photo credit: ste3ve

Have you seen the movie War Games? Back in the day of 2400 baud modems, our slacker hero tries to hack into the company putting out the hottest new game on the planet (hacking has been going on a long, long time).

Instead of getting into the game company, our innocent hacker, instead, gets into the WHOPPER — the game computer used by the Defense Department to simulate what happens in Global Thermonuclear War. Choosing from a menu, our hero starts off the big one.

To the computer — who learns strategy from playing games — it’s just another game when, in fact, it’s a real event. One that has planetary implications — the missile launch codes are controlled by the computer and unless the computer learns futility at the very end, every nuclear missile in the United States will fly away to attack the enemy.

Our hero, of course, saves the day by getting the computer to play tic-tac-toe. Put your X in the center square and no one ever wins the game. The computer learns this, then goes on an astonishingly bright techno display of all of the thousands of possible nuclear war scenarios — all resulting in all missiles launching by everyone — and ends with this:

“An interesting game. The only way to win is not to play.”

It’s a saying that’s resonated with me a long time. How do you deal with passive-aggressive people? The only way to win is not to play. In the long run, how do you win at gambling? The only way to win is not to play.

After a while, anything that continuously brings out futility has the answer of “the only way to win is not to play.”

All very nice, but this is a site about finding jobs, landing jobs, and doing well in your career. You might wonder what this has to do with the world of work. Well, quite a bit. And it starts with the myths we have about work. Those myths that — surprisingly to me — continue to exist wholesale out there in the work world that will lead you to futility over and over and over again.

I’m indispensable and won’t get laid off

This myth really is a smack in the mouth when it doesn’t pan out. If you believe this, you won’t look for signs in the company that a layoff is imminent. You won’t look for a different job to prevent financial hardship. Worse, you won’t even prepare to find a different job, putting you a good month behind everyone else who at least did that much.

That myth is reinforced by career pundits constantly writing about “how to make yourself indispensable” so you won’t get laid off. Well, that’s all pure bullshit. If General Electric or any other company’s management decides to shut down the office you work in, you’re gone. Simple as that. No amount of indispensable will save you.

But the myth of indispensability lives on.

The company will care for my career

“People see the work I do. They know how good it is. I’ll be rewarded in pay and promotions because the company wants to keep good people.” You’d think Corporations were People, or something, and will care for you.

Sure, companies talk a good game about wanting the best for their people — but very few back that up. Does the company offer training programs to keep you abreast of the latest in your field? Does your company pay for you to belong to professional organizations for the work you do? Does your company move you to different jobs so that you can learn new job skills to make you a more versatile employee?

Usually, you have to do all those things yourself if you want to advance your career. If you perform great in your current position, a company will most likely keep you there because you’re so good at doing it — killing your career over the long run because you won’t have the right job skills to get employment somewhere else.

The company knows what it is doing, so I should support it

People have this rarified perception of managers. And, especially, of CEO’s. Whether it is because of their perceived power, or how much money they make, or just believing they should be in a saluting mode when any new corporate strategy is announced, people tend to go along. It’s like the initial Mac commercial from Apple in 1984 when hundreds of drones were blankly following along with the master of the universe. Where are the runners throwing down sledgehammers against this stuff?

We go along. Usually, that’s okay. But managers are people and CEO’s are often isolated from much of reality because no one is willing to challenge their thinking. Since most of us never talk to a CEO, we shouldn’t just assume that this way of doing something is the right way. In our heads, we should consider this new approach as having the company leading us off a cliff, but people pay no attention to that.

Want an example? When Washington Mutual went out of business (I worked there) and was bought by JPMorgan Chase, employees I knew had so much faith in management knowing what it was doing that they held on to their WaMu stock all the way down from $47 a share to $0.04 a share the day the FDIC took them over. And that was all they had in their 401(k)’s. WaMu stock.

It was only the entirety of their savings. No problem with that belief in management always being right, is there?

We need to stop being passive people in our careers

Now, should we try and be indispensable in our work? Yes, if we value doing good work. Should we see the company helping our careers? Yes, as long as we don’t depend on it. Should we support management? Yes, but we should be watching to see if what management is doing makes any sense.

Corporations are not people. And any company management, for good reasons or not, will change your job — and your life — in a heartbeat. Your office is closed down. Your department is reorganized and, oh-by-the-way, we don’t need your services any more. You were happy and comfortable in your stable — but declining — marketplace and when the company changed strategic direction to attack the declining market (as they should do), you were the one left out in the cold.

Can we do everything to prevent bad things happening to us? Nope. We can’t have job security. We can only achieve employment security. And the only way to get to some level of employment security is if we don’t continue to play the game as if these myths about work were true. The company doesn’t care if we believe those myths. But we should because believing them leads to futility and financial stress.

The only way to win is not to play.

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photo credit: TC Morgan Photography

Pundits will have their best and worst of 2011 articles out there. The best and worst needs noting, of course, but, to me, neither of them are actionable. Instead, I like to look at the experiences we’ve had over the year and then determine what lessons we can learn from those experiences to make ourselves better. 2011, while offering greatness, was a pretty tough year for us working in cubicles. What lessons did I learn?

We need to better influence our performance reviews

Look, the number of performance reviews that just suck is still too high. Whether it is managers showing favoritism, or not knowing what accomplishments you’ve made during the year, or completely blowing off the reviews, performance reviews remain as one of the least favorite activities to work on.

But your raise and (perhaps) bonus depend on it.

A reader wrote to me and noted that unless she did better than a “3-successful” on her performance review, she didn’t get a bonus. And, despite all that she does — and compared to her coworkers — she never gets better than a successful review. That costs her a lot of money besides ticking her off. Now, I happen to think no matter what she does, that won’t change and that informs me she should leave.

But while she is actively trying to influence her performance review, too many of us just passively wait for the performance review without trying to influence it — starting today with goal-setting — during the course of the year. That causes frustration, exasperation, often times anger — and dollars for our family’s well-being. That one extra level of performance can mean a world of difference.

Our job search and interview skills need improving

This past year I’ve probably written a hundred articles on job search and interview skills (also over at Dice.com). It is the number one traffic area on the site. You know why? Because we suck at job interviews. And then we look for easy answers to unlock the magic key for the interview so we can bypass the hard work of getting ready for an interview. When I advise people they need to practice answering interview questions, very few do. Yet, those that do practice answering interview questions go further in the interview process and get jobs more than those who don’t practice interview questions.

Because of my consulting work, I was also a hiring manager this year. And I can safely tell you that people don’t know how to interview and it kills their chances at getting the job.

Doing a job search and knowing how to interview is now a basic, needed job skill in your career profile. We’re not good at using that job skill. That makes sense since we use our job interview skills far less often than we use, say, Microsoft Office to do our work. But with 4-6 people looking for work for every job opening, job interview skills are more important than ever because of your competition for the job.

Interestingly, there is little good stuff out there to help with your interviewing skills. It will be a focus for me in 2012 to have products to help your interview skills.

We need to build employment, not job, security

There are still way too many layoffs from the Great Recession. And the recovery has made a snail look fast. Our reaction to that is to hold on to that job no matter what. Understandable. But a job is the least secure thing to hang on to because a company can take that job away in a heartbeat. Instead, we should focus on building employment security. Employment security says that, though I may lose my job, I’m still employable because of the work I have done.

You know that the long-term unemployed is at one of the highest points in history, right? The longer they stay unemployed, the harder it is to get a job. It is truly a vicious circle. You can build employment security, though. And it requires a decent amount of work, don’t you know. But I’ve become more convinced than ever in 2011 that job security is gone and employment security needs to replace it. I’ve laid the foundations of that in my free report when you sign up for my mailing list and getting “The Employment Security Hierarchy for Cubicle Warriors.” You can sign up by clicking here.

2011 was a stressful year in the world of work. We can learn from that and resolve to make it better in 2012.

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photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

Most of us realize that just having a job does not make it a career. But there are a lot of us out there that think the goal in our adult working life is to have a career, not just a job.

Unfortunately, careers are over.

Think about it. In my personal history, I’ve been a project manager, a design dude, a sales person, a manager, a director (super manager), a pundit, a web dude, a consultant and an entrepreneur all the while looking for what I wanted to do when I grew up. Not exactly the traditional path to a career where ladders are climbed, enemies are vanquished and income hits the top 1%.

Earlier, in eighteen years working for the same company, I never had the same job nor manager for two consecutive performance reviews. Hell, in my current consulting gig, I’ve had four managers in one year. You expect to create a career out of this?

The days of our fathers and grandfathers — where grey flannel suits reigned and there was lifetime employment at a company — are over. I just can’t believe people still think that type of employment still exists. Have we seen the layoffs? The outsourcing? The downsizing? The increased productivity? How could any person reasonably conclude that a career could come from all that?

The answer is: it can’t.

There are no more careers. There is no job security. There is only employment security.

I have a friend who’s mantra on LinkedIn is this: “Have laptop, will travel.” That’s a good assessment of employment in this time and in this place. We have skills. We can use those job skills to help hiring managers reach their goals. And when we do our job well, we can show our business results to others, showing them that we can help them reach their business goals. That’s employment security.

Do enough of that and, perhaps, you get a career. But pining for a career is long gone.

Have a job in which you can produce business results that you can show the next hiring manager. And the next. And the next. That’s the miracle.

Harsh? Yup. True?

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photo credit: Johnny Vulkan

The traditional media is finally catching up to what a lot of us have seen for a while: There is a very good possibility that the United States will default on its debt on August 2nd by not raising the debt ceiling. The impact of that, according to pundits, is anything from “nothing” to the end of the financial world, putting us back into a recession or depression. Worse than the one we haven’t got out of yet…

Even if you live outside the United States (and thanks for reading Cube Rules), a US default will have significant impacts across the planet’s financial systems.

As employees working in cubes, should we just throw our hands up in despair and whine about Washington and politics? Well, you can, but there are some concrete actions you can take now if a default happens.

1. Lock down any floating interest rates

Floating interest rates are often tied to the cost of Treasury bills — and that rate will most likely go up in case of a default. Whether it is a variable rate loan, credit card, home mortgage or other financial instrument, the time to lock this down at current rates is now. I locked rates on a home loan this past Friday in case a default occurs.

2. Consider going to 100% cash in your IRA or 401(k)

There is more than chatter on financial sites that a default would cause all sorts of drops in stocks (the stock market, because of those great corporate earnings that have not translated into jobs, is close to a 3-year high). Why take a 20% haircut on your savings by holding on to your positions and hoping the market comes back soon? Instead, you can go to cash now and then reinvest when you can see past the crisis. You can move all your holdings in 401(k)’s and IRA’s into cash without taking money out of the account.

I’m not a financial advisor, but this seems a logical move. Right now, I have zero exposure to stocks in my retirement accounts with the majority of my savings in…cash…until I can see past a crisis.

3. Review how long your job will last

I advocate that every job will end; the only question is when. Either you’ll get sick of doing your job or your company won’t see the need for the work you do. I advocate figuring out how long you think the job will last and then to check the decision at least once a quarter — or when circumstances change.

Well, a default is a change in circumstances. Instead of reviewing how your company is doing quarterly, it’s time to look at your situation weekly until the crisis is resolved and management can see the way again. Given the job market — and a default, it may not make sense to necessarily change companies or get a new job. But it sure makes sense to have your eyes and ears wide open so you are not surprised.

4. Don’t take on more debt

If some of the worse events happen because of a default, lots of layoffs will occur. Now is not the time to be adding thousands of dollars to a credit card — especially if there is any variable rates. Besides, after savings and a long layoff, you may need some of that available credit.

5. Make sure to fund your emergency fund

Not much you can do in a week, of course. But your emergency fund (I advocate one year’s take home pay, but at least 3-months worth is needed) needs funding. If the economy takes a shock, credit won’t be available to use and layoffs will happen. Your emergency fund is what keeps the wolves at bay.

Pundits will claim that default is unthinkable — and it is. But that’s not reality. Reality is that there are Wall Street traders looking at the crazy people in Washington and taking out Credit Default Swaps – yeah, the same ones that brought down the banks with sub-prime mortgages – betting that the US will default because of what they perceive. We’ll see how the negotiations go in Washington. But, trust me, if a default happens, it will impact either in your job or your family life.

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Job security doesn’t cut it anymore. The days of working at a company for a lifetime are long, long gone. Heck, even working for the same manager for a long time is long, long gone. It’s clear that corporate churn, corporate reorganizations, and downsizing (or, in the company viewpoint, rightsizing…) is here to stay. When companies decide to cut their costs to help their bottom line, the first option too many companies take is cutting your paycheck.

Employment security, though, suggests that though we may lose our specific job, we are still employable. We can get that next job despite the headwinds of the economy or five job applicants going after the same job we are targeting.

But defining employment security is one thing. Getting employment security is another. What are the categories that need addressing to even think about getting to employment security? What steps does one need to take to make progress to meet employment security? What needs reviewing in our careers so that we keep our employment security when we think we’re close to getting it?

The Cubicle Warrior Employment Security Hierarchy

The Cubicle Warrior Employment Security Hierarchy builds a framework to help you focus on achieving employment security. It is a 20-page white paper that explains the different tiers of the hierarchy, how the tiers inter-relate, and why you can reach the top of the hierarchy and come crashing back to the base level if you don’t consistently check the hierarchy against the standards of your work today.

This is not 3-steps to “Watch me self-actualize”

Pundits write a lot of articles on the “X number of points to fix something.” The problem with the working life is that what makes up success today doesn’t come close to defining  the job ten years from now. Or two years from now. Or even when you get a new manager. All of those articles might solve a tactical problem, but they don’t offer the big picture that will help drive projects to improve your career and work to protect your income.

We don’t know how to test our work against a career. We don’t know what categories to review or what career skills we need. We drift, waiting for the whim of management to define our work and give the illusion of job security.

The Cubicle Warrior Employment Security Hierarchy provides the framework

The employment security hierarchy provides an effective model to manage your career. It provides the five areas of a career where you need to focus to stay employed. It helps you define your next actions to get to employment security.

The white paper is easy to get and is free. Just sign up for the Cube Rules weekly newsletter — once you sign up, you will immediately receive an e-mail with a link from my newsletter service that you will need to click to confirm the subscription — and then you will be directed to a landing page where you can download the white paper.

My subscribers receive the newsletter once a week and receive a career or job tip to help them in their work. As a bonus, my newsletter subscribers get first crack at all the new stuff I produce for sale here on the site and discounted as well. But the career tips are worth the price of free admission. And the white paper will set you on the path to protecting your income because you have employment security.

You can sign up here and can unsubscribe at any time.

PS Want your first career tip? Sign up for the newsletter with a personal, not corporate, e-mail address. When I send my newsletter out, I always get one or two automated replies saying something like “Mary Smith is no longer with Corporation for Profit Only. Please adjust your records.” Mary Smith might want some career, job or interview advice now — but she can’t get it because she put her career stuff on the very corporate resources that get taken away from her when there is a layoff or job change. Take control of your career by signing up with your personal e-mail address. Remember, it’s your career, not the company’s.

Related posts:

1. Employment security trumps job security
2. Your job skills and talent are not enough for employment security
3. Social Security is not the problem – Retirement security is the problem

With all the talk of goals, resolutions and great intentions for 2011, I’d like to give you a resolution for 2011 you must keep. Must keep. Here it is:

Invest in your career in a way to give you employment security, not merely job security.

The reasons for this are both obvious and subtle. Let’s take a look.

The obvious reasons to embrace employment security, not job security

This chart, from the Calculated Risk site, which I show as part of my layoff product, tells the story of the percentage of job losses by recession in one frightening graph:

The percentage of job losses in this recession are far worse than any other recession, save the Great Depression.

In addition to the job loss percentages, the sheer volume of continuing first time claims for unemployment insurance continue in the 400,000 per month. And based on current job growth, it will take another six years — years — to get to “full employment” again.

So while hiring is starting to get better, there is a high percentage of people who are still at risk trying to keep their job — and job security. We need to get to employment security because one cannot put all of their employment eggs in one basket.

Not so obvious: Companies are not interested in your career

A company has one major goal: make money for the shareholders, or, more broadly, for the company owners. All the other corporate stuff — our customers count, our employees are our most important asset, those corporate values posters, mission statements — all of that is secondary to the primary aim of making money for the owners.

Now, I don’t have a problem with that — it is very hard to make a company successful from a start-up and just as difficult to continue to make money for the company owners. We can trash the profit motive if it is too aggressive, but I’m not one that says companies should make no money — how are they going to keep employees if they don’t?

But that also means companies are not interested in your career. Companies, at the very core, are interested in how using your job skills and talents will help them reach their business goals and make the owners money. Yes, individual managers and HR departments can tout how important you are to the company and how much they want to develop your career. In good times, keeping your talents because you help reach their business goals makes sense. When times are tough? Not so much. When a strategy change takes place and your skills are not part of the strategy? Not so much.

If you are the highest performing person on the planet and if your skills no longer match what the company needs to continue making money for the owners, you are done. Gone. Wrong place, wrong time. Job security doesn’t cut it because your job can get cut at any time. Or reorganized in a way that no longer is useful to you and your needs.

Investing in your career is the only way to get to employment security

Most people will not invest in their career — either through spending money on products like those sold here or for getting needed job skill certifications. Nor will people practice what needs practicing to keep their skills up — like practicing answering questions for a job interview.

But in this moment — and for the foreseeable future — it is necessary to invest in your career across multiple levels of a hierarchy to make sure you meet employment security.

You will not always be in the right place at the right time. And the one time you are in the wrong place at the wrong time is the very time that your lack of employment security — investing in your career — will hurt you the most.

How do you get to employment security? I have put a lot of thought into it. More to come. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you could get to employment, rather than job, security.

Related posts:

1. Exercising is no longer a career option

As it happens, that lack of loyalty has been a key driver of the Valley’s rapid innovation over the past three decades. AnnaLee Saxenian, author of Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, puts it this way: “Job-hopping, rather than climbing the career ladder within a corporation, facilitates flows of information and know-how between individuals, firms, and industries. When combined with venture capital, it supports unanticipated recombinations of technologies and skill.” In other words, we have Twitter today because a bunch of engineers who were trained at other companies quit their jobs and brought their expertise to Evan Williams’ side project. It’s like biology: In an ecosystem where microbes are promiscuously swapping genes and traits, evolution speeds up.

Now this wonderful ecosystem of voluntary job-hopping is coming to a screaming halt because technology people are starting to play it safe and stay in their current positions longer because there aren’t that many open positions available, just like the rest of the country.

So the churn from layoffs is good because it will speed up the evolution of the microbes, sorry, workers — for industry. But for the workers there? What’s in it for them?

Layoffs, the article notes, don’t carry the stigma they used to anymore. Plus you can work on cool things like iPhone apps — if you can get any financing.  That’s about it. Which means this:

So if you’re clinging out of fear to a job you don’t want, you’re doing yourself and the rest of us a disservice. This is still Silicon Valley: Getting kicked in the behind might just be your ticket to getting ahead.

So industry gets new ideas and recombinations of technology and skills from workers voluntarily leaving their jobs to work in new environments — or from layoffs. But with layoffs, workers get to feel better about it because the stigma of a layoff is almost gone. And, if you can get it, you might still get something cool to work on if you can get the financing. Someday. Maybe.

Of course, getting laid off means you have no income. No neat stock options or restricted stock to help pad a savings cushion between those cool voluntary job-hopping gigs. Networking is now with other laid off coworkers, not necessarily people working on the interesting things.

But you should not have fear of a layoff though the rest of the world does. No need for you to worry about your finances, your family or the probability of finding a new job any time soon. Companies are OK to lay you off because…wait for it…getting laid off will be good for you — and it helps companies too!

Apparently, the difference between voluntarily leaving a position is the same as being laid off from a position. The difference between a good or even decent job market is the same as being in the worst job market for the last 20-years. And your behavior should be the same because it helps industry.

Not so much.

I’ll pass.

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Arrive early and stay late

The clock, after all, is what counts, isn’t it? Who needs a manager when we all know that butt-time in the chair is where it’s at?

Time spent on the job tells no one about your accomplishments nor does it guarantee success to the department or company. Instead, working longer hours begets working even longer hours to look better than everyone else. Pretty soon, we’ll all be sitting in the cube 20-hours a day just so we can look good.

Look, it’s management’s job to optimize resources to meet the goals of the company or department. That doesn’t get done by counting hours in the chair. Instead, it’s managing to the goal attainment in the department.

If you have a manager that simply measures time in the office, you don’t have a manager.

Look busy even if there is nothing to do

This one cracks me up every time. Really…nothing to do? If that is reality where you work, here is the one step to overcome this: ask your manager for something to do that contributes to the department goals. Doing so will get you working on something that contributes to the success of the department and the team. That is what will make your job layoff-resistant, not “looking busy.”

And if you get nothing to do from your manager that contributes to the goals, then — instead of looking busy — you need to get busy and start looking for another job. Companies are not employing people who are not contributing to the business — they are laying them off.

Looking busy will catch up with you and bite you in the you know where.

Have work-life balance

Most every pundit I know offers up having work-life balance. This is built on a false premise — that there is only “work” and “life.” And because there are only two of these things to choose from, you need to “balance” them.

Hogwash. The truth of the matter is there is only “life.” In our life we make choices about what we do with that life. Indeed, in most of our lives there is work and partners and professional development and children and personal development and hobbies and finances and retirement planning and visiting with neighbors and seeing our family across the country and having dinner with our friends and going to worship and looking for a new job. Plus so much more.

See? It’s a life. It’s not work-life balance.

Instead, here’s what counts

Results. Seriously, that should be it. Just results. Unfortunately, you go down the lists of most of the punditry and you never see this little gem. Contributions matter. Meeting department goals matters. Helping customers matters. Continuous improvement matters.

Some executive somewhere is focused on the results produced. And if your manager isn’t focused on your results, you are at risk no matter what. If you aren’t accomplishing your tasks and goals, you are totally at risk of a layoff.

Worse — without accomplishments, you aren’t that attractive for hiring in a different company either because you can’t show how your work contributed to your department’s success.

So focus on getting to accomplishment, OK?

What’s the worst advice you’ve received on how to keep your job?

Related posts:

1. 10 worst keys to keep you off the layoff list

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consistently evaluate your situation. Just because companies are raining down with layoffs doesn’t mean you should cling to what you have at all costs. Because there are costs. Costs like not wanting to go to work on Monday. Putting up with a disgusting manager who will submarine your career. Or losing your marriage because of the hours you are working.

One aspect of self-management is control and the other is perspective. In these trying times, it is easy to get lost in the weeds of work and lose the perspective that it is time to move on.

While Gen Y is taking it on the chin with unemployment numbers, all of us should learn this valuable lesson from them: it’s OK to change jobs even in the midst of a recession. In fact, often you should.

I’ve always had this simple career management formula, learned from one of the best managers I’ve worked for in my career: Job skills plus job performance equals opportunity.

If you have job skills and you can show your accomplishments, a recession is a great time to seek out opportunity. Get closer to what you want to work on, not what you are forced to work on.

Perform well doing your work. Evaluate what you want to do next. Then go after it.

No related posts.

CNN notes that today is “Bloody Monday” with over 71,000 layoffs announced. Yeah, 71,000. Whole cities are smaller than that.

Stay confident, focus on your work, and build your network. This is the time to be a Cubicle Warrior.

Here’s the list of companies that have laid off so far in 2009 — some 200,000+ — in what CNN describes as “body count.” We really need to figure out how to describe layoffs as layoffs and not body counts…

Ouch.

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