Robert C. Hall, the current CEO of the Toronto-based Thomson Corporation's Information / Publishing Group, has been a portable executive for his entire career-working at or near the top of a number of different companies in six different industries. "I would get antsy," explains Hall. "I simply could not tolerate a situation where I was not continuously challenged."
This is not to say, however, that because these individuals choose the moves they make, they do not experience some of the same trauma as those who have been terminated. Robert C. Hall says, "We moved a lot! My daughter never went to the same school two years in a row until she got into the eighth grade. You can't move like I did without a supportive family."
A Retirement That Looked Good on Paper
There are executives as well, who, having taken early retirement with a reasonable amount of contentment and more than adequate severance packages, find themselves either bored or missing life in an organization. Joseph Bevan, a former vice president of personnel and operations for Richardson Vicks, had given his retirement a great deal of thought. Upon taking his last assignment within Richardson Vicks, he said, "I'll go out and do this for four years and then I'll retire." Says Bevan:
I had said, 'I'll have no problem sliding into retirement. I have other interests. I'm not hung up on how valuable I've been to this company. I don't define myself by those terms." After retiring and spending a lot of time at home, I was a bit itchy-I was uncomfortable with not doing anything. I found myself thinking, "I still have some-thing to say and I believe I can use my experience to help companies deal with difficult situations effectively."
Bevan did not want to return to an organization full-time, so he chose to become a portable executive because it allowed him to work on short, intense business assignments and spend the rest of his time as he pleased.
Though certainly not as traumatic an experience as that of an executive who needs to find a new position for economic reasons, the disorientation and grief an executive in this situation may experience can be every bit as debilitating. After being a part of an organization for years, retired executives are left trying to find work that will be deeply satisfying and engage all of their talents. In the end, regardless of which of these situations motivates an executive to recognize his or her need to become more self-directed, common to all is the fact that there is no longer an organization to define them, and their dependence on an organization to define their sense of self has come to an end. Former Union Carbide executive Ed Burrell described it this way:
The longer you work for a large corporation, the more dependent you become on it psychologically and financially. You begin to doubt your ability to support yourself without the company job. This kind of dependency takes away from the self-sufficiency I feel everyone should have. And it's hard to recognize-I didn't sense my dependency when I was at Union Carbide, but once I was outside, I clearly saw what had happened to my self-worth over the years.
Portable executive Michael Hostage, who has served as chair-man of the Continental Baking Company, a division of ITT, as well as chairman of the Howard Johnson Company, talked about how he defined himself during the early days of his career at Procter & Gamble:
As a young man coming out of college, I identified myself by the company I worked for and my title. If you asked me, "Who are you?" I would have told you who I worked for and what I did. Today, I own a series of small companies, but I'm not defined by any one of them.
To grow beyond defining oneself by an organization or a title, the executive committed to becoming self-directed needs to break through an ingrained set of habits and roadblocks.
Culture Shock
While the intensity of the anxieties, fears, and practical problems that arise for an individual who has just been downsized varies, almost all people experience a profound degree of culture shock when they no longer work full-time for an organization. The first shock, of course, is that of suddenly being without any income, with the loss of medical benefits-a major part of compensation-a close second.
Also among the initial shocks the individual confronts is the loss of social status he enjoyed within the community. An executive's sense of dignity, power, and self-esteem are not only tied to his position within a corporation, but also to his status in the community. A loss of power is also felt by many executives as they abandon clearly defined positions of authority. Portable executive Jack Cahill says:
The power was gone. I didn't realize I even had any power until I didn't have it. The people who used to "pay homage" to me before didn't pay me much attention when they found out I wasn't in that position anymore. I've talked to other people who felt the same thing. You walk into a restaurant, and people say "Hi! Good to see you again. What are you doing?" When you respond, "I left, and I'm really looking for a job," you get a very different feeling from people. It isn't money, because I still had that, but I didn't have the power. It's power that commands respect.
Many executives serve on the boards of commercial organizations and major charities because they represent the presence of their organization in the community. Often, a newly downsized executive finds himself not only without a job, but asked to step down from the charitable and corporate boards they serve on. When Mike Hostage took early retirement, he soon found that a bank where he served on the board of directors no longer required his services. Hostage's core skills hadn't changed, but the bank's perception of him had, assuming that his value was a result of his affiliation with the organization.
For most executives, the shock of realizing that job loss or early retirement often carries with it a loss of status compounds the concern that if they aren't working they aren't worth much. Though it may sound like a rationalization, it is important to remember that these rejections are just a consequence of the old view that organizations provide individual value and self-worth.
