One of the most common mistakes, he says, is quitting too quickly. "So many times a new investor will come into the stock market, play around for a while, lose some money, get disgusted, and back out. I try to argue with this man or woman. 'Stick around,' I'll say. 'Take the trouble to learn what you're doing. You'll get better.' But no, the guy hasn't made an overnight killing, so right away he wants to quit."
People behave the same way in their careers, says Hazard, who started as a brokerage trainee many years ago and eventually rose into top management. "Time and again I see people come into a good promising job, but it doesn't go a hundred percent right for them, so right away they want to quit," he says. "I don't know how many times I've had people in my office, trying to get them to stay and work things out. Good people, a lot of them, people who had a real future in this business. 'Stick around,' I tell them. But no, they've had a dispute with their boss, or they aren't getting a promotion they thought somebody promised them, so the answer is: quit. It's too bad."
Hazard says he recently met a woman who had worked under him many years ago. She had joined his brokerage house as a secretary but had expressed interest in moving up to the position of customer's representative, or "rep." Since she was bright and personable, with an unusually keen understanding of the financial markets, the brokerage house was happy to accommodate her. "We went out of our way to help her get the schooling she needed," Hazard recalls. Her future was bright. But then, through a misunderstanding, she got blamed for a costly error that she did not believe was her fault. The problem could have been worked out, given patience on all sides, but she quit in anger.
That was in 1974, a notoriously bad year in and around Wall Street. She was never able to find a similar opportunity. By quitting, she had given her future away. She is still doing clerical work. Quitting often seems like the easy way out of a bad situation. There is always a temptation to give vent to the emotions of a painful moment, to lash out, to act in anger. "When people quit," Hazard says, "they often do it partly in a spirit of revenge. They think, 'I'll show that so-and-so!' They think they're punishing those they leave behind, when they're really punishing themselves."
Hazard is right. Instead of quitting your job, you are usually better off sticking around and trying to improve what you've got. It takes more discipline to do that, of course, but it usually pays off. Even if you feel your situation is intolerable, quitting may not be the best answer. I suggest a better one: get yourself transferred to another job in the same company.
The Reasons for Moving
A campaign to get yourself transferred will take a lot of planning and a lot of work. (As I said, quitting is easier.) So don't undertake such a campaign for trivial reasons: you find your boss too sharp-tongued; you are a bit disappointed with your last promotion. The reasons behind such a move should be solid and compelling. There are six such reasons:
You find yourself in a state of permanent boredom. You get no stimulation from your work, hate to come to the office in the morning, can't wait to get out at night. Everybody has occasional boring days or weeks. Everybody gets assigned to boring tasks once in a while. Obviously you wouldn't want to take drastic action if your feeling of stagnation has lasted only a short time or if you can see its end not far off. But when boredom becomes a permanent aspect of life, then it is a danger signal. It means the time may have come for a change.
There are objective signs that your career is at a standstill. These signs, coupled with the subjective sense of boredom or stag nation, may reinforce your suspicion that you are in a dead end. The most important objective signs of career advancement are raises, promotions, and increased responsibility. Compare yourself with others of your own general age, educational background, and job level. Do most of them seem to be generating appreciably more forward motion than you? If so, then you may find it worthwhile to think of getting yourself moved.
You find yourself trapped in an intolerable and unfixable personality or business--philosophy clash with your boss. Not just an argument, not just a week-long period of anger, but a deep-rooted incompatibility that, in your best judgment, is permanent. You've tried hard and earnestly to fix it and now genuinely feel you have exhausted all feasible approaches. Looking ahead, you see virtually no hope that the situation is going to change in the near future.
Having made a close study of your department or group you find it too far from lines of power and unlikely to get any closer in the foreseeable future. The indications are that you are in a Siberia, where, if you don't do something to help yourself, you will freeze.
Studying your boss in the same way, you find him or her to be a person of little or no real power. In your best judgment, this situation is probably not going to change.
It is entirely conceivable that you could judge yourself to be in a weak department or group, but one with a strong, active, and ambitious boss who shows promise of lifting the team out of the mud in which it has been stuck. In that case, you would be well advised to stay put at least for a while and see what happens. But if you find a combination of weak department and weak boss, then you can profitably begin to think about getting yourself moved out.
You feel, paradoxically, that you are a victim of your own success. You have done such outstanding work, which has reflected such credit and glory on your boss that he or she is now reluctant to let you go. Promotions you'd hoped for have not materialized. You have the distinct feeling that your boss intends to hold on to you until long past the time when, under normal circumstances, you would be moved up to the next level of rank and responsibility.
These are the six ruling reasons for seeking a transfer. Any one of them, if solidly based on tangible facts, is reason enough for making such a move.
Right Ways and Wrong
If you determine that a move is warranted in your case, take warning: you are about to embark on a highly hazardous course. Handle it right and you can vastly improve both your present and your future. Handle it wrong and you can seriously damage your career. You can even wreck it. So be careful. Here are the most important do's and don'ts:
Do let your dissatisfaction be known, very carefully and pleasantly, however, taking note of all the cautions below.
Don't just stew suddenly. Many people do that. I know one woman who boiled internally for years, never telling anyone she felt mired and frustrated where she was. Then, suddenly, she boiled over one day in her boss's office, shouted criticisms that she later wished she could take back, and ended up getting herself fired. Her boss was bewildered. "If only she'd told me how unhappy she was," he complained to me, "I'd have been glad to help her. Matter of fact, a couple of times in the past year I'd heard of job openings where I thought she'd fit neatly, but I didn't say anything. I thought she was perfectly content where she was!"
Do talk first to your immediate superior, your boss. Be pleasant and positive: "I've appreciated the chance to learn under you. You've been a great teacher. I kind of feel I'm ready for a new challenge now. Do you happen to know of anything opening up?" It's true that not all bosses will be softened or will react generously to this kind of approach, but I venture to say the majority will. Few, at any rate, will be angered by it. When someone comes up to you asking for important help, it isn't easy to say no.
Don't under any circumstances, allow your boss to hear of your get-transferred campaign from somebody else. I've known many people who tried to hide such campaigns from their superiors, and I can assure you that the chances are such an attempt will end badly, perhaps disastrously. Put yourself in your boss's position: wouldn't you be angry if you found out that a member of your team was sneaking around looking for another team to join? Of course you would--especially if you had made some kind of emotional investment in this straying team member. So be particularly careful about this: your boss should be the first, not the last, to know of your feelings, plans, and moves. You might as well tell your boss all about it in any case, for your chances of keeping such a campaign hidden permanently are just about zero.
Do talk to your mentor, if you have one-or, if you don't, to any company executives you think might help. Maintain your positive attitude: "I like this company and I want to stay, but I seem to have reached a point where I'm not making a great deal of progress. Can you suggest anything?"
Don't make this campaign into an assault on your boss. Never complain or whine: "I just can't get along with that woman. She makes mistakes and I end up getting blamed for them. She doesn't really have the qualifications ..." That kind of talk only makes people uncomfortable. Moreover, it can backfire, for the person you complain to may be a friend and admirer of your boss. No matter how badly your relationship with your boss has deteriorated, grin and bear it for the time being. Keep up your positive attitude and speak only kind words.
Do build roads in all directions while waiting for something good to appear. Seize opportunities to do unfamiliar kinds of work, learn new skills, meet new people. If you can identify a kind of work you'd like to do in a department that seems to be well plugged in to a line of power, then set up a course of schooling for yourself; become proficient in that work so that you will be ready to move into job openings as they appear. The schooling can be formal: a college extension course, perhaps, or a special education program offered by the company itself. Or the schooling can be entirely informal; it might involve nothing more than studying some books in a library. The point is to prepare yourself for whatever opens up.
Don't be impatient. It may take many months for things to fall into place. Don't issue ultimatums: "If I don't get transferred out of this department by the end of the month, I'm leaving!" You may be leaving.
Do see to it that the personnel department, if there is one, stays properly updated on changes in your schooling experience, and ambitions. Many personnel departments (sadly, not all) try to match new job openings with the skills and wishes of people already on the payroll; these people get early shots at new jobs before outsiders are invited to apply. Thus, if you are in the public relations department but bum to get into test marketing, be sure to let the personnel people know about the courses you've been taking and the weekend consumer-interviewing work you've been doing. Also update your mentor at the same time.
Even If You're Happy
These do's and don'ts are specifically designed for the employed person who is actively dissatisfied with present and future prospects. But I believe you can profit from the advice even if you are entirely content in your present situation.
The advice is something like fire insurance. You hope you will never have to use it, but... You never know what lies ahead. Today you seem to be solidly installed in a strong department under a powerful and generous boss who thinks the world of you. What can go wrong? Any number of things.
You simply never know. Your boss could get promoted away from you, recruited out of the company, cut down in a power struggle, or fired. You could stumble in your own career, could make some expensive mistake, could be blamed for someone else's mistake. The nature of the company might change; a large company could acquire it and reorganize it; currently strong departments could be weakened or even abandoned completely. Your very profession--your particular area of expertise--could diminish in importance as the world's technological and social revolutions roll on.
So it never does any harm to be prepared for a change. Some people never see themselves as doing anything different; they blandly assume they will work contentedly and profitably in the same specialized area throughout their lives. These people are in grave danger. Don't get caught in this trap. Build roads for yourself, just in case you need them. Prepare escape routes. Study your current specialty, yes; become superior in it if you can-but don't close your eyes to all other possibilities.
Janet R., a General Motors employee, is one woman who knows from firsthand experience that this policy can pay off. She joined the huge company years ago, rising to a minor supervisory position in a divisional advertising office. "I always thought I was perfectly secure," she says. "I mean, GM! The biggest manufacturing company on earth! How could anything ever hurt GM? Just the same, in the late 1970s I started to ask myself if I wanted to be in advertising all my life. I looked around to see what else was going on, and for some reason I got interested in the way the annual report was put together. It was just a short step from there to the whole field of stockholder relations. I got more and more interested. I thought that would be a fine field to work in if I ever wanted a change."
Still without any suspicion that her advertising job would one day be in jeopardy, Janet R. started asking questions casually around the company. Who designed the annual report? Who decided what to tell the stockholders? She talked to her mentor, who happened to be her boss. This man had had some peripheral contact with the annual report preparation process years before, when he had worked at Detroit headquarters. Amused by her interest, he introduced her by phone one day to a woman in Investor Relations. The woman invited Janet to visit if she was ever in Detroit.
Janet eventually took the woman up on this invitation. The woman introduced her to others in various functions bearing on the giant company's continual efforts to keep its far-flung stockholders informed and content. One older executive was particularly impressed by Janet's interest. He gave her some books to read. She read them and was very careful to return them with thanks a few weeks later.
"I didn't know it at the time," Janet says, "but I was working out my own salvation. This industry collapsed in the early eighties, as everybody knows. It wasn't just a recession for us, it was a full-scale depression. A lot of plants and offices either cut back on operations or closed down completely. In my office everybody was scared. We could see the writing on the wall. Some of the clerical staff were the first to be let go. Then the axe started to fall on people of my level. I knew I had to act fast, so I did. I called the man who had loaned me those books."
He was glad to hear from her. GM's management had some difficult explaining to do to stockholders--as did the managements of many other troubled companies. Stockholders were going to have to live with painful cuts in earnings, dividends, and, inevitably, the stock's market price. The company's posture toward its stockholders and the general investment community was undergoing radical change, and in the process job openings were being created. Janet was transferred out of her advertising job in the nick of time. "I was lucky," she likes to say. But perhaps that is not quite accurate. I prefer to say she was prepared.
