If you skipped the
Foreword, take a moment to note that it originally appeared in 1980, long before
the recession that had a lot to do with the transfer of presidential power from
George Bush to Bill Clinton. The
Foreword is a depressing essay written by a senior executive who lost his job in
the late 1970s.
He was
"ousted"--"displaced" instead of effectively "outplaced"--a victim of what later
came to be known as "downsizing" in the American economy. His severance occurred a full decade
before the days when just about everyone knew someone who had been "streeted" in
mid-career. And, as the reader
accustomed to tracking gender references in written accounts will have noticed,
his companions in "The Hawaiian Room" were all male.
In truth, involuntary
separation happens all the time. In
good economic times and bad, high and mid-level managers are at risk of losing
their jobs. It happens more to
males than females only because there are more males than females in the mid- to
upper-levels of managerial responsibility. The experience of involuntary separation among executives in corporate
America is predominantly, but by no means exclusively, a male
phenomenon.
I began noticing the
problem--as a problem for the disconnected, mid-career, male executive--around
1975. I was 48, a priest with a doctorate in economics, a university president,
and a corporate board member. Old
friends from college days-- all within a year or two of my own age, all
beneficiaries of the take-off economy that swept the Class of 1950 into jobs
that soon became positions of influence and power in the American economy--
started renewing their contact with me by making quiet inquiries. Confidentiality was important.
Networking was essential. A new job was the objective. After 25 years or so of uninterrupted
employment, they found themselves in the embarrassing and often frightening
circumstances of looking for work.
This is a book for them
and for those men and women who now face, or want to prepare for, the mid-life
search for meaningful jobs. I write
for experienced managers who find themselves looking for employment. This is a book for men and women (there
are indeed, now in the 1990s, many women in this situation) who, voluntarily or
involuntarily, left positions of managerial responsibility and are trying to
reconnect with meaningful employment. I think I understand where they're hurting and why. This book is intended
to assist dislocated managers in getting themselves back on
track.
Reading over their
shoulders, I hope, will be those who want to help--spouses, friends, pastors,
counselors.
I write also for those
who have made it through the transition into new positions and now want to fold
that experience into an interpretative envelope to be filed away for further
reflection. It is an experience surely they will never forget, but may not yet
understand.
Also in view,
throughout the project that produced this book, were students preparing to step
onto the corporate ladder and young managers on their way up. Both should
realize that job loss is a possibility at any time and that career rebounds,
like fortune, have a way of favoring the well-prepared.
After more than 20
years in academic administration--a college deanship and two university
presidencies--I decided to spend a transitional year, before returning to the
classroom, by studying the phenomenon of executive separation. I used the survey instrument appended to
this book, but I realized from the outset that this would be a study, not a
survey that could produce statistical comparisons and data that explain the
universal experience of managers who move, in mid-career, voluntarily or
involuntarily, from one job to another.
This population cannot
be randomly sampled. There is no
"directory" or "registration list" from which every seventh name can be culled
and questions addressed. Those who
exited voluntarily fear being tarred with the same brush that touches those who
were fired. Typically, they
politely decline invitations to be interviewed. Some ousted executives are still hiding,
or just unwilling to talk, or still smarting from the pain of the lay-off.
It is not surprising that many, from
both the "pushed" and "jumped" categories, do not want to relive the experience
even in an analytical, "academic" context. Nor is it surprising that others are more than willing to talk.
They find the discussion therapeutic.
They welcome the opportunity to reflect on their experience, articulate the
guiding principles that worked for them in the reconnection process, and
communicate, through this writer for the benefit of others, bits of wisdom they
acquired along the way.
Fortunately, by virtue
of a networking process not unlike those used by successful job seekers, I found
a sufficient number of willing subjects to make this book
possible.
What I offer in these
pages is the result of experience, my own and that of two sets of persons--the
twenty or so I have helped personally over the years, and the 150 executives,
male (90 percent) and female (10 percent), middle managers on up to chief
executive officers, geographically and industrially diverse, who participated in
this study. Since the relevance of
religion in their lives is one of the themes I highlight, it should be noted
that religious identification of the participants is approximately (and I say
"approximately" because some were vague and imprecise in this regard) 40 percent
Protestant, 45 percent Catholic, eight percent Jewish, and the rest identified
with no organized religious denomination. Participation involved completion of
the questionnaire and, in many cases, a face-to-face or telephone
interview.
Participants in this
study are the world's leading experts on their individual, intensely personal
experiences. I have caught a lot of
that for inclusion in this book. I
managed to assemble a representative, but by no means perfect sample. That, however, did not deter me, nor
does it detract from the utility of my findings for the intended readers--those
immediately affected and those who could be affected by job loss, and persons
who want to help them.
My own experience as a
CEO, a board member in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors, and as a
priest-counselor, has influenced my approach and provided the vantage point from
which I examined this relatively uncharted area of personal and organizational
reality. A useful metaphor in
explaining the purpose this book is intended to serve is that of
a compass. A compass differs from a roadmap; the
needle on a compass provides direction, not detailed and precise information on
how to reach specific destinations.
Without overloading
this metaphor with excessive symbolism, it can be noted that portions of this
book correspond to major "points" on a personalized compass in the hand of a
job-seeker: the relationship to self, spouse, God, the corporation. And all 360 degrees on the face of the
compass suggest the countless points of networking contacts needed to find the
right job. And, pushing the
metaphor one final notch, if the compass can be imagined to have a glass cover
capable of reflecting an image, the reader can hold up Chapter Four, "The
Literary Mirror," as a looking glass to see him- or herself in literary
portrayals of persons dealing with discouragement--persons set adrift, not
necessarily by separation from a job, but by other forms of broken connection
that result in personal dislocations.
If the Surgeon General
were to preview this book, he or she would probably approve it as beneficial for
the mental health of any dislocated manager. But a warning might be attached not to
permit the early sections to depress you; the second half of this book will have
you on your feet and ready to roll.
Job-seekers can expect
to be spending more time than they would like alone. Not only do you spend more time with
yourself during the search for re-employment, you have to devote time, perhaps
for the first time, to self-assessment, self-renewal, cultivating (or combatting
the forces that tend to negate) self-respect and self-esteem. Chapter One reminds you that you have "A
Self to Serve," and that knowing that self--its strengths, weaknesses, talents,
and genuine occupational interests--is prerequisite to a successful job
campaign.
Repeatedly, persons I
interviewed stressed the importance of having an understanding spouse before,
during, and after severance. Those without a spouse acknowledged the value of
having a close friend for encouragement and support. A paradigm for understanding the way
this personal reinforcement can counter the stress of unemployment is offered in
Chapter Two, "Spousal Support."
"Dealing With
Discouragement" is the focus of Chapter Three. Discouragement cannot be avoided
but it can be managed during what often proves to be a painfully long search for
the next position. Personal
accounts of the way job-seekers dealt with their own discouragement are outlined
here for the consideration of others who have to map their own strategies for
managing discouragement.
Chapter Four holds up
"The Literary Mirror" so that you can see yourself in the character delineation
fine writers give to persons in situations like yours. It can be both clarifying and
encouraging to find what you are thinking, or see what you are feeling, in the
images and words crafted by good writers and embodied in the characters they
present in the pages of fiction and drama, or the intensity of meaning that good
poetry can convey. This chapter is
not a course in literature, just an excursion along literary lines to stimulate
the imagination and, perhaps, feed the soul of managerial men and women in
transition.
"Networking," the
subject of Chapter Five, is indispensable to anyone looking for light at the end
of the transition tunnel. Those who
have been through it before you will tell you to "Network, network,
network!" This chapter offers
ideas, gleaned from the experience of others, on weaving networks that function
as life-lines and safety-nets throughout the search, or, to try still another
metaphor, hiking trails that can take you to your next
job.
"The Relevance of
Religion" is the heading of Chapter Six. For many, religion is part of the reality and thus has a place in a book
focused not on religion, but on management concerns. For others the issue is not
"religion," which they perceive to be an irrelevant, institutionalized
stained-glass distraction far removed from the urgent business of finding work.
They prefer to talk about "spirituality"--a clarifying, integrating, reflective
experience involving self and a higher power. Some that I met during the course of
this study had neither religion nor spirituality to draw upon for assistance in
their search for employment. Most
in the sample, however, drew strength from their religious faith and regarded
themselves as open to help from organized religion, however that help might be
made available.
It was not my
expectation going into this study to find severance to be a "window" through
which an observer could see structural change and a culture shift within the
American corporation. What I found,
looking through that window, is contained in Chapter Seven, "The New Corporate
Contract." Company loyalty has
disappeared in some quarters and is waning in virtually all parts of corporate
America. The "womb-to-tomb," quasi
tenure-track security managers enjoyed in the giant corporations and financial
institutions of decades past is gone; smaller companies and nimble managers
represent the wave of the future. The old corporate "battleships" are yielding
to new, more maneuverable corporate "cruisers," with corresponding adjustments
in crew.
Managers and companies
are now quite literally coming to terms in an environment of new corporate
contracts that are explicitly
contingent, less "relational" and much more "transactional" in nature. Your relationship to the employing
organization is more like an over-the-counter transaction than an identification
that will last a working lifetime.
Chapter Eight outlines
"Principles"--the originating impulses of action, the directional guidelines
participants in this study used for their own benefit. They are articulated here
for the benefit of others. It is
important for job-seekers to clarify for themselves and adopt for their own
guidance principles capable of keeping themselves and their search "on track"
during the job campaign.
Chapter Nine sketches a
"Strategy" for the manager in transition. This is about as close as this book comes to the "how-to" genre.
Suggested strategies are based on the
advice participants in the study would want to pass along to others who find
themselves pulling an oar in the same boat that once held those whose
reflections on severance provided not just inspiration, but ideas for this
book. The books they read are noted
here--many of them practical manuals on how-to-find-a-job, some of them
reflective works that reinforced their spirits or changed their outlooks during
their job campaigns.
As I mentioned earlier,
this book is intended to function more as a compass than a roadmap. If it helps the reader get his or her
bearings in the pursuit of employment, my primary goal in writing will have been
met. If, in addition, this book
helps those who want to help the job-seeker, and assists those who have been
through it all themselves to understand better their own experience, so much the
better from my point of view. If,
finally, these pages encourage anyone to "be there" for another person in any
way at any time during the lonely experience of trying to reconnect with
meaningful employment, I will be happy to have had a hand in reducing the pain
of an almost always painful process.
Gerard R. Roche,
Chairman of the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, was described in
1994 by Business Week as "headhunting's high priest." Executive recruiters focus on persons
who are in place, at work, content, and successful, not the typical person you
will meet in the pages of this book. Headhunters try to interest managers in
moving to new, and usually better positions of higher-level executive
responsibility. Their clients are
organizations looking for executives, not executives looking for work. It interested me, therefore, to hear an
admiring competitor speak of Gerry Roche as "legendary," and immediately add:
"He built his business by making time for folks who are out of work."
It will please me
enormously if anyone who reads this book will, as a result, decide to make some
time for persons looking for work.