Jason Monastra

My life and thoughts out on the web

Now I sit me down in school

Where praying is against the rule

For this great nation under God

Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,

It violates the Bill of Rights.

And anytime my head I bow

Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,

That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.

The law is specific, the law is precise.

Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall

Might offend someone with no faith at all

In silence alone we must meditate,

God’s name is prohibited by the state.

We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,

And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks..

They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.

To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,

And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.

It’s ‘inappropriate’ to teach right from wrong,

We’re taught that such ‘judgments’ do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,

Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.

But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,

No word of God must reach this crowd..

It’s scary here I must confess,

When chaos reigns the school’s a mess.

So, Lord, this silent plea I make:

Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

As the economic condition continues in its turbulent rant and rave cycle, the consistent flow of layoffs seem to effect and detract from every sector without relief.  In this, I try to look for the benefits that are offered to those employees in their transition.  How do employees view their employers and how did the layoff go in terms of process and respect.

Well, to no ones surprise, least of all mine - they do not do a good job.  A recent poll suggested the following figures which are a testament of poor process and even poorer strategic planning.

• 88% of the people polled said that they would rate the process with their layoff poor or very poor
• 72% of the people polled rated the severance packages poor or very poor
• 94% of the people polled rated the outplacement services poor or very poor

Now the review went on to speak about several other factors around remaining employees morale and other factors but these three I think list a hard line truth of the short sighted view that many employers are taking in today’s market.  One of immediate cost cutting with no regard for future business and employee need.

One thing is for sure, and most people are not speaking about it - the employee pipeline in the US is getting smaller not larger and companies need to position and act accordingly.  Public companies are thinking of this weeks numbers vs. strategic planning and work force development and talent management.  Instead of laying people off since the numbers are not there, look at the projected years business and the following year, where the market is headed and better yet what your multi-billion dollar company will look like 5 yrs from now.  Executives need to head the word of the people and know that with constant layoffs come a smaller and smaller labor force to hire from when things start getting better.

Now no one is saying that layoffs never need to happen and if they do manage them well.  What we are seeing above is that the process is handled badly.  I personally only want to discuss the first bullet point of the above listed three.  The other two are very subjective since the amount of money paid in severance and outplacement will never meet the expectations of the laid off workforce no matter what is done.  But the first one is the process and I hear consistently of the horror stories of some of the poorest run programs anywhere.  A few things I notice that are consistent through the layoffs and make for a poor process are as follows:

1. Poor communication or a total lack of in most cases
2. No consistency
3. Poor management left in place

Well the major themes above are not only common but executed with no accountability nor regard for the longer term impact.  I would be interested in knowing how layoffs would be executed if the people managing the process would keep their role or lose their job based upon the exit survey of the group being ousted.  I know one thing for sure, people would be more like people and a great deal nicer dealing with the issues of the work force.

• Poor communication is the leading cause for many issues.  However it appears that there is a larger issue here that no one is pointing to.  The reason for the lack of communication comes from the executive leadership wanting to hold things close to the vest, not lose productivity during the transition, and maintain control during the process.  Hmmmmm….sorry folks does not work that way.
• Consistency.  There appears in most cases to be little reason for certian people being laid off and others kept.  People with similiar roles are left not knowing why their co worker was dismissed and the desk next to them empty.  In conjuction with no communication, they are paralyzed with the uncertain future of their role and when they might fall under the axe.
• Poor management left in place.  All the time!!  It happens everywhere I turn that the management left in most cases is the least expensive to the payroll and therefore the most in experienced or the poorest.  Not the people you need during one of the more crucial times of your company’s history.  Again, cost is the ruling factor here not thinking of the loss of talent, knowledge and increased inefficiency that will permeate through the environment for the coming years reducing your competitive advantage.

Where does this leave us?  Who knows?  Honestly the people that are in the trenches, see the people for who they are, and understand the masses either are let go or forced under fear to conform to the strategies of the people that do not know any better or choose short sighted cost cutting as the only solution.  Whether you are one or the other, or even part of the laid off work force - feel empowered or become empowered.  Things will change, the employee will once again rise to the occasion and things will get better.  It never happens as fast we like, but it will happen as history teaches.  My hope is that all of the good people are not burned by then and don’t feel like working for the corporate empires that have brought such low morale standard upon how we treat people.

National Geographic has to be one of those mags that simply amazes the young and old.  Pictures of creation, landscape, animals, and all life that inspire one to truly look at themselves and wonder who they are and what they are doing.  Being a passionate person, certain things bring about a distinct emotion within me making for a great writing.

Turtles…not something I was overly fond of when growing up.  Actually I think my mom scared me off from them circling back to bacteria and such.  In any case, as days pass and maturity keeps gaining momentum - I look at things like turtles and wonder.  Pretty amazing.  When you think about it, something that most of us should consider when working.  More of us should be turtles.

A turtle has a very solid slate of great working characteristics.  Take a look:

1. Hard outer shell.  Protects the animal from the outside world and shields it from things that would otherwise harm it (predators and the like).
2. Neck.  One of the more interesting parts of the creature…a neck that can expand and retract as an element of confidence or fear.
3. 4 legs, a formidable moving system allowing for the creature to move effectively - not too fast, not too slow - but just in time.

So lets think about this, is being a turtle so bad?  I do not think so.  Use it for us and take a look at the benefits.

1. Hard outer shell.  Well most of us need this to survive in the business world.   Unfortunately few people actually have it, although more people will claim it than should.  The ability to seperate the business from personal, offer a formidable barrier between your heart and the business at hand.  If more of us had this, business would be cleaner and less fads like change management and other people factors would need to be addressed.
2. Neck.  I love this one.  A neck is a great asset and suppose we used it like the turtle.  First, take a look and understand what you are suppossed to be doing.  Extend it out and get a better view if you need to.  However when things start flying around, and you need to get down to business and avoid the business climate - retract it and stay in your own world.  Keep it out there too long, you might get it cut off.
3. Legs.  Movement.  Time and speed is what we hear about all the time.   But speed is becoming less hype, and people are more focused on results and the steadiness of getting things done correctly the first time.  Maybe slowing down like the turtle might not be so bad if you are suffering for your speed approach.

I think the turtle has it right.  He goes at his own pace, remains available and knowledge to the outside world, and keeps a hard exterior to protect against his enemies.  Come to think of it, don’t think that the turtle ever cries either.  Hmmmm…maybe there is more to the turtle than we thought.

Ahhhh, the break time.  Well I have been on hiatus or whatever they call simply doing everything but writing.  Barely been reading any of the normal blogs I do, simply working and expanding of the footprint of the business.  Which I might add is doing very very well.  Consulting has been screaming along and our intention is to leverage that for the establishment of a more formal business development effort with centralized location penetration requirements of our employees.

In any case, glad to be back and sorry been away so long.  Look forward to reading and writing a good deal more about this business we work in.

The job search and better yet the career path that one takes has a genuine undertone that I think inevitably shapes the thoughts and minds of the seeker.  That is the person’s passion.  Passion is under-used criteria in the search process as most people think that passion is lost when they need to “grow up” and move out into the world.    I researched passion and this is what I found “Passion can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea, person, or object. A person is said to have a passion for something when they have a strong positive affinity for it. A love for something and a passion for something are very similar feelings.”  Does this sound like something we need more or less in the work place?

To me I would say more.  I have recruited, placed and built departments in the IT world for 10 yrs plus now (I am getting older….LOL).  The thing that makes a person or a place great is the passion the team or professional brings to the job and the environment.  So many of us do not have passion for our daily duties.  A real love of what we do, how we do it, how we can make it better.  I read once that a person with a job has too much time, and a person with a career never has enough.  I believe that this makes a strong alignment to the passion one feels and the career that spurns from that love.  Jobs are boring, careers tend to be better, but what about a passion that happens to be what you do for work?  That has power, creativity, efficiency, and hard work written all over it.  It is the key to making your job what no one else haves….a part of your daily life that you love doing and happen to get paid for.

How do we capture this in our search for a new role, or even create it in a role we currently have and enjoy?  I think that bringing passion to the search is far easier than creating it from scratch.  So we will begin there.  I know that people have heard in all sorts of forums the need for a professional job seeker to look for what they love and apply that to the search.  But that does not really address the idea of passion.  People love to do a great deal of things, most of which cannot sustain a living.  So what about a passion?  Well…pick it and I think we can come to a handful of positions in which that passion can be leveraged to create a career.  Passion is the key in what needs to be defined.

So lets do it….what is your passion?

Ask yourself:

• What do you wake up thinking about?
• What brings you more fulfillment than anything else?
• What spurs a restlessness in your heart when you discuss it?
• What can someone say, or bring up, that immediately floods you with passion to talk about, act on, or defend?

These are all defining comments on passion.  If these are answered truthfully, passion is easy to define.  Once defined, you need to incorporate that into a what positions use or leverage that passion to succeed in their business or objective.  Those are the positions and companies you need to align yourself with knowing that you are progressing the cause in which you have a great deal of passion.

Over time it has become apparent in reading and listening to people within organizations that a sense or lack of manager care is constant in the work place.  Management, both executive and supervisory, are pressed with the bottom line offering little consciousness of the impact.  Expecting more and demanding more, employees become less and less engaged.  They work endless hours to serve “the man” just in the hopes that they will keep their job in the sliding economy.  The downward pressure continues to build until the release factor - quitting or getting fired - becomes a reality. 

I know in a great amount of the time this is true.  Economics on a worldwide stage are brutal, offering little to make one feel comfortable about the future prospects.  But is management to blame?  Better put, are managers the only ones to blame?  Until recently, I would have easily laid the pressure on their shoulders without thinking twice.  Mocking them as much as others would be a natural and easy step until most recently.  I read the story of a certain professional whose story becomes not so uncommon.  And in this, we can all see that management is not alone.

Derrick is an employee currently working in a customer focused environment.  He works for a large services company operating in their 2nd level support function bringing customer solutions to people that have purchased products from his employer.  Recently, it has been rumored to increase the bottom line and continue growth - the US based call centers will be closing and transferring responsibilities to off-shore call centers in India and Brazil.  This has worried a great deal of people including Derrick.

Derrick’s company has been very good about communicating the strategy and not all positions will be moving overseas.  The lower level roles will be moving, but all critical care, management, and project management roles will be staying here in the US.  Those positions will be filled with professionals in the company already and external people if the talent pool is not present.  Derrick, a 5 yr employee, is quite interested in remaining employed and inquires from his manager how he can be involved with one of the company’s remaining positions.  His manager offers him a clean strategy of to collect professional reviews, references, and annual evaluations to show that he can handle the new positions increased responsibility.  He also was told to break down his current role, inquire from business intelligence on how he stands statistically and bring all of that to the table.

Despite the advice and direction offered by his manager - Derrick decides to “show” his manager what type of person he is.  He continues doing the work he is doing, but working extended hours and filling roles where other people are falling short or have quit.  He feels that in this manner management will see his efforts and place him into one of the newly created roles.  Logically, as Derrick sees it, the actions he is taking make him appear like “management material” and the company will see with sweat and tears that he is a needed part of the team.

Fast forward to the end, Derrick lost his job - not to India but to another professional that came in from outside the company.  When he questioned the decision citing his more than 5 yrs of service, management told him that the information available for decisions and moving people into this role did not offer them a clear view that he had done, nor would be capable of the increased responsibility.  Therefore they went in a different direction. 

WOW.  Derrick was floored but to whose fault. He leaves there thinking little of the company and that he never stood a chance in getting the role.  But did he do what he could to get the new position.  Was he truly listening to the powers at be to place himself in the best seat to take advantage of the changes.  In this scenario, he had all of the information he needed to make the jump.  He simply did not execute.  However, when the picture is less clear, are we helping ourselves or doing more of the same in hopes people see us different?

Now this is funny.  Take a look at this article on the anti addiction drug that has been all over the media recently.  Anti Addiction drugs seem to be developing into a new national trend in the hope of propping up another industry that has been experiencing difficulty - BIG Pharma.  Can someone send a bulk case to AIG and some of the other financial people on the street…..I think they might need this.

I read a recent article about the art of confidence and how one is to garner it.  Take a look at the post on The Career Encouragementblog.  I noticed as I was reading the post that places together a quick list of ways to gain self confidence that something was missing.  The list of ways to gain self confidence did not cover what I think is the number 1 reason and method for building your internal power when heading to an interview.  Preparation.

Preparation is the number one way people feel confident in their approach to a meeting, an interview, pretty much anything.  You can walk fast, speak loud and dress for the black tie event.  If you are not prepared mentally with a knowledge of the subject matter, of the audience, of the purpose of your meeting - you are doomed for failure.  The people that are prepared are not only the most confident, they typically do not have to lather on some of the surface mannerisms that try to masquerade as confidence allowing people to quickly realize their expertise thus immediately taking them in as a trusted resource.

The great thing about preparation.  It is the easiest and cheapest method as well.  With the web, the limitless resources available for one to read and become aware of a subject make for a sea of opportunity when prepping for that big meeting.  So instead of running out to purchase that 1000 suit, running to the gym one more time, or sitting in the front row yelling your head off  - do the simplest thing.  Sit tight, take time off and spend it in front of the research instrument most all of us have available.  You will find it is time well spent.

Take a look at LambentPath and learn more about the keys that people are using in making their job search more effective.

Written by Jason Monastra