St.Louis Business Journal
HOW TO BE THE BOSS OF YOUR WORKLIFE

By Anna Navarro

November 1999  

Author's note: Client stories in this column are based on actual situations fictionalized to protect privacy and told with permission.

People often ask me why there continue to be so many downsizings when the economy is doing so well.

The answer disturbs many people: The economy is doing well in part because of the continuous downsizings, and the downsizings are here to stay, whether the economy goes up or down.

The ability to reduce the workforce when needed, to use contract labor and to outsource jobs that were formerly done internally have increased labor efficiency. These strategies have been good for organizations and good for the economy as a whole.

But they have been hard for individuals.

Under the new conditions, employees need to look to themselves, not to employers, to obtain paycheck continuity, work satisfaction and opportunities for growth and development.

But many employees still have difficulty accepting the new situation. They get angry and feel personally hurt when employers don’t deliver on their expectations. And that anger and hurt keeps them from taking care of themselves.

What today’s economy calls for is being willing to be the boss of your worklife, even if you work for somebody else.

That translates into doing four things:

1. Monitoring your level of satisfaction with your work situation to determine whether what you are getting and what you are giving is a fair exchange.

2. If not, figuring out where else you might want to head. Sometimes that means exploring possibilities in the same field with other employers. Sometimes that means doing the hard work of establishing a new career direction.

3. Knowing how to sell yourself to employers and/or customers. And if you don’t do these things easily and well, learning how.

4. Having a savings cushion to absorb the financial shock of changes. Money buys the time to make considered changes without having to take the first alternative that comes along.

If that sounds like hard work, you are right. Being the boss of you work life takes effort, foresight, discipline and the willingness to take risks. But that’s what being a good boss requires under any circumstances. It’s the price of having control.

If you can do these four things, you will be able to determine your own destiny. If you become dissatisfied with your current situation you can walk away. And if you get downsized, it may be bumpy, but it won’t be a crisis.

These new “rules of the road” for employees apply across the economy. They affect business, healthcare, education, the law and non-profit organizations alike.

One of my clients, a doctor, is employed by a large physician group which is owned by a hospital. She is a specialist, and her patient load is shrinking, in part because of managed care, and in part because the generalists are doing more of the patient work themselves rather than referring to specialists.

She can see that in a year, or two at most, her job is likely to end. And she isn’t sure she wants to stay in the field. The prognosis doesn’t look much better with other employers and starting a solo practice isn’t feasible because insurers prefer to contract with large groups of doctors.

She has started saving her money and investing it wisely, so she will have a safety net when change becomes necessary.

She has also started working to decide what she wants to do next. She is open to leaving medicine, despite her years of training, if she can find an area that suits her better.

To date, she has established the characteristics she wants in an ideal career. She’s in the process of brainstorming and exploring career options both within and outside medicine.

She has a way to go yet to set a new career direction. But she has time and a financial cushion to follow it through.

She reports that some of her colleagues, in similar straits, devote a lot of their time and energy to complaining about the situation. She invests her time, energy and money in finding alternatives.

She’s in a difficult position. Both her job and her chosen career are in jeopardy. Yet she remains the boss of her worklife. She isn’t depending on her employer to provide long term job security, satisfaction or development opportunities. She will get all three because she is relying on herself to provide them.

Most of us need to be prepared to take charge of our destiny in this way not once, but several times in a lifetime as the “new” economy becomes a permanent feature of the American landscape.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.