First emotional step: Quit the Cinderella role and start thinking career development.
First practical step: Figure out exactly what you can and can't control. Take responsibility for managing your time and activities.
An investment banker who works for a New York-based firm managed to accomplish both goals ably despite institutional obstacles.
When the banker was asked to join his firm's restructuring taskforce, he knew it would be important to participate. He also knew that the responsibility would be like having a second full-time job. His dilemma: how to handle both duties without working 18- or 20-hour days. What he needed, he decided, was to work smarter but not necessarily harder.
His three rules of participation:
- Never work more than a 12-hour day. A devoted family man, he acknowledged openly that spending evenings at home with his wife and two daughters was important for his sanity. While he was willing to begin his workday early (6 A.M.), he also planned to be on the 6:15 P.M. train home. You could set your watch by him. Unless it was an absolute emergency, he never deviated from his schedule. As a result, his employers and co-workers knew exactly what to expect from him.
- Don't expect perfection. By nature, he was a meticulous man who dotted every "i" and crossed every "t." He also knew that if he maintained that work style, he'd soon fall far behind. So he lost the perfectionist mentality and developed personal standards of "good enough" that still kept his reputation for able work intact.
- Share your goals. Always considered a star performer, the banker knew he could never produce the same results with so much added responsibility. Rather than try to achieve some impossible goal, he renegotiated his sales objectives with his manager, then worked diligently to deliver what he'd promised. Not once did he beat himself up for not delivering the sales figures he'd achieved in previous years. However, getting his manager to buy into his new goals was crucial to his success. Otherwise, the banker would merely have looked as if his performance was way off.
While acknowledging that you're neither a machine nor a superhuman always carries some risk, you don't do anyone a favor by refusing to accept or understand your personal and professional limitations.
"Unless you learn to set boundaries and prioritize your work, you can end up going down with the ship," says Bougie.
That's exactly what happened to the assistant dean of a prestigious liberal arts college in Chicago. When his support staff was eliminated, the administrator didn't adjust his goals to accommodate that loss. Instead, he tried valiantly to do the job of three people. In his case, this meant single-handedly servicing more than 1,200 students.
His reward: ulcerated colitis. He also got a year off, which he needed to recover his health and sanity.
An operations analyst with a consulting group in Chicago had better success with a more aggressive style. To prevent an overload of demand on her energies, she moved her office to a location removed from her colleagues. She also convinced her manager to let her work at home two mornings a week in order to get some uninterrupted work time.
Keep in mind, though, that even your most innovative solutions won't be considered seriously unless you have a solid track record of professional credibility. You need to establish yourself as a hardworking and committed team player who's willing to go the extra mile before asking your employer to go out of the way for you.
The Crabpot Mentality
When you approach your job with creativity and enthusiasm, don't expect the people around you to rave, "Wow! What a great person!" More likely than not, you'll encounter what Hawaiians refer to as a "crabpot mentality."
When Hawaiian fishermen go crabbing, they throw the crabs they catch into a bucket with no lid. The Hawaiians learned long ago that there was no danger of the crabs climbing out and scurrying away. Whenever one crab reaches the lip of the bucket, the leader is pulled back into the pot by the others, who seem determined not to let any members of their group escape.
Who needs a jail warden when you have each other to guard the gates?
Granted, great ideas are hard to achieve in downsizing organizations where emotional leakage and miscommunication run high. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Why not lose the chip on your shoulder and show some initiative of your own? For those of you with leadership blood in your veins, the time is ripe to separate yourself from the horde of naysayers that surround you. Exercise your leadership potential and you'll truly stand out.
Managers (and aspiring managers) should display the courage to participate in the changes and, if possible, make change a more compassionate experience. Norbert Wiener, the founder of Cybernetics, said, "The world may be viewed as a myriad of 'to-whom-it-may-concern messages.'" It's up to you whether you want to heed their call.
If you do, expect the road to get rocky.
A senior customer service manager who'd made it through two years of continuous organizational change (including five different restructuring attempts) was determined to be more than just a survivor. He wanted to learn something from the process, even if it meant putting his personal career objectives on hold for awhile. To him, it was a "developmental challenge" to keep his staff motivated and provide quality customer service in a constantly changing environment.
His advice: Use organizational change to become an expert in what you do. For example, he was able to experiment with a dozen different ways to improve customer service, even in the midst of business and staff changes. The hardest part was to keep his staff of 60 people motivated to provide quality service in the face of serious morale problems. Secrecy, he discovered, was his enemy. Communication - even if it meant over-communication - was his greatest ally. By sharing his concerns and frustrations with the staff, he motivated them to work hard, even if the company they worked for didn't seem to appreciate their efforts.
"I wore a lot of hats with my staff," says the manager. "Protector, advisor, parent. Sometimes, they acted like little kids who needed a 'time out' to get control of themselves. It was tough."
Getting through the rough times may be easier if you recognize that you've entered a skill-building phase in your career that will make you more marketable elsewhere. "If I hadn't known that my situation would be temporary," says the customer service manager, "I probably would've been miserable."
As it is, he isn't sorry that his name showed up on a list of jobs to be cut. "Mentally, I'd already packed my bags," he says. "The paperwork was just a formality."
Now that he's in the job market again, he's discovering that many employers are interested in his ability to manage through change. This is fine with him, but he has a requirement of his own: He wants to manage change that comes from growth rather than shrinkage. "I want to add staff and grow them," he says. "Not fire people I've groomed as members of my team."
To achieve that goal, he's targeting expanding midsize companies with solid market niches.
