While this need has not changed, the ways in which organizations will achieve it has. Since job security-one of the central elements of corporate loyalty-is no longer guaranteed, loyalty must be derived from the challenge and the satisfaction of the work. Thus, loyalty today grows out of the content of the work rather than the security of the job.
A Talent for Creating Their Own Jobs
Whether operating within an organization, or servicing one from the outside on a contract basis, portable executives display a marked ability to recognize opportunity in their work environments and create their own assignments.
Twenty years after joining Polaroid, senior manufacturing manager Mansfield Elkind decided to focus on his fascination with how people create change in their lives. At Polaroid, he recognized that whenever employees were unable to effect change in their lives, it spilled over into the organization. Sensing that his real passion lay in discovering how to create change in people, and drawn to the work-development side of the business, he proposed a self-designed job to Polaroid and they approved it. "I changed careers," says Elkind, "and made my avocation my vocation." Even though Elkind admits, "I took a lot of chances doing what I did and the way I did it," he was able to maintain the critical support of senior staff members, which was necessary for him to continue. After several years, Elkind's business attracted the attention of outsiders, and soon he was bringing in $100,000 worth of business from outside of Polaroid. He had just submitted a business plan to Polaroid to further develop the business when their takeover turn came and he was forced to decide whether to stay and watch his new venture be back - burnered or accept Polaroid's early-retirement offer. In the end, Elkind decided to leave Polaroid, but his entrepreneurial venture did not go unrewarded. Polaroid recognized that the business Elkind created was his and told him to take it with him, with no strings attached, along with his early-retirement benefits, bonuses, and a nice severance package that put him in a good position to spin the company off and continue operating.
While Manny Elkind's story is perhaps unusual, the portable-executive mind-set that weighs one's core skills and the ability to market them as valuable, individually owned assets is increasingly motivating workers to apply their entrepreneurial skills wherever they happen to be working.
When Matthew Peach learned that he'd been "put at risk" at AT&T at the age of fifty-three, he says: "I felt like I'd been sold out by my company. I was aware that you should be in charge of your own career, but I didn't pay a lot of attention to that. I only began to put it into practice when I was put 'at risk.'" Peach's first hard lesson, which he learned as he hit the marketplace in search of his next position, was that "I'd lost touch with the core business of telecommunications. I just wasn't salable." Given the opportunity to join AT&T's Resource Link on a contract basis, Peach took it and soon swung into action, quickly carving out his own niche. He set out to create a human resources guide for AT&T, mastering the computer skills necessary to create it, and steadily gained both self-confidence and self-reliance. Describing the difference between his role at AT&T before termination, and his new role as a consultant within Resource Link, Peach says:
Before, I might feel I'd had a great year, but my boss might not have seen it that way. What's exciting now is that I have this product-this guide-I can point to. It's an accomplishment, plus I get feedback from the employees.
What Matt Peach discovered was a sense of ownership and an appreciation for the control inherent in taking the initiative to create his own job. And he expressed this attitude best when he said, "Today, I'm more interested in the type of work I'm doing rather than the security I once thought I had."
