Mom And Dad Were Wrong
The problem is the 50-plus generation is the victim of an outmoded work ethic. Our folks taught us that hard work and loyalty paid off. My immigrant grandfather thought his boss was God because he gave him a job 3 days after my grandfather landed on Ellis Island with a battered suitcase, tattered clothes, and big dreams. My father felt the same way about his employer. Yes, even I was a victim of the same thinking until the day I was deemed redundant and "down sized." At the time, I wasn't quite sure what that term meant. It sounded like a disease. Before I knew what was happening, I was figuring out how long my severance pay would last and the amount of my first unemployment insurance check. Nothing like a chilling shower of corporate reality to give you a new take on life. So much for the American dream. It was 1986 and the world was changing in front of my eyes. I too thought big American corporations were bastions of strength, indestructible Rocks of Gibraltar, the machinery that kept the entire world revolving on its axis. They were supposed to be the Big Mama nurturing the faithful until the final cadence sounded. I was wrong.
The company epitomizing the myth of job security is IBM, better known as Big Blue. As the first American corporation to develop the policy of lifetime employment, its "no fire" policy became the foundation of corporate paternalism. When the marketplace changed, IBM was already a cumbersome behemoth weighted down in bureaucracy. Competitors that were smarter and faster on their feet gnawed away at Big Blues flesh. By the mid-1980s, the company had lost its muscle as the ultimate American corporation. It could no longer compete on the corporate battlefield.
To say IBM fell on hard times is an understatement. Pummeled and kicked by a merciless computer industry rocketing toward the twenty-first century, helpless giant Big Blue reeled and stumbled against global cutthroat competition. The corporate titan began hemorrhaging and there were no sutures big enough or strong enough to stop the bleeding.
Former chairman Thomas B. Watson, Jr., son of IBM's founder, expressed shock and surprise that the unwieldy computer maker lost its grip. Like all IBM bigwigs, Watson thought the company was invincible, immortal, and impervious to hard times. Come hell or high water, the company would endure. A throwback to a simpler era, Watson was out of touch. IBM's fall from grace is a sad story indeed. Launched in 1956, it was heralded as the perfect company. A job at IBM was considered an honor. You were part of the working elite. Not anymore. In 1986, IBM employed 407,000. Now it employs 112,000. Last year alone, the company shed over 40,000 jobs.
The New Order
So began a new era and the explosion of a widely held myth. In its heyday, IBM was more than a solid company selling quality products. It offered its workers an enviable lifestyle. For other companies, it was a model, symbolizing egalitarian hiring and business standards.
For 40-odd years following World War II, thousands of American companies followed IBM's lead, offering workers their own lifetime contract variation. Job security became the centerpiece of the good life. But it proved only to be a "blip in time," as Dan Lacey, late editor and publisher of Workplace Trends Newsletter, put it. It was an aberration, an accident never to be repeated. By the late 1980s, the Organization Man was officially drummed out of the American consciousness. Part of a bygone era, he was never to return. The mobile society described by Alvin Toffler {Future Shock) became the new reality. The solid citizen who would hold one job on one career path was replaced by the rootless worker who'd have 8 to 10 jobs and undergo two to three career changes throughout his or her life.
American workers have been thrust into a strange new world. With fax machines, cellular phones, notebook computers, and modems, they're learning to job-hunt through cyberspace on the vast information superhighway as telecommuting citizens of the global community. Meanwhile, high-profile companies continue to clean house, permanently laying off tens of thousands of loyal workers.
Get Smart-Things Will Never Be The Same
I could get real gory and run through a litany of household-name companies that mercilessly fired millions in order to stay profitable. But you get the idea. Actually, I drew a graphic picture of the last four decades to cheer you up. No, I'm not a sadist. I'm an optimist. I sprinted through the past half-century to show you the light-and a radiant light it is.
See yourself in historical perspective. You're part of the story. You've a witness to one of the most significant periods of economic change this country has ever seen. You were there. Your kids and grandchildren will read about you. Americans are no longer doing business and working the way they did two decades ago.
Rather than see it as a curse, see it as a blessing, a new morning, a chance to start over and think differently. Forget the old path and find a new one. You've heard it thousands of times from the self-help hucksters, but it's true. Change is good and healthy. It's like a cold refreshing shower on a sultry summer day. Yes, it's also a shock and it can be difficult. Yet practically everything worthwhile requires some angst and sweat. Face it. If you could reach out and grab everything you wanted, what fun would it be? Believe it or not, we unconsciously enjoy the struggle because it challenges us.
Deprogram Yourself
There you have it. It is time to abandon that feeling of entitlement you were raised on. Forget what your folks told you. Stop idealizing the past. More importantly, stop living in it. The free rides are over. If you want the proverbial gold ring on the merry-go-round of life, you must grab for it yourself.
Deprogram yourself and tell Big Blue and every company like it to take a hike. They lied to you by not making good on their promise. Worse still, in the process of firing you, they copped out by resorting to doublespeak rather than explaining what was happening in plain English. You were dubbed a "negative deficit" and "released," "non retained," "dehired," or "selected out" in order to "eliminate redundancies in the human resources area" and "enhance efficiency of operations." Yet you learned some important lessons in the process.
Uppermost companies shouldn't make promises they can't keep and you shouldn't be so gullible and believe everything you've been told. All you can expect from a job is the chance to do something you enjoy, fair pay, and (if you're lucky) decent benefits and some near-term security. Anything else is pure gravy. Why should it be any different? A company is not a parent. There is no biological or emotional bond. It's just business, plain and simple. It doesn't take a Keynesian scholar to know that profits are more important than people.
Don't think of me as cold and cynical. That's just the way the world works. It's the divine order. If anything, we've gone back to an honest way of working. Finally, all of us know where we stand and how we fit into the business equation. The message is, rely on your own self. You and only you are responsible for your fate.
Put it all together and you're left with a powerful word: opportunity. And a wonderful word it is. It spells new adventures, experiences, and a chance to learn new tricks. If that doesn't keep you young, feisty, and excited, I don't know what will. If you doubt me, consider the alternative. Nothing is worse than stagnation. Now let's rally the troops so we don't have to go it alone.
