Mike Robertson's initial response to being terminated is being echoed by scores of executives across the country who have fallen victim to the massive restructuring and downsizing of the nation's corporations in recent years. Losing his job may well have come as a shock to Mike, but in view of his stellar track record, he had just reason to believe that he would soon find a new, perhaps even better, position elsewhere, and continue forward on his career path. What today's downsized executive is quickly discovering, however, is that in the 1990s, traditional job-search strategies that would have worked as recently as the early eighties are no longer effective, because unlike those who lost jobs just a decade ago, today's downsized executive has an additional factor to contend with: the fact that he probably wasn't "fired for cause."
In their drive to remain competitive, organizations have whole heartedly embraced technology at every level of their operations. Yet corporations and individuals alike have been slow to grasp the repercussions of these technological innovations on the employer-employee relationship. This ten-year process of restructuring has eliminated thousands of management jobs, and while some people still cling to the belief that these changes are cyclical, they are in fact technologically driven changes that have altered the relationship between executives and their organizations permanently. To be successful today, we must understand that it is this changed employer-employee relationship that dictates how each of us will search for future positions and map our careers in the 1990s and beyond. This applies not only to experienced executives who will be making the transition in the latter part of their careers, but also to entry-level and mid-career executives who will find themselves moving frequently from position to position throughout their professional lives.
An End to the Notion of Being Fired for Cause
Under the old rules governing the relationship between employer and employee, executives had to commit a political error or fail substantially in their job performance in order to be terminated. AT&T executive Jim Meadows aptly describes the rules most managers lived by during the heyday of lifetime employment:
I grew up with a "Do well or you lose your job" mentality. The threat of being fired was always there, but it never nagged at me because I knew that unless I committed an act of failure or fraud or violated the code of conduct, I more or less had guaranteed employment for life.
Indeed, the notion of losing one's job "for cause" has been so deeply ingrained in our culture that, even today, many executives easily relate to the image of "the man in the gray flannel suit," conjuring up for us, as it does, a picture of the unthinkable shame and humiliation once attached to losing one's job.
Though certainly traumatic, fault-based termination is ultimately far easier for an executive to handle and accept, because an executive fired for cause can eventually determine the reasons why he failed, learn from his mistakes, and move forward. No-fault termination, however, is not the result of failure or breach of conduct, but simply the result of a structural change in the economy, leaving the downsized executive without any feedback as to how he can improve in his next position.
Though many no-fault-terminated executives have snickered at the now-clinched exit line "It's nothing personal," it is largely true. Unfortunately, many executives affected by recent down-sizing's find it easier to blame themselves for being terminated than to accept the arbitrary nature of job loss that accompanies the new era of no-fault termination. In the very personal process of coming to terms with job loss, many executives still weigh the experience against the old mindset of lifetime employment, and assume that their job loss is in some way their fault. They try to convince themselves that it was due to deficiencies within themselves.
Too few recognize what Robertson eventually came to under-stand-that they are encountering an entirely new phenomenon in the history of the American workplace.
While it is still important to continuously evaluate one's own performance, many executives are losing valuable time attempting to assess blame for their terminations, in the hope, perhaps, that they can pinpoint the reason they were fired and resolve not to let it happen again before joining yet another organization. Mike Robertson's story, and those of many other downsized executives, illustrates how important it is to cast self-blame aside and accept the reality that, in today's corporate climate, you can do everything right and still lose your job.
