Notice: This is the first of 30 articles that have previously been published in newspapers. They are for your enjoyment, but cannot be reprinted or used without permission. Most of the people in my address book are retired, but they have children and grandchildren that I think will benefit from these missives. That is my aim.
JRF
COLD SHOWER™
HOW TO ENSURE YOU NEVER GET FIRED!
(Article no. 1)
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 11, 2008
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Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. is an industrial/organization psychologist and former corporate executive for Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe Ltd. For the past 30 years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls CULTURAL CAPITAL, that is, risk taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits and relation to power for a changing work force in a changing workplace. His focus is on the modern professional worker.
Dr. Fisher started out as a laborer in a chemical plant, worked his way through college to become a laboratory chemist and field chemical sales engineer. He retired in his mid-thirties, went back to school and received his Ph.D. in I/O psychology, became an OD consultant and adjunct professor, eventually returning to the corporation from which he retired in 1990 to devote himself to writing.
These columns in another form were first published in newspapers in the late 1990s. They have been updated and reissued on his website (www.fisherofideas.com) to provoke thought and discussion.
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Question: Dr. Fisher, I understand you've written a book about how never to get fired? Is that possible in these times?
Dr. Fisher replies:
Absolutely! The key to ensuring you never get fired rests with the way you think about work. If you don't see yourself as part of the problem, then you are not going to be part of the solution.
You must see yourself as an owner of what you do, not a renter who brings his body to work but leaves his mind at home. Nor can you afford to turn your head when colleagues or bosses exploit the company. You are the company!
As to writing a book about this problem, I've actually written several books on the subject. SIX SILENT KILLERS (CRC Press 1998) and THE WORKER, ALONE! (The Delta Group Florida 1995) dealt specifically with the problem of being employed and remaining employable.
When workers are dissatisfied or miserable at work, they think and behave as social termites burrowing in and silently destroying the infrastructure of the place of their employment. More than $100 billion is lost every year for:
(1) Workers coming in late and leaving early, doing as little as possible to get by;
(2) Workers doing only what told to do and then waiting around for more instructions;
(3) Workers always having an excuse why something isn't done or done on time;
(4) Workers accepting assignments they don't have any intentions of completing;
(5) Workers obsessed with what other workers are and have and how they are treated;
(6) Workers spreading disinformation or holding back critical information to complete the job.
Eventually, the economic walls of the company come crashing in requiring it to resort to downsizing; moving to a cheaper place of operation, or totally imploding by filing for bankrutcy protection.
Social termites exist in virtually every operation, but when they are ignored and allowed to run rampant, the company will inevitably go into distress at some point, and no longer be competitive.
Too many workers are into comfort not contribution, retiring on the job, reacting to circumstances not anticipating them, searching for excellence not creating it, seeing themselves as part of the solution not part of the problem, behaving as renters not owners, bringing their bodies to work not their minds, behaving as counterdependent children not interdependent adults.
Far too frequently workers fall into a job or career, they don't plan for one.
They pursue a line of work because it pays the most, has the best benefits, is considered prestigious having little idea what they love to do, or why.
They play the blame game. To their mind, the reason they are miserable and not making satisfactory progress is because of the work, the boss, or the company. Wrong!
Workers make their own misery. A clerk's job can only pay so much. An engineer's job pays a lot better. But that means hitting the books when you are young, and sacrificing along the way to receive a quality education. No excuses. Anyone can improve their skill level, anyone! That's cultural capital! It is the only ticket.
It is a simple formula:
The more training you have and the higher your skill level the better your chances are for job security. The higher your skill level is in critical jobs the higher your pay and the more secure your future.
All jobs are limited by what the industry can afford to pay. If you need higher pay, then you need to be better qualified in high risk jobs because the highest pay is always in the highest risks categories, such as stockbrokers, salesmen, actors, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.
Far too many workers have bought into the idea that the way to get ahead is to please others not to please themselves. They fail to see the limits to opportunity but stubbornly push it beyond reality, and invariably experience disenchantment for the effort.
Work, so generated, becomes a contest of will rather than an expression of love. It becomes the dance of a whirling dervish.
In the midst of this social maelstrom, "scientific performance indices" are created to deal with incipient cultural disaster. Many of them have worn thin, but are still around:
1. Empowerment
2. Teamwork,
3. Seeing the company as family,
4. Company pride,
5. Professionalism,
6. Reengineering,
7. Just-in-time production,
8. Management by objectives,
9. Total employee involvement,
10. Participative management,
11. Total quality management,
12. Open-door policy,
13. Pay for performance,
14. Performance appraisal,
15. Professional pride,
16. Assessment centers,
17. Profiling for performance,
18. Personality inventory,
19. Value assessment, and so on.
Admittedly, they sound nice and are cosmetically attractive, but they are designed "for" workers but not "about" workers.
They measure workers as "things," which clearly are meant to produce "profits." This suggests profits are more important than people. It is the main reason they have not worked. Workers are not stupid.
A rule-of-thumb:
A healthy focus on people (process factor) and the profits will follow (product factor).
Everyone seems to be looking for the magic word, magic test, and magic bullet to turn things around. Notice it is always a thing that is sought not something "by" the workers but "for" the workers!
Yet, without workers, there are no products, no profits, no company, and workers have the answers. They have always had the answers.
The problem is that you have to ask workers the right questions to glean these answers. It is not an automatic proposition, where the company says, "Workers, what do you think?" Such questions are met always with silence.
Stoichiometry in chemistry teaches us that in order for a reaction to go to completion it must have the correct mix of mole fractions (workers) with the proper catalyst (worker involvement) to realize the results desired (meet the needs of the company and workers alike).
This represents a balanced equation.
Life is all about chemistry, and chemistry is all about life.
To ensure you never get fired there must be a place to work. You must own what you do; be a student of the job; a learner not a knower; a listener not a teller; a doer not a complainer; a thinker not an imitator.
No company on the face of the earth can any longer support a 40-year career in which the worker is a student of the job for 4-years and a coaster 36.
This does not mean you should point fingers at others who fall short of the mark. You should help them get better. You don't dodge problems. You embrace them. You appreciate your job. If you don't appreciate it, you should leave!
You do your best, pat yourself on the back, don't look for recognition or appreciation elsewhere. You are the total deal.
You accept peaks and valleys, good and bad days, and take surprises in stride.
You don't expect reward without risk, gain without pain, accomplishment without help.
You buy a ticket to adulthood and embrace your natural resistance to pain, self-doubt, confusion, and all the other idiosyncrasies that make you, you.
You become a leader by pushing the driver out of your chair, taking over the controls, and then driving yourself to your destiny. It will be a joyous ride because you are in charge.
To summarize:
1) Treat yourself as an employer not an employee. Think how to grow the business. It is your investment in cultural capital.
2) Don't manage up! Manage your boss by educating the boss on the tools, training and opportunities you need to do a good job. Be persistent and don't accept any excuses for not being trained in new skills. Nothing stays the same especially work.
3) Remember everyone has feelings and needs. That includes bosses. Tread lightly on others, as you would have them tread lightly on you.
4) Treat coworkers as customers. Make what you do user friendly to everyone.
5) Be more concerned about being useful than fearing being used. The reason you have a job is that you are value added to what is being done. Quit complaining!
6) Don't get buried in gender or ethnic politics. Losers use this to distract. Don't confuse role demands (the job) with self-demands (personal concerns). If the job is making you sick, leave! There is a near perfect job for all of us if we have the honesty to know ourselves as well as others do.
7) When you have a complaint, don't advertise it. Direct it to the source politely and in a timely fashion with emphasis on politely. Don't let anger fester. It will if you don't address the cause of your misery promptly. Manage your conflict. Conflict is the natural glue that holds work and workers together. You don't have to like everybody, but you do need to respect and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
8) Say what you will do. Do what you say. Trust is built on doing, not promising to
do. A dependable, trustworthy, and resourceful person is three-people-in-one.
9) Do what you love, love what you do. There is no job, no amount of money worth existing in misery. Work is love made visible. When it isn't, it destroys, as hate is a disease of the soul. It weakens the body and poisons the mind against being effective.
10) Be part of the problem. If you foul up, admit it. If someone else fouls up, help get him or her back on track. If the company falls on bad times, thank it for the good times, and help it get back on its feet.
11) Take work seriously not yourself. Have a sense of humor about the flawed person you are. Humor gives balance and perspective, and others will love you for it.
12) Make others better for your being there. Share knowledge, good will and cheer with others. Bring out their best and you'll feel better about yourself.
13) Be a student of whatever you do, a learner in quest of all that you could be.
14) Be a performer not a personality, a doer not a pleaser, a problem solver not a pyramid climber, make a difference; don't worry about making an impression. Let your work speak for itself.
15) Don't hesitate to share critical information essential to a project. If you feel you have been taken advantage of or passed over for promotion, fight for it, but don't punish your colleagues or the company for your angst.
16) Don't misuse or misappropriate company property be it a single postage stamp or an expensive tool. You are stealing from yourself.
17) Be ever on guard that the six silent killers don't bite you in the ass!
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See the books listed in this article, and similar essays on Dr. Fisher's blog and website (www.fisherofideas.com.
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