There's an opportunity or maybe even plenty of them in this mandate to "explore opportunities elsewhere."
The trick, just like the pony Ronald Reagan always assumed was concealed in the manure, is to believe there is something there and to struggle till we find it. That might be what I, who has been booted out of my share of full-time jobs and consulting assignments, can recommend to the associates axed at Squire Sanders as well as at Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels and Mayer Brown this week.
The reality is brutal and that's why we'll do lots of things to avoid it: If we got the ax when others didn't, that's could be red flag that being in that space wasn't good for our employer - and, more importantly, for us. Instead of peering into that "horror" or "heart of darkness," we frequently become determined to "do it right" the next time.
That means we tend to force-fit ourselves into another bad situation or at least one in which we ain't going to thrive. When I got the boot in the first round of layoffs at Kraft in 1987, I realized I should look at that. What I came up with was that I was not a corporate player. Obviously I couldn't hold on in an organization. I decided to open my own shop. Good. I did well very well in consulting
But the "exploring other opportunities" was not far enough, at least not for me. I couldn't travel all the way into my private hell - and probably the hell I might have been causing organizations - to question the nature of the work I was doing. It was executive communications and for years in full time gigs and in consulting it paid a king's ransom. I had a Victorian mansion on the Gold Coast of Connecticut and a beach house on the Jersey Shore. Not too shabby for a working-class kid from Jersey City.
When I went the distance I accepted that I needed more professionally than doing executive communications. It could be something I used to earn money - and satisfaction - part of the time, not 80 hours or more a week. I wanted, I needed more. It took until 2003 to put my heart, soul and bills to be paid around that. Here's that story, just-in-time for all the other confused creatures who should feel lost, at least temporarily. It's free and over 750,000 have downloaded this e-book Download Geezerguts.
The pony was there. Had I been willing to shovel enough personal and professional manure, I would have found it in 1987. You, of course, can start in on that now. What keeps us from digging? That's so old: Fear, of not getting what we want or think we should want or losing what we have or think we should have. The great news for this fresh batch of forced out is that the world of work is upside down now. Changing ourselves and changing our professional situations are the emerging zeitgeist vs. the road we were discouraged from taking.
The happy and lucrative ending to my story: Professionally, I've never done better. Personally, my three cats and I, which I accept is about as best I can do in putting together relationships, enjoy a deepening sense of connection.
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