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by Gary North, Ph.D.
So does career self-defense. Dismissal happens. In recessions, it happens more often than normal. You think it can't happen to you. That's a sign that it can. When, almost four decades ago, Clark Kerr was fired as President of the University of California, he told reporters: "I am leaving just as I arrived: Fired with enthusiasm." I have never forgotten that line. With the Federal Reserve System tightening on the money supply, allowing short-term rates to rise relentlessly, the threat of a recession grows. If you are not paying attention to this, you are making a mistake. When was the last time you sat down, pencil and paper in hand, to make an inventory of your job performance? Have you ever gone through this painful exercise? If you don't make such an inventory, then your boss may make it for you when word comes down that it's time to make the company leaner and meaner. I realize that most people will procrastinate on this. For those of you who are ready to take the self-inventory, here are ten warning signs that you had better deal with. There is another reason for taking this inventory. If your reaction to this list is this -- "I'm not married to this company!" -- start making preparations for a divorce. Maybe you should initiate it. Job Phobia Millions of Americans hate their jobs. Are you one of them? The thought of spending most of your life doing work that you don't like ought to be horrifying. It ought to persuade you to change careers or employers. A person who is in this situation may be facing circumstances external to his job. Maybe he is in debt. He lacks mobility. Maybe he is in the highest-paying job that he believes is available. But if either of these is true, then money is the root of his problem, not his job. He is motivated by money rather than by the personal satisfaction of delivering a good product to an enthusiastic buyer. I think the career problem that most dissatisfied workers face is not debt. Debt can be paid off through self-discipline. Admittedly, mortgage debt may be a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, but unless someone has bought his first home recently and owes more than the house can be sold for, he can sell the home and get out from under the obligation. Most home owners can do this. I don't think money is the main reason why most dissatisfied workers stick with their jobs. I think it is their lack of self-confidence. They think of themselves as somehow overpaid. They don't think they can quite and re-enter the job market with any prospect of landing a comparable job, let alone a better one. This mentality is the employer's holy grail. He wants all of his employees to believe that they are overpaid. This way, they will not ask for raises or -- worse -- quit in search of greener pastures. The fact is, your boss is more likely to be overpaid than you are. The lower you are on the rung, the more you face a market with lots of potential employers. A CEO who makes $50 million a year, if he quits on his own, is unlikely to find another corporation willing to pay him as much as $25 million. No search team wants to hire a quitter at $50 million a year. Corporations raid each other to pick up hoped-for miracle workers. But a CEO who has just quit mid-stream at age 58 or 62 is not widely perceived as a miracle worker. He is seen as a leper. "There must be some dark reason why he quit." This sort of rumor doesn't attach to a guy who is making $50,000 a year and who quits in search of greener pastures. Any one of fifty reasonable explanations will do. My recommended excuse: "I was not given any respect." A person in the personnel division resonates to that one. That's because he thinks -- probably accurately -- that nobody in senior management has any respect for people in the personnel division. No Respect Most long-term employees are so good at what they do that they forget that hardly any outsider knows how to do what they do. This leads to a lack of self-respect. They think: "Anyone could do my job. I'm nobody special." The fact is, it would take the company weeks or even months to replace a person in a secure niche position. It takes time to train a replacement in the details, of which there are many. What saves businesses is that so few employees understand this. Also, they don't all quit at one time, creating a real disaster for the company. If you have taken the inventory and passed at least 80% of the questions, then you are a high-priority employee. You should probably be looking for a promotion. More than this: If you are not actively seeking a promotion based on your performance, then you have hit your own glass ceiling. You are the limiting factor in your career. It's not that your boss can't perceive your value to the company. It's that you can't. Why should you expect recognition from your boss if you are not self-consciously working to improve your value to the company? If you are working hard to improve your value, and you can document this, then you need to get your message clear to your boss. You are not among the also-rans. You are aware of your value, and you expect him to be aware. If he remains blind to this, then you really are not getting the respect you deserve. Start making plans to get a better job. Be systematic in these plans. Respect does not begin with self-esteem. It begins with a fanatical dedication to self-improvement. By "fanatical," I mean dedicated. You do this, not for your own sake, but for God's sake and the consumer's sake. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome,
This is the correct attitude. You cannot do this in every area of life, as Romans 12 teaches. You must respect the principle of the division of labor, which is what this chapter is all about. But if you serve effectively in one area of life, then you are worthy of your hire in God's sight. Paul also wrote:
There are self-help books that show you how to advance your career. Any self-help book that does not begin with dedicated service to paying customers has missed the point, both for work and career. A good movie on this is "Working Girl" (1988). It's the story of a dedicated lower class woman who is an assistant to a female corporate barracuda. The girl is trying to improve her performance. Her boss steals her idea, makes a pile of money for the firm, and takes credit for it. The movie is about the unravelling of her plans. It's a good movie for two reasons: (1) we want it to be true; (2) it really is true. I think of Joe Rochefort, the head code-breaker at Pearl Harbor, whose team, including the musicians on the sunk battleship "California," cracked enough of Japan's JA- 25 naval code (maybe 20%), that they accurately predicted the attack on Midway. Japan lost the naval war at Midway, in June, 1942. Rochefort had this sign on his desk: "You can achieve anything if you give the other person the credit." His success got him fired by Washington's code-breakers, who resented him. But, posthumously, he got credit for the breakthrough in the history books. He even appears in the movie, "Midway." Must you wait until you're dead to receive credit? If you work for the government, this may be the case. But if you work for a profit-seeking firm, there is an economic incentive for management to identify every source of profit, and then pay for it. Note: If you are a source of profit, and you refuse to ask for a raise, then you are making management's task less costly. You are not only a profit center, you are a super center. You don't ask to be paid what you are worth. If the system is really stacked against you, then it's time to make plans to leave. Two of my favorite character actors are the late Jack Elam -- he of the remarkable eyebrows and the cockeyed eye -- and Wilford Brimley, he of the spectacular moustache. Elam had worked for movie industry people as an accountant. He was blind in one eye and the other was getting worse. Some of his clients encouraged him to get into movies. He did. Brimley was a blacksmith who worked in movie production: westerns. He then picked up bit parts as an extra. Eventually, he made it to the big time. If these two had not done good work in the background, they never would have made it into the foreground. Their work opened doors. If your goal is to get out, you should work like a maniac to get good enough to impress someone who can get you out. What Have You Done For You Lately? As emotionally painful as taking the inventory is, it is even more painful for some people to act in terms of it. Some people refuse to change their ways in the face of the grim truth. Others are unwilling to ask for compensation to match their performance. It is standard knowledge that only about 10% of the population gets a thrill out of selling. Most people hate sales. This is a subsidy to those few who enjoy sales. The 90% who prefer other aspects of productivity -- invention, back-slapping, expertise in the fine details, etc. -- suffer from a major disadvantage. They are unwilling to sell themselves. They do not make a systematic effort to persuade their superiors to acknowledge financially that they are performing at above-average levels. Unless you sell yourself, you are in the not-for-profit mode. You have got to sell yourself. This assumes that your performance is worth buying. It's time to modify the old slogan:
You must not only hone your skills in your job classification. You must broaden your job classification to sales. Indirect Self-Promotion If you just don't have the stomach for negotiation, sell yourself indirectly. Start producing public information on your company that will be of interest to buyers or users. This way, you will come to the attention of those whose job it is to increase sales or reduce costs. You can start a blog for free at www.blogspot.com. Be helpful to the product's users. Word will get out. Or, if it doesn't, you can act as a promoter -- not on behalf of yourself directly, but on behalf of customers. You position yourself as Mr. Helpful for customers. This positions you as Mr. Helpful for the company. This way, you don't have to toot your own horn. You will get noticed by those who are in a position to advance your career: indirectly, customers; directly, superiors. Conclusion It is possible to get ahead without being an active climber. But you must be an active producer. If your pay is average, but your work is above average, you must make career adjustments. If your work doesn't speak for itself, you must speak for it. You must do so in ways that are not visibly self-promotional, yet make you indispensable. Begin with the self-inventory.
Dr. Gary North earned a Ph.D. in history and is one of America's keenest economic analysts and commentators. He supports the Austrian school of economics and is a previous assistant to libertarian congressman Dr. Ron Paul. Visit his website at http://garynorth.com. To subscribe to Gary North's Reality Check go to http://www.dailyreckoning.com/sub/GetReality.cfm. If you enjoyed this essay and would like to read more of Gary's writing please visit his website at http://www.garynorth.com or http://www.freebooks.com.
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