You’re sitting in the meeting room. It’s been ten minutes since the meeting was supposed to begin. However, seeing as he’s the national department head (also known as your boss), the concept of lateness falls underexecutive privilege. You never see a superstar waiting around for his entourage, after all.
It’s the annual counselling session. Your boss usually starts the first few minutes with a few opening compliments, hastily half-remembered achievements. It’s his well-practiced prelude, the basic babble that leads to the more serious stuff. Waiting for the But…, those minutes feel more like eternity. As you know all too well, anything that is said before that magic word is merely filler.
Even though this is a total waste of time, you’re expected to go through the motions. All anyone really cares about is the ‘rating’ at the end, and the hints at pay rises and bonuses. These are never decided during counselling sessions anyway. Nonetheless, you know this needs to be done; as a senior executive yourself, you also inflict the same torture upon your staff. And yes, no matter how senior you have become, you always report to somebody. Just grit your teeth, grin and bear it.
As you start to daydream your way out of boredom, you look at your boss’ face and start wondering. How is this guy my boss?”
A big company is created from a pyramid of people doing what you reckon to be very similar and repetitive tasks, within a bureaucratic structure that creates massive employment opportunities. And at the bottom of the pyramid, there seems to be a myth among junior level workers that their managers somehow think and do things very differently from them. After all, that’s why they’re senior, right?
Well, no. Am I the same person I was as a graduate trainee? Obviously you are—it’s only your position that’s changed. So realistically, there’s nothing fundamentally different between you as a junior staff, and now as someone more senior. The same goes for your boss.
However, there are always certain elements that affect the way people make decisions, no matter their level of seniority. As an example: everyone is naturally prone to being lazy, if they can get away with it. In some circles, it’s known as the smart way. So if firing person A instead of person B will cause less hassle, most people will just do it that way. And then, of course, there are other factors, like timing and peer pressure, which come down to luck and perception.
Not that you don’t respect your boss—he’s just another regular person, born a few years earlier than you, working in this big, big company. Nevertheless, you’ve always maintained that you want to do the right thingwhen it comes to the working world. You’ve seen all the literature about the difference between a “manager” and a “leader” and how you’re supposed to use this annual counselling session to motivate your staff, to objectively evaluate their performance and develop a plan that allows your staff to flourish.
But all these years in big corporations have changed you a little bit. You know it’s not possible to evaluate people from a completely objective viewpoint, because at the end of the day, it’s an inevitable comparison within the team. Everyone’s going after that same bonus pool, or clinging onto the same shrinking number of positions in the company. Especially as you get more senior. So all you need is to do relatively better than others (or at least be perceived to be doing better), and you will get a bigger share of that bonus pool and/or get to keep your job. You don’t need to be good, you just need to be better. Or less worse. So all these goal settings, mid-year and final counselling sessions are there not to show what you have done well, but rather as evidence to prove what you haven’t done when certain situations arose.
***
Back in the meeting room. Your boss has just reached the all-magical word, snapping you out of your daydreaming.
“But… as a team, we didn’t accomplish all the goals that we set at the beginning of the year.”
You know all too well the rules surrounding your manager’s use of the word ‘we.’ It never really means ‘we,’ like you’d hope. It’s you he’s talking about. You are the one who’s the root cause of all problems. Of course, it’s also your privilege to cascade that down to your team. It’s like the opposite of what happens in big league sports, really. Usually in team sports, the players get all the credit when the team does well. But when the team isn’t doing well, the first guy that gets fired is the manager. Why is this the other way around in big companies?
“It’s a stretched goal, that’s what you said at the beginning, right?” , you made sure he is also involved.
“I know it’s not easy, but that’s not what top management is going to acknowledge. They expect us to exceed goals. They are also under a lot of pressure from the investors, you know.”
You can sense he’s trying to be compassionate. It’s ironic that your boss also reads that same leadership books you read. He is trying to be a “leader” and shows that he cares, but you can never be sure how sincere he really is—after all, you’ve been on the other end of this exchange.
“The economy is really tough right now. We’re unable to give you a pay rise or bonus for this year.” It’s funny how everyone becomes a macro-economist when they have to deliver the bad news. You also know having no salary increment and a big fat zero for bonus is a sure sign of something worse to come.
“We have to put you on a performance improvement plan. If you don’t improve within three months, I don’t know if I have other options. My hands are tied here.” Finally, he’s got to the real news.
You know all too well that performance improvement plans are never used for improving performance. It’s a standard documentation a company needs to prepare before they fire somebody. Another stack of paperwork that big companies fall in love with, with all the juicy legal ramifications. This period also represents a time where management has the license to make you feel extremely miserable in the hope that you’ll surrender and resign yourself. They get to save maybe a month or two of your not-so-significant salary, while a board member gets to enjoy an unexpected short trip.
There’s no coming back, in other words. Not usually anyway.
You have your family expenses, your mortgage, loan repayments, and all those other delightful things. Naturally, if an employer promised to guarantee you your job for the rest of your life, with an inflation-matching incremental every year, you’d take it right away! Yes, you want that incremental rise, no matter how small, even though you’re already generally satisfied with your pay right now. You’ve been taught that inflation is what’s going to kill you financially. “Compound interest” is going to dramatically increase your investment portfolio incredibly—but if it’s a compound rate of inflation, it’ll wipe out your wealth completely sooner rather than later. So all you want is to match inflation and keep your current level of income.
Am I asking for too much? I just want a bit of security and stability. That’s why you chose the ‘safe’ route through life.
Go to school, get a decent grade and study a popular degree in a decent university. At the time you decide your major, you might have no ideas about the world, careers, industry, anything like that. You pick the subject that you are most vaguely interested in, or perhaps you pick the one that other people tell you is a good choice. After doing well enough to graduate, you drift your way into an average job, often snatching the first job offer you get. You’re no Harvard or Stanford graduate, no top companies will hire you anyway. Google won’t hire you, not even as a janitor! The point is, upon graduating, you have no idea what job awaits you, and what that job really entails. You land a job simply because the employer selected you. But that’s OK, you just need a job. A steady stream of income.
And as you work diligently through your career, you move up steadily. Slowly but surely. Yes, it has a lot to do with your outright ability, but it also has a lot more to do with what’s happening to the company’s performance as well as the guy that sitting above you. Is he moving on to bigger, better things? Is he retiring?
All your life, you’ve been just going through the motions.
“Do I really choose what I do? How much of a ‘choice’ do I have? What kind of say do I really have in the matter? If I do in fact make most of my choices independently and intelligently, why aren’t I happy with my job all along?”
You always believed that unless you were the 10% at either end of the human bell curve (the famous normal distribution), you’re really similar to the rest of the 80%, the majority. You’re not particularly intelligent, hardworking or lucky. You’re not particularly set up for greatness or infamy. Yes—by definition, you are the average. And just like the majority, you just want a bit of certainty. That’s all.
Why is keeping the status quo so difficult these days?
***
The shock news has left you a bit confused and upset. But stay classy. Don’t ask your boss for a reason why. Whatever reasons he gives wouldn’t change the situation.
So it’s you who gets to be part of that massive lay off plan. There’s been rumour floating around for weeks now. A plan that focuses on reducing headcounts, but not necessarily about the actual staff cost. This means that firing a couple of lower level staff is more meaningful than one senior guy—even if the two staff do a lot more real work and have a lower combined salary. After all, it’s 2 vs. 1. An easier story to sell to the investors.
You don’t want to beg; you really need this stable job, but you can’t do it. Not quite yet anyway.
“Have I reached my peak?” That so-called ‘career peak’ where your income level starts to exceed your value to the company? Maybe someone with ten years less experience could do exactly what you do. They might even outperform you. Yes, experience counts, but there’s only so much daily routine that requires that unique experience. You feel like you have been holding on to your job because of your ability to fight office politics, rather than your ability to do your job outstandingly. And today you found out may be your office politics is never that good either.
Overpaid. Obsolete. Dispensable. These are the words that start to ring around your head.
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