CHAPTER  |  TWELVE

Fear of Job Loss Is Incompatible with Good Management

According to Peter Drucker, outstanding performance is inconsistent with fear of failure in anything. He stressed this point in both his writings and his classes. Although his lectures were on management's need to take risks in decision making, they soon evolved into discussions on job performance and job security. In fact, Drucker's belief about this incompatibility between outstanding performance and fear of job loss would generate a firestorm of comments from his students. They went something like this:

• “You cannot ignore how your boss will react to your actions, even if ethically and technically they are correct.”
• “Ignoring fear of job loss may be okay in theory, but it's a jungle out there. Disregarding the possibility you could be fired can lead to losing your job.”
• “Fear of losing my job isn't the last thing I think of—it is the first thing.”

Peter listened to these comments, but stuck to his earlier statement. “If you have this fear, you will improve your performance by learning to ignore it. Moreover, ethically it is what every manager must do.”

What Happened When I Lost My Job

A few months after that class, I lost my job. I then knew exactly what my classmates meant when they thought fear of losing one's employment was not to be dismissed lightly. I had conducted a successful, if somewhat unorthodox, job campaign some years earlier, when I had returned after several years abroad and had landed back home smack in the middle of a recession. At that same time, I had the added pressure of having to support a wife and two young children. It took seven weeks, but I got the job I wanted.

Buoyed by this prior success, I initiated a similar job search, incorporating some additional insights I had gained from Drucker. Once comfortably employed again, I reflected on what had happened. Even before I completed my doctoral studies with Drucker, I began writing on how to conduct an executive job search. You might find some of these ideas useful.

Before You Lose Your Job, Prepare

You can minimize the fear of job loss and negate any effect it might have on your job performance if you are prepared for the possibility. Drucker was always an optimist; however, he was also a realist, and he prepared for contingencies. (Maybe that's why he was optimistic.) For him, the old concept of “expecting the best but being ready for the worst” applied. That didn't mean fearing the worst, but it did mean preparing for it.

Of course, while you're still on the job, you should work hard and take the right actions. That's expected of a good manager. However, no matter how solid your company or how well your boss thinks of you, you need to prepare for the potential loss of your job. How well I recall a friend telling me that his boss called his team together and said they would be untouched by the layoffs occurring throughout the company. A week later they were all let go, including his boss!

Maintain a Current Résumé

One of the best ways to prepare is to keep an updated résumé on your computer, organized around your specific work accomplishments. Note that I said “accomplishments,” and not just experience. It is terrific that you had experience as a manager supervising over 100 subordinates, but what did you actually accomplish while in that position? Simply supervising people or having a certain title is insufficient. Did you increase the productivity of your organization by 25 percent? Did you or your organization win an award? Did you implement new methods that saved a significant sum of money?

You should keep a record of your accomplishments for every job you hold. And for those jobs you have held in the past, go back and include every past accomplishment as well. Quantify your accomplishments whenever possible, because quantified accomplishments are much more credible to a potential new employer. Be as specific and complete as you can be. And never mind whether the accomplishment involved a project lasting several years or only several hours. Something that you did and the experience you gained in doing it, even over a short period, are far more important than something on which you spent years. In fact, even a student looking for a first-time job has probably completed classroom projects or extracurricular activities that have direct applicability.

Start a Job Search

What if you are already out of a job and are reading these words? Then rework your résumé based on your accomplishments, not your experience. Your experience is the outline, or the bare bones, of your potential—the potential to do future great things in a new environment. However, your accomplishments are the meat on those bones and they make all the difference in your ability to land a great job in the shortest time possible.

Having an up-to-date résumé is the most important part of launching your job search when you are out of work. However, the following four steps are also essential to getting any job search off on the right foot.

Step 1: Ask Yourself What Business You Are In

Drucker recommended that all managers begin running their businesses or organizations with that question in mind. That's pretty basic, but the implications are pretty profound and pretty important for job finding, as well. Unless you decide that your former position was totally out of your profession, don't go after any and every job that happens to be open. Of course, if an opportunity comes along you can consider the offer on its own merits. However, you can't be everything to everybody, and trying to do so will only interfere with your getting the best job that you can.

A potential future boss usually doesn't want “a jack of all trades.” He or she wants the very best, an “ace” in one trade, for one specific job. Concentrating on what you have accomplished that supports your likely future performance in a specific position should be the basis of any successful job-search strategy. As a practicing manager, and once as an executive recruiter, I've seen less qualified individuals preferred by prospective employers and get jobs where others, some who were much more experienced, were overlooked. Why? Because these other job candidates didn't decide what business they were in, and they didn't present their backgrounds as the single best candidate for that single position. They tried to cover all the bases and show that they had done a little something of everything. Candidates who may not have done as much, but who focused on a single target, often got the offer over those who did not.

Step 2: Cultivate Positive Thinking and Self-Confidence

Good jobs are scarce, but so are good candidates to fill them. That's why the executive recruiting field has blossomed in the last fifty years. You must believe that you are one of the top candidates out there looking for a job. You have to convince yourself that you have a lot to offer a potential employer. You can always look at the positive. During the Great Depression, the unemployment rate eventually hit a whopping 25 percent. That's pretty bad. However, if 25 percent of potential employees were out of work, that meant that 75 percent were working and had jobs. So positive thinking is always possible.

Positive thinking and self-confidence go together, and Drucker practiced both. Unfortunately, it is difficult to have either when you lose your job. If you have completed Step 1, then reread your résumé. This will boost both your positive thinking and your self-confidence, for unless you were a complete washout in your former jobs, you have some notable achievements that are of great value and will be impressive to your future employer. They will be impressive to you, too, as you read them over.

The current résumé on your computer is so important that you should read it regularly, update it, and add accomplishments as you remember them and as you conduct your job search. In this way, you will not only maintain your positive thinking and self-confidence, you also will know yourself better and appreciate what you have done in the past and can do in the future.

Step 3: Develop a Plan

You need to have a plan. You can't get “there” until you know where “there” is. Your planning starts with something you've already done—determining what business you are in, developing precise objectives, and creating a good description of the job you want, including the compensation, level of management, and geographical area. Of course, this process does not substitute facts for judgment, or as Drucker put it, “substitute science for the manager.” However, systematic planning will strengthen your judgment, leadership, and vision and help you to focus on what you want and what you do not want.

Step 4: Work Your Plan

Your plan can be modified during your job-search campaign, but the important thing is to start. Your plan by itself won't get you anywhere. Drucker always insisted on action. He said that no plan was worth anything until it “degenerated” into work. In other words, Drucker didn't want you just to have a nicely developed plan. The plan had to be executed to have any impact at all.

Now that you know how to avoid fear from job loss, it's easy. Get started right away and develop your plan. Do everything but the implementation. Review and update your plan periodically. Do this, and sometime in the future when you may need to, you will rapidly find what you are seeking. Moreover, you won't fear loss of a job today, either.