Dan Erwin

Sucessful 21st Century Career: Understanding Who Gets Laid Off

Although a large percentage of the people to be laid off are already on the streets, it's important for your career future to understand who usually gets laid off.  Conventional wisdom says that low performers get the axe first.  However, that's not necessarily true.  Thus, the information I want to share will be especially useful for professionals in the first ten years of their career who take charge of their career and don't intend to be at the mercy of recessions, cut-backs, bankruptcies, buy-outs or mergers.  Think of this information as street smarts.

This sharp downturn has forced companies to take different steps to maintain profitability, specifically the unbundling of the corporation. Most companies have three "bundles" of business:  managing the infrastructure (IT, finance, logistics, etc.), product and commercialization (R&D, marketing, marketing research, etc .) and customer relations (sales, etc.).  This will make more sense if you ask yourself this:  what is your firm farming out?   Bits and pieces of these bundles are being dissected to achieve greater efficiency and profitability.  As a result, organizations are managing talent quite differently and will do so even more in the future.  I assume that global competition will force these changes to be long-term.

Although the lay-off process in the past was merely to fall back on across-the-board cost savings (cut 10% out of every division's budget, etc.) or tenure, today that's a gross over-simplification of what's going on.  Major and even smaller firms are thinking about lay-offs in different terms.  You should be able to respond knowledgeably to these issues and questions.  Your answers to these questions will help you make the decision to transfer, change career, change industry, search elsewhere, build up your bank account, or whatever.

1. What jobs or positions that provided coverage for business demand or growth have evaporated and will not come back? 
2. What competencies no longer fit the company's core competency, future direction or strategy?
3. To what extent is your position aligned with the organization's new requirements?
4. What parts of the workforce most need to develop new skills--and is the organization desirous and willing to support that development?
5. Are there parts of the workforce that could be redployed, perhaps to another organization, if retrained--and is the organization willing to support that?
6. Based on long-term competency appraisals or a survey of supervisors, what employees should be booted?

Caveats: 

As the business and its strategy changes, often people who were of high value no longer fit.  In spite of their contribution and visibility, these people may be let go.  On occasion, that will include senior executives.

Although some organizations assume they need topnotch talent in all roles, most organizations have "B" or "C" level players that fulfill a need of significance.  Though they may never be promoted, they will be kept because, to quote a client, they are "useful Grinds--and they don't cost a lot."

No matter how thoughtful the analysis, there are occasions when neither the managers nor the firm have control over terminations.  A new and successful competitor in the field or a business that is simply failing can result in mass exodus.  However, smart professionals stay on top of the relative opportunities for the business as well as its longer-term status to reduce unpredictability as much as possible.  Large, multi-national corporations in today's tumultuous markets can and should change frequently.  Understanding what's going on organizationally can help make the pain of 21st economy more open to creative self-management for all professionals.  Indeed, this is one backdrop for the 21st century "Take-Charge Career."

Why Escape from Cubicle Nation?

Why escape from cubicle nation?  Three of the smartest thinkers in business weigh in on this highly relevant question, a question made public by Pam Slim in her intriguing book, Escape From Cubicle Nation.  Their belief, however, is that we really need big companies.  Admittedly, many big firms still work out of the cost-containment, standardization model, which authors the unfulfilling jobs and dysfunction that Pam Slim and Daniel Pink refer to.  Still major firms are beginning to understand that a different organizational model in which organizations value their employees will be required for competition in a highly innovative world and many are starting to put that in place.

But what's most significant is the writers' insight into why we need large organizations:  Large organizations can provide "platforms for individuals to systematically experiment, learn, and innovate" and they will be the "best positioned to support and develop scalable, long-term, trust-based relationships."

Furthermore, large firms can provide the stability that makes it possible to keep up with the fast-moving global economy and this unpredictable world.  They will be able to provide learning opportunities for growth, more growth and still more growth in a world where company existence will be built on employee competence and innovation.

Having consulted for start-ups, small firms and multi-national organizations, I've noticed significant differences in personal opportunity--especially for those in the early years of their career.  Although the media hype the youthful entrepreneurs who succeed, statistically they are such a small piece of the total that the pattern they set serves only to hype the imagination rather than build genuine opportunity for more than a few.  

Among the writers of that Harvard blog on big organizations is the highly knowledgeable John Steely Brown, whose work, The Social Life of Information, published in 2000, remains the last word on the information side of technology.  It's light years ahead of anything on the web from any generation.  It does point to the tunnel vision that information-driven technologies breed and is not necessarily welcome input to the conventional wisdom surfaced by so many bloggers. 

By no stretch of the imagination would I deprecate the orientation to free-lancing (I'd be shooting myself in the foot), and escaping from the dysfunction of the macro organization.  But those who have thick skin will find much of value in at least a short-term tenure at one of America's major organizations. 

As a free-lancer who consults largely to huge, multi-national firms, I accept Brown and his colleagues' argument in toto.  Actually, it's the best rationale for a major corporation that I've seen in the last ten years.  The truth is that no matter how effective a small firm's network of experts, it can't provide the platform and resources often needed for major projects and much innovation.  The article, deserving of much study and thought, is found here:  http://bit.ly/1a9Y35

Quotation of the Week: Deborah Dunsire on Career Pathing

You can't be too sure of the path you're on because you might shut down some side roads that are incredibly important.

    Deborah Dunsire, M.D., CEO of Millennium Pharmaceuticals

In my mind this is a terrifically important insight on career from a leading biotech executive.  If you read her history, you'll notice the side-moves, the taking of small opportunities that become key to growth and the continual development of personal and leadership smarts.

I must confess that I become fatigued by those who want career certainty in a world of uncertainty, and Dunsire's comment is a needed antidote.

I deal with taking side roads in a free research paper on bluffing.

Listening with Your Eyes: Why Nonverbal Insight Is Tough

In a post on listening with your eyes, I pointed to important research showing that 42% of our work time is devoted to listening, including listening with your eyes.  In the early years of my career I taught public speaking and in that setting I often wondered why some speakers had so much difficulty assessing audience response.  It's a difficulty that I face today in teaching client relationship managers to become "good noticers" who listen to clients with their eyes.

Recently, I stumbled on the research that explains the difficulty many have in "noticing."  Alfred Yarbus, a pioneer in the scientific study of eye movement, asked participants to examine paintings while he recorded the patterns of their eye movement.  And then, by superimposing the recorded patterns on the paintings he found it possible to see what participants were looking at.  He discovered that eye movements were not scattered randomly, nor were they systematic such as from top to bottom or left to right.  Instead, the viewers tended to focus on the parts of the picture that were most prominent or conspicuous.  For example, he found that a great deal of attention was paid to the eyes of the human figures in a painting.

On occasion when I was teaching public speaking with a primed audience, I would stop the speaker to find out what or who he was looking at besides me (I was the teacher).  Even though it was obvious to me that in the listening group of eight, one or two might be bored and trying to get the speaker to hurry up by their finger or body movement, it was rarely noticed by a speaker.  In one-on-ones it seems to be more exaggerated.  Talkers tend to look solely at the eyes of the listener and not pick up on other cues in posture, breathing, voice tension, antsy movement in a chair, wandering eyes during your conversation, muscle tightening in the neck or shoulders or even color changes in the neck or cheeks. 

What this means is that if you have a message or conversation of importance to deliver, you want to pay attention to a lot more than a person's eyes, otherwise you liable to miss vital cues that a receiver gives off in response to your message.  Look for the inconspicuous cues for real success.

Although nonverbal accuracy is usually less than 50%, it is possible to train yourself to notice these cues and ask non-threatening questions about them.  For example, if your boss looks at her watch a couple times in the conversation, you might comment:  "I notice that you were checking your watch.  Is this a good time to talk, or would there be a better time?"  Or, "I notice that you've looked down a couple times during the conversation.  Am I overstepping the bounds?  Is this a subject you'd prefer not talking about at this time?"

The more you know a person and watch for these cues, the better you can become at reading them accurately.  That means in a first conversation with someone, your accuracy is liable to be very low.  But if you initate a number of first time conversations across corporate lines, among new vendors or even at the coffee shop, and watch for recurring clues, you'll begin to up your accuracy rate. 

You can google a number of free videos made for nonverbal training.  One that's a mix of seriousness and humor is found on Max Atkinson's blog.  But there are any number available for you to up your nonverbal ante.

One of the best ways to learn to pick up on nonverbal cues is to focus solely on one cue for a month or so.  For example, in addition to paying attention to the eyes of people which is always necessary, keep watching the neck areas for color change in both men and women.   After you become successful at that, move on to another typical nonverbal.  It will take time, but gradually you can increase your expertise.  A major act of nonverbal retraining took place in the 1950s and '60s when Blacks were retrained in eye contact.  Prior to that time Blacks always looked to the ground when walking in the direction of whites.  It was such a clear issue of cultural subservience that Black leadership retrained their young people as part of the movement to racial equality.  Although I grew up in the Detroit area where blacks largely refused to accept the assigned Southern role, I went to college in the Mid-South in the '50s.  When I first walked around the small college town with Southern white friends, I was so shocked by the black response that I asked my friends about it.  It was just about "place" I was informed.

Nonverbal training has a significant success rate.  What that means is though we've been trained to look at the eyes, we can train ourselves to focus on other parts of the body and environment and make ourselves far better listeners and communicators.

Great Questions for (MBWA) Managing by Wandering Around

A number of years ago when I coached middle managers rather than the execs that now make up my client base, on occasion I urged managers to do more MBWA.  It's always important to let your employees know you're interested in them,to catch up on the status of projects, to offer needed help or gain insights into bettering organizational performance.

Inevitably the first question coming out out of their mouths after I made that recommendation was "what do I say when I stop by someone's cubicle?"  I suggested that they initiate the conversation with the cliched hello, how are you, and do whatever updating or giving of positive feedback possible.  Then follow that up with relevant questions.

As a result, I have become a question freak.  In a fascinating interview of Deborah Dunsire, CEO of a Massachusetts biotech firm, she laid out her MBWA questions.  I thought they might be useful for most anyone's managing toolkit:

    "Hey, what's keeping you up nights?"

    "What's most exciting for you right now?"

    "What are you working on?"

    "Where do you see we can improve?"

Analyzing these questions, note that they focus on problem issues, personal motivation, work status and possible organizational development.  It would be rare for an effective listener to have the opportunity to ask all four.  You might get waylaid on just the first question. . . and that's fine, too.

The cynics out there might be thinking that those questions are obvious.  The reality is that they're only obvious when you see them in print.  Advice is one thing, but my clients at all levels, from entry to corporate officers repeatedly thank me for the actual scripts.  Indeed, questioning has such high value that I've created a category on my blog for those entries.  Starting with the importance of questions to creativity is a good entry place.  So, plagiarize, merrily.

Unhappy at Work? Should You Fake It?

Although I rarely pay no more attention to bumper-sticker language than an occasional smile, I was caught by a T-Shirt ad on CNN.com:  "Unhappy at work?  Better Learn to Fake It."  What forced my attention was a conversation with a Gen-Yer over a related subject.   She'd been in her job for 15 months and "was bored out of her skull."  Working for a major firm, the usual modus operandi meant that she could apply for a new position after a year of service.  She'd gone through the ritual but, thus far, not been able to connect with a new, more challenging position.

There are, of course, a number of strategies available for work frustration or boredom.     

If you've got a bad boss, I've suggested that in many cases you can remake that relationship and get a better boss out of the deal.  In my post on how to get a better boss, I indicated that there are plenty of situations in which you can create one by reworking the relationship.  That means, however, you'll be responsible for the new creation, but eventually in those settings most bosses also cooperate.

Bob Sutton lays out numerous ways to deal with your boss if he or she is a real asshole.  I don't know whether it's unbelievable luck or blindness, but I've never worked for an asshole.  Still plenty of people marshal evidence to support their beliefs.  I have worked around a number of dumb asses, but that's not the same animal.  Dumb asses can be circumvented or ignored.  I always believed that it was a matter of personal honor not to be frustrated by a dumb ass.

Boredom on the job, however, is a far different issue. It's an emotional state growing out of personal lack of interest in the situation and opportunities around you.  It's a primitive conviction that this not how things should be, and it often results in angst or differing levels of anxiety.   To use another bumper slogan, boredom is often about "been there, done that."  A better one was handed to me by a friend who had successfully changed careers:  "I've climbed that mountain."

Suppose, like my Gen-Y friend, you're bored early on in your career, no job opportunities are surfacing, and in this job market, you're stuck.  Here's my near-automatic question:  What can you learn from that situation?  Let's dissect it.  My friendly Gen-Yer was stuck in the miserable middle between what she was currently doing and what she hoped to be doing with her future.  She'd learned all the skills for her job, was performing at a high level, and now she wanted to move on.  My perspective was that she'd eventually find herself in the same state of mind a year or two into the next job.  I argued that boredom was inevitable, that it was an ordinary and essential part of life, and that it provided an opportunity for learning about herself and her world.

It's important for all of us to recognize that boredom and tedious work are simply a part of life.  On the one hand, if I have a boring, tedious task that must be finished, I tend to do it ASAP, and as early in the day as possible.  Getting it out of the way and out of mind is important.

On the other hand, if your job is boring, then more will be required.  The issue comes down to this:  How do you develop an appreciation for the ordinary (with all its implicit potential for boredom)?  

Historically, boredom is a luxury that only we who don't have to scratch out a living to exist, can enjoy.  So, eating can get boring, raising kids can get boring, sex can get boring, relationships can get boring, and so can most anything else.

On the plus side, the fact that you're bored is a statement that you believe things can get better.  It's actually a form of optimism and a fundamentally open way of looking at life.  Boredom has a great deal of motivational drive, drive which I've harvested much of my life.  It drives me to realize that I've become a success at one thing, and challenges me to open my life to create new opportunities for excitement and achievement.

Of course, one reason some people don't get bored on their job is that they have essentially given up on a work future.  They become automatons with little interest in life.  To my chagrin, I see this in some people who are "retired," though still working.  There's plenty of research that suggests that those who don't believe in a future are giving themselves an early death sentence. 

Early in your career, boredom is a call to evaluate your choices.  Like my Gen-Y acquaintance, I remember wanting so much more out of my work in those first few years.  Although I gave a bit of attention to what I didn't like about that job, I've come to realize that I could have streamlined my career by better assessing my job frustration and gaining further clarity on more significant interests.  I was a young counselor in a religious setting, working 50 to 60 hours a week.  But what I began to understand was that I'd learned the skills necessary for that setting.  Nearly every counselee, day in and day out, was dealing with family dysfunction.  I eventually realized that I was far more interested in working with fast-track achievers who wanted to access my learning skills to support them in their personal growth--a very exciting vocation.  However, the career context for that commitment took a while to figure out.

Inevitably, boredom can drive us to make better career choices.  It pushes us to decide what we want to better personal career choices for ourselves.  Certainly we're not going to lay out a life plan, but boredom in one job can enable us to evaluate alternative choices.

I also believe that the ability to manage boredom is tied to personal resilience.  As in the conversation with the Gen-Yer, the boredom was stressful and lead to unstated internal tensions between her and her boss.  Though none of her colleagues suspected, the tension was clearly gnwing at her gut and creating unncessary fears about her future.  Since these are the kinds of issues most achievers face, we can better deal with boredom by viewing it as a problem to be resolved, and by developing relationships that foster growth.

Back to the original question:  Should you fake your unhappiness and boredom?  Absolutely not.  Deal with boredom, frustration and unhappiness as problems to be resolved and grow from them.  And then when your next opportunity comes, be sure not to burn any bridges, but take it.

Get Out of My Sandbox!

In an enlightening interview in Sunday's New York Times, Deborah Dunsire, chief of a biopharmaceutical concern in Massachusetts, weighed in smartly on a fundamental issue of leadership.  Her revelation is not unusual, but it's highly important for all leaders:

When you desperately want to do well, and I am a person who’s typically worked hard and done well, sometimes that desire translated into overdoing it on the leadership side. If something went wrong, I would get too anxious about it or think I had to fix it personally.

As I’ve stepped further and further outside my comfort zone to the job I’m in now, I’ve had to focus more on the work of leadership and not focus on being the person who solved the details of the problem.

She went on to say that she had learned to step away and allow the person to "stub their toe." 

Research shows that one of the most difficult tasks for a new manager is letting go--delegating the work, and getting out of your subordinate's sandbox.  Here's great input from a CEO who really understands that issue.