had looked at whether there were options that would involve, instead of a PIP, a probationary period to put some actions in place and assess whether things had improved, but I have the feeling that by the time he had considered that maybe the motions for the PIP had already been put into place (when he was in the angered state). I did get the distinct feeling today that he almost had not wanted to go through with it (and had maybe even tried to circumvent doing so).

A lot of thoughts are running through my brain about what could possibly have changed in the course of 2 weeks. I have the feeling that in the course of events, my boss and my clinical editor's judgment were brought into light, and though I'm not sure, may have even brought to light some issues (or possibly, scrutiny) about the quality of the topics within my publishing group. Maybe this extends to my own topics, which until now were considered to be "good to excellent" in quality, but I really don't know. I know my own boss's editing and my clinical editor's editing skills have come into question at certain times in the past, to some degree, though I assume they never had any measures put in place for it.

Obviously I will have to just do the PIP, and probably start looking for another job in case this doesn't go through. But what happened, and is it possible to get through a PIP with your job in tact?