Almost every person wants better job security. But that’s a joke! Job security is practically non-existent in today’s market. You may work for an established Fortune 500 company with 20 years of superior performance. Then new management decides to sell your division and suddenly you are “redundant.” Or you may be a serial entrepreneur with a hot product (think video games , like Call of Duty or Black Ops 2). Your projects may be making beaucoup bucks for the company, but someone higher on the food chain may want to add features you think are stupid. You resist change. Your job may be eliminated quickly. Here are ways to cope with lack of job security.
Stop resisting change.
Fear plays a key role in resisting change. “That’s how we have always done this” is a cliché for possible layoff. Innovation is the mother of the bottom line, the all important bottom line.
Drop a bad attitude.
Are you resisting the change because you cannot see the system is broken? If Henry Ford and others had not moved forward with ideas, we’d still be using real horses, instead of horse power. If Zuckerberg hadn’t been feisty with a willingness to dare to be different, there would be no FaceBook. Complaining constantly about “too many changes” often leads to the revolving door at work.
SWOT your career.
Assessment tests abound, but some are expensive. Minimally you need a personal SWOT analysis to look at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Once you determine if any threats are real, you can plan for action to adjust.
Understand the new trends.
Every company has its “culture.” Do you read the trends? If you read the recent article by Alantria Harris, titled Major Shifts Coming in the Next Five Years, you know that new sourcing technology continues to provide the competitive edge. Balanced geographic sourcing, reverse engineering and emerging markets are all hot topics. Are you ready to implement the changes?
Improve the bottom line.
Instead of insidious, internal turmoil, develop a business case for saving money or time for your company. Move forward with suggestions while attending to the politics and the people.
Learn from retched experiences.
I’m convinced we learn more from bad experiences than good. For example, the control freak boss after graduation checked all your work and provided limited exposure. Now that you are mentoring many others, you realize that rigid review helped you grow in many ways.
Establish long term goals.
The trends require immediate attention but you often see craziness in the decisions. Your survival depends on not just the short term, but looking realistically at where you want to be long term. Yelling and screaming about the stupidity of another change, is like playing a short video game. It provides a quick outlet, but little positive energy toward your future goals unless you gradually work towards becoming an expert. In a recent article in the New York Times, Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology at New York University states that:
“The way to be happy in life is to set a series of achievable goals,” Professor Marcus said. “That’s why video games are so attractive to human beings — because they’re structured to offer incrementally more difficult goals.”
The bottom line is to study the trends, avoid resistance to change and create new accomplishments in your career. Security is elusive but survival is possible with a positive attitude and wise innovation. It’s like playing a video game.
Ruth Glover is our Career Engineer. She owns Career Consultations, a company which has evolved with market trends, fear and attention to the bottom line, although she rarely plays video games.