“Congratulate (Insert Someone’s Name), and more happening with your network”
Now, I love these emails from LinkedIn, as they provide me with an easy way to see what’s going on with the folks in my network. Though I am less interested in “Work Anniversaries,” it is useful to see when folks have changed jobs, and often the nature of the change (from what to what) tells the tale of what happened.
For example, I recently noticed one of my connections — who had a great job for a long time — switched to an obscure, part-time position completely out of the healthcare IT industry. This tells me the change was likely abrupt and involuntary. Then I remembered that this was not the first person to have left that particular organization since a high profile change in management took place. And the pattern starts to tell the tale — some old-fashioned housecleaning.
Now, my intention is not to weigh in on the merit of the housecleaning — whether each or both individuals, shall we say, deserved to go — but the point is I don’t think they had any intention of going on their own. I also believe that, before the new chief took the helm, both thought they’d be there for life. But, alas, it was not to be.
And this is far from the only instance of traumatic job change that I’ve seen in the last month. Among others:
- A consultant realized he’d been sold a bill of goods by his new outfit and resigned
- A longtime HIT publishing salesperson was let go after decades of service
- A large consultancy that enjoyed a cult-like employee following was acquired, almost assuredly changing the culture that had engendered such loyalty
- A longtime CIO (15 years with the same organization) was let go after her hospital was acquired by a large health system
What is the theme here? It is that nothing is constant, nothing is secure and nothing is permanent. If the folks noted above harbored any misconceptions about this, they were summarily disabused.
But for you, today, my mission is to disabuse you before you find out the hard way.
“Ok, Anthony – thanks a lot, you just ruined my day! What’s the point of telling me things I can’t do anything about?”
The answer, of course, is that you certainly can do something about it, or at least you can get into the proper mindset one should have when dealing with the fluid nature of employment reality. You can operationalize it by being loyal, not to any one organization — lest one of the above fates befalls you — but to opportunity alone. When you accept the fact that, though you may love your company today, it is under no obligation to requite that love tomorrow, you act accordingly. You look at opportunities which come your way not askance, but straight in the eye, and you do not flippantly forgo them due to some silly and antiquated sense of loyalty.
When you got married (if such as been the case), you and your betrothed exchanged vows — the promises went both ways. But we are continually seeing that when you married your company, it had its fingers crossed. No matter how many anniversaries you’ve passed, you might just be the starter spouse.
But don’t get down about this. Take heart, accept reality and know that you are in control. Take that control, get off autopilot and be an active participant in your life and your career, not a spectator. Because the last thing you want — just like the mouse who found his cheese had rudely been moved — is to put in 20 years of hard labor, letting opportunity after opportunity pass you by, only to be unceremoniously put out to pasture.
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