Technical Advise Week #5 - Survival Guide

Our mentor and friend (Dad) came home last evening. He seemed a bit down and we asked why. It seems as though the client he was visiting exercised a layoff. Since we have never known anything other self-employment we could imagine what it must have been like for those people. Anytime we wanted more security or Kibbles in our bowl we simply went out and either developed a new product or sold more of what we had in our stable of products. We suggested that we take a dip in the pool to relax and to think about the situation (in somewhat of a consulting like fashion). It was too awfully long before we realized that it's a matter of domain control. Regardless of a person's position you have limited control over things. Often those things that can be controlled aren't and those things that can't be controlled consume an extensive amount of your attention. We aren't suggesting that you ignore your employment (which you can't control) but rather suggest that you involve contingency planning as a part of your employment habit. In a healthy sense, an employee shouldn't just be doing the job that they are assigned but should also be looking at ways of building intellectually wealth. Early in ones career this wealth building involves skill and intellect based strengthening. Late in ones career this foundation points are converted into specialized skill development. One might ask, how can this possibly help to shield me from the effects of right-sizing, layoffs, down-sizing or whatever you wish to call it? Actually the latter step has significant personal benefit potential. Going beyond simple understanding to specialized ownership will involve personal innovation and branding/trademarking. This is where the faceless concept is personalized by you. Many of you have done this, albeit in somewhat of a casual hidden fashion. Others have gone on to bring this front-and-center in your life through whitepapers, conference presentations, and even side business ventures. We believe that this is not only of significant importance to insulating yourself from layoffs but also contributes to increased networking, knowledge building, and affords wonderful personal satisfaction. Does this require effort? Absolutely! Do you feel that you need to do it? Probably so, because most professionals will experience at least one downsizing event during the course of their career (for Max & I this will have to happen in a small timeframe since our lives are 10-1/2 to 1 what a human's life is). However, we are hedging our bets by a) knowing that what we can control we are, b) building special technical abilities that we can convert to use should we ever face a downsizing, and c) since we are consultants we are in control of our own work. We Labor Day around the corner Max & I have decided to take a little nap and to get some much needed rest.