Read this when budget cuts are coming.
Not when it’s mere speculation. Or just noise from the rumour mill…
Read this when budget cuts are really about to happen. When they are already being scheduled by both big and small firms. When CEOs hint at it in their financial statements. When you know it’s going to happen.
Read this, when you feel the budget cuts in your gut…
Maybe you got a sense of it in conversations with your coworkers during a break. Maybe you felt this awkward unease, as if everyone was secretly thinking “is it them or is it me that’s more likely to get canned?”.
Or maybe you were talking with with your boss, and after a random statement about some future project, suddenly, and awkwardly, your boss turned deadpan silent and quickly changed the subject.
Or maybe you’ve seen the writing in the wall; for instance, you have access to budgets for the year, and you know – not everyone is going to make it…
One way or another, if you “know” that layoffs are coming – and you’re not the one doing the layoffs – This might be a good reminder to get your act together.
As a side note: At the time I write this article, layoffs might indeed be coming!
The global economy is in a disastrous post pandemic recession that is being propped up by nothing but greater debt and kicking the can down the road. It’s so bad that many countries across the globe are experiencing unprecedented inflation. Investor confidence is hitting all time lows.
Even the US credit rating is getting downgraded (that’s actually a big deal).
Plus, there is also the war… (yeah, that’s probably a bigger deal)
So…
Let’s get you prepared…
I remember a profound statement one multi-millionaire corporate executive once told me:
He said: “We all have certain self-sabotage behaviours”.
And that reminded me of a conversation with another leader, one of the directors I worked with back in the day, during the 2008 crisis when we were planning for budget cuts.
This director said: “Even if I told my entire team that budget cuts were coming and that they had to watch out, it wouldn’t matter. The weak ones, despite all their efforts to save their jobs, would still find a way to get themselves laid off. They would do something egregious, like fall asleep on their desk or miss an important deadline.”
Both men were right! People certainly do have self-sabotage behaviours. And weaklings on his team made it easy to lay them off, despite their best efforts – including one that actually fell asleep on his desk!
Remember this: It’s not enough to warn people or tell them to watch out. It’s not even enough to instruct people on how to behave – because, unless they understand why things work they way they work – their actions will not make a difference.
So… In order to give you some insight into why things work the way they work… Here are some of the top behaviors that lead people to an unexpected job loss:
1) Not Taking Credit: I have a saying about being successful in your career – “stay in the light” (If you think about the disco song, it will stick in your brain).
When it comes to the chopping block, many times, managers end up sawing off bones and muscle, even when they only intend to trim the fat. Managers think – or hope – they are eliminating overhead or employees they can do without. But because “credit attribution” does not accurately match “value production”, they quite often end up getting rid of critical employees.
In other words, it’s not enough that you ARE critical. You also need to be THOUGHT OF as critical.
This requires taking credit, as publicly as possible, for everything that you do. Of course, there is a tactful way of doing it, and a crude way of doing it that makes people secretly hate you. (See our publications for details)
2) Not Becoming a Generalist: The modern day corporation is a machine that is designed to extract maximum value from people at minimal cost. And to do this most effectively, we leverage the concept of “specialisation” from economics.
In other words, the job of your corporation – as well as that of managers and HR who determine the corporate structure – is to make every employee as replaceable as possible. And that can only be done when your work is clearly defined, quantified, and specialised.
A specialised workforce can be contracted and expanded based on the resource demands of the market without jeopardising a company’s operations. And the more specialised you are, the easier it is to let go of you during bad times, and find a replacement for you when the good times come again.
Yes, you may need to be (or pretend to be) a specialist when you first enter a company, but after that, as rapidly as possible, you want to become as much of a generalist that people depend on as possible.
3) Not Being “In On It”: Let’s get one thing straight… In every layoff I have been involved with, and in every layoff I have heard about, there are those in the know that make the decision, and those that get impacted by that decision.
This is always the case in the corporate world… You’re either the cause, or you are the effect.
In other words, if you are already in on the financial planning of your company and you know how layoffs are going to look, chances are you’ll be fine. But if you are not one of the “insiders” that makes the decision, you are at risk.
What do you do? Well… It’s simple, but it’s not easy.
The solution is that you must get “in on it”. And we talk about how you can do that, even if you are not currently a manager or an executive, in our Career Hacks Newsletter.
4) Not Paying Attention: The most successful people I know are the most attentive people. They pay attention to the details. Nothing escapes them. They are fully present at work, in their office, or even when they are attending stunningly boring meetings…
Yes, even in the most obscene circumstances they pay attention.
Unlike these top performers, if you spend your workday on autopilot, you are going to continue to struggle. You will not only miss opportunities, but you will also be easy to forget, easy to exclude and easy to let go.
Once you start going through your workday mindfully, paying attention to everyone as if it’s your first time interacting with them, they reciprocate. Opportunities, promotions, and people seeking you – not just for your work, but also for your guidance – become a daily occurrence.
5) Not Being On The Job Market: The one thing you’ll hear over and over and over again from our most successful members – especially those students who have transformed their careers in what seems like overnight success – is to “be always looking”.
You can think about getting that corner office or 4x-ing your salary all day long. It’s not going to happen, unless you do something about it…
No one is going to magically raise your pay-grade and help you jump class. And they especially won’t do it, when you come from a position of need.
In fact, the more urgently you need a job or a promotion, the more likely you will become underemployed and exploited.
You need to always be looking for new opportunities to gain a degree of control in the modern world. And no… That doesn’t have to mean sending in job applications every day. Or even every week. And also no… You don’t have to tell your employer that you are always looking.
There are more ways to look for new opportunities than you can imagine, and they work best when you reject the game HR is forcing you into. And the best time to start is now, before any layoffs come.