Dan Erwin

"NEVER ALLOW A CRISIS TO GO TO WASTE"

"Rule number one," Rahm Emanuel said, "never allow a crisis to go to waste."  Wise statement.  Poorer managed organizations miss the point.  Fear constricts, and many companies just start cutting, willy nilly.  But the better organizations take advantage of crisis, whether unexpected competition, recession, or even bankruptcy.  They check out their strategy, and stay focused on their core business, maintain the long-term view, and relentlessly (yes, relentlessly) manage costs.  Inevitably, that will mean reducing head count.  

One thing you can be sure of is that the better organizations take crisis as an opportunity to cut out dead wood.  They think through current personnel, revise future personnel requirements if needed, and dismiss low-achievers.  That's an important warning.  But there are some important steps you don't want to miss for using the blowback from a crisis.

Key Point:  Professionals who think strategically about their career will also take advantage of a crisis.  Recessions, for example, can be used to clarify your oganization's real personnel needs and skills.  Recessions provide the smart businessperson with opportunities to sort through his/her toolkit and refocus personal development.  They enable you to ask the questions necessary for success in this demanding talent age.  How useful are my competencies to my organization?  Are some of my skills obsolete?  Do they need updating?  What new experiences will provide me with richer opportunities?  What do I need to learn to more successfully managing my boss and his/her peers?  In managing up, what does my boss need from me?  And what do I need from him?  What technical skills am I going to be needing in the near future?  And what people skills do I need to learn?  Then, the biggie, how can I get myself into a different project or setting that will enable me to stretch, and learn what's necessary?

Thoughts?  Do you have more and better ideas?  Let me know.

ARE SOME SCIENTISTS TOO CAUTIOUS?

Based on the number of stories about physicians and biological scientists in bed with pharmaceutical companies you might not think so.  But when it comes to some neuroscientists, there's a lot of caution. . . perhaps overdone.  In Eric Jensen's recent book, Enriching The Brain,  he relates the fascinating research of Henriette van Praag at the Salk Institute.  Van Praag designed an interesting brain enrichment experiment for mice. 

The control cage contained no toys or littermates.  The second cage made a simple maze availabe for the mice, but limited the activity to five minues each day.  The third put the mouse in a Morris water pool that required mice to do some stressful swimming to find a transparent hidden platform below the surface.  The fourth condition put the mice in a highly enriched cage full time, but with no running wheel (that tiny ferris wheel apparatus in which mice and hamsters can run incessantly).  The fifth cage featured running wheel, but no other apparatus or toys. 

Intriguingly, the research found that the mice forced to use only the running wheels grew the most neurons (brain cells).  In fact, the mice in that limited cage grew 50% more neurons than any other setup, including the enriched cage.  However, the mice that kept those neurons over time--the greatest cell survival rate (85%)--was the highly enriched fourth condition.  Running produces more brain cells than being a couch potato.  But it is the complex, enriched environment that helps the neurons survive.

Once conclusion we might take from the experiment is that running ought to be considered a part of an enrichment environment.  And there is plenty of research supporting that.  But Jensen asked Dr. van Praag about that.  She was characteristically cautious in applying her research to humans.  She did, however, take up running as a result of her research.  Then Jensen asked her a different question.  He pressed her about the kind of education she wanted for her own son.  She responded that she would hope the school have plenty of "gross motor activities"  (recess and physical education?) available. 

But here's the kicker:  Jensen goes on to comment that he has found this type of response common among researchers.  As he says, it's the model of, "Don't ask me for practical applications on the record, but in my own life, I'm covering my bases just in case."  Pretty smart.

In a conversation with a VP from a well-known American organization, my client drew the same conclusions about her staff. A few years ago, her present company bought the company of her former employer.  In the integration both she and her employees kept their position, while employees and executives from the acquiring firm failed to make the cut.  When asked why, she responded that her old firm was continually yanking people around, making changes, reorganizing, etc.  So the merger was nothing new for her people.  They knew how to adapt.

The point I make in a research-based summary is that "getting yanked around is good for you."  That might not fly well, but all the research supports the constant need for enrichment--to achieve success.  How does that notion fit with your presuppositions?

(See my site research:  Getting Yanked Around is Good For You)

STICK WITH THE JOB YOU KNOW, BUT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE RECESSION

In an article in today's Wall Street Journal, Sarah Needleman surfaced some very important recession-creating data.  46% of middle managers polled by Accenture in mid-September "said switching employers in the current environment is risky.  Just 13% of respondents said they were actively looking for a new job."  That was down from 30% in the same time period last year.

Clearly, it's wise not to be in a hurry to jump ship in a deep recession.  That new job may just not materialize--and you could be on the streets.

At the same time, a recession often has a very constructive impact upon organizations--that is, if you look for it.  In tight times, the real focus of your firm may become much clearer.  And that should provide an opportunity for your own development of new skills.  You may not want to move around in the organization, but you can be adding important new competencies to your toolkit.  Be strategic about your development. Look around for a small project where you can gain new experience, or wrangle an invitation to an ongoing project. 

Rule #1, says Rahm Emanuel, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste.  They are opportunities to do big things."

I'd revamp that, and apply it to your development.  A recession is always an opportunity to move ahead.  Build that toolkit!  You can take advantage of it in the future.  

"BUT I DON'T WANT A PROMOTION"

Recently I bartered my coaching expertise, trading for the services of an immensely capable statistician.  I needed some statistical assistance for a major project, and he wanted some coaching from me.  “But,” he said, “I’m not after a promotion.  I really like my job.” 

 

I assured him that my coaching always focuses on client needs, and that a promotion isn’t inherently the only focus of coaching.  At the same time, I warned, you always want to be developing your toolkit—keeping and making yourself employable.  Favored jobs go out of existence.  They’re canceled for lack of organizational rationale, defunded, outsourced, and reframed beyond recognition.  So, I suggested, taking charge of your career means being smart about worst case scenarios.  In today’s economy, that’s only good horse sense. 

 

With that caveat, our discussion immediately went to his problem.  My friend wants help in selling ideas.  Selling ideas is tough for a majority of workers, and rightfully so.  It’s an elaborate skill set.   Like most competencies, selling ideas cannot be added piecemeal to your toolkit.  It assumes the following: 

• Fit with your organization’s strategy.
• A network of smart people to assess the idea, give you feedback, and help you adjust the idea for maximum success.
• A network of brokers to help you sell the idea up the ladder and circumvent the fence-sitters, adversaries and opponents, and harness the expertise of your allies.
• Advocacy and persuasion skills.
• Campaigning skills of tenacity and perseverance to push and pull the idea through the organizational system.
• Language technologies to deal with questions, keep the conversation on target, make your case, and gain commitment.

An umbrella term for all that is political action.  Yep, selling ideas means that you will have to learn to be politically active.  In our networked economy, it’s highly valued—and an important driver of employability.  The belief that coaching and learning are only for managers wanting a promotion is thoroughly wrongheaded.

WHAT'S THE BEST WAY TO MAKE A CAREER CHANGE?

Working Identity:  Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing
Your Career.  By Herminia Ibarra, Harvard Business School
Press;  199 pages; $26.95

Most people who are considering a career change never seem to take the final step.  Their approach to career change is ready, aim, fire—with a great deal of aim—pondering, deliberating and cogitating that continues for years, resulting in the absence of fire—forever a virgin, failing to consummate.  They hold on to their past, paralyzed, and fearful of the loss of security and income for a career that may be a big question mark. 

However, those few who take the step are glad they did it.  Some enjoy the excitement of a start-up after what they see as the frustrating predictability of a major corporation.  Others thrive on the challenge of a broader role in another company, after years in a corporate silo that had brought disappointment after disappointment.  Still others affirm the transformation of finding an alternative career that really fits their life--after too many years of unfulfilling work.  (With two transitions under my belt over 45 years, and a third on the way, I celebrate reinvention.)

Even the most conservative statistics support the need for Ibarra’s book, Working Identity:  Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career.  Career statisticians will tell you to expect 3 career changes in your life, and 12 – 15 jobs as corporate loyalty recedes into history and technology drives evolving skill sets. 

Ibarra’s book challenges nearly all the conventional wisdom about career change.  Rosabeth Kanter’s endorsement is apt:  One of those rare and wonderful books that combines deep knowledge drawn from careful research with practical ideas that can be put to immediate use.

The book grew out of questioning how people change careers in this new economy.  Ibarra’s research for the book was supported by the conception that changing careers amounts to changing identities.  History reminds me that reinvention is the American career model.  No one assumed more personas, played more roles, was more mobile, cosmopolitan and worldly than Ben Franklin, the most American of the founding fathers—the master of reinvention.

Ibarra’s social-psych research is focused on people aged 32 to 51, with the majority midcareer--ages 38 to 43--individuals with enough experience to know themselves.  The selection includes a motley crew of MBAs, lawyers, physicians, university profs and IT professionals.  Her methodology focuses on the transition from one career to another, comparing and contrasting personal cases to surface the characteristics of career transition.  The result is the creation of a new theory of career change.  This new thinking is desperately needed, largely because all the previous insights are built on the “one career” career—prior to the technology revolution.

I emphasize the research in this book because the bulk of popular business books are poorly researched, if at all.  They are filled with great stories about how someone confronted a very difficult situation and triumphed.  I love hearing and telling war stories, too.  The fact of the matter is that very little of what goes for a great business book will travel—it’s not relevant outside the context from which it’s drawn.  This is true for Jim Collins’ book—high quantity data, but poor quality.  To check it out, go to the Freakonomics blog by Stephen Levitt:  http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/from-good-to-great-to-below-average/.    Even Jack Welch admitted, in a Business Week article, that he never said his stuff would travel.  So it’s important to ask, “Will Ibarra’s research travel?”  Can you generalize from it?  Based on the breadth of her research base, as well as my coaching experience, the answer is an unqualified yes.

Here are a few of her conclusions:
* Act your way into a new way of thinking, rather than think your way into a new way of acting.
* The biggest error when trying to change careers is deciding on the destination before taking the first step.
* We can’t regenerate ourselves in isolation.  We develop in and through our relationships with others.
* Adults learn not logically—reflect, then act, or plan, then implement—but by testing an opportunity, then learning from it.
* The most effective way to tackle big problems such as a career change is through baby steps.  This is also a great way to build your support network.

About fifteen years ago, I suggested an excellent book on leadership to an IT client.  He told me he paid me for that.  This was good for my wallet and my business, but he didn’t benefit as well as he could have had he read the book himself.  If there’s the slightest possibility that you’ll be changing your career in the next decade, don’t let somebody else read Ibarra’s book for you.