and what happened if…

… a sufficiently interesting job offer in the UK came along and I accepted it? Well it could happen - I could even get an offer in Kyrgyzstan as well… that could shake more than one!

Now why would that happen? Because I published my CV on an on-line job search website as well as a couple of social network sites? And why would I want to publish my CV on such websites? Well apart from being an inveterate writer ( I have 4 websites and 1 other blog) its the thing to do today. These detachable extensions, or addendums, of the profiles these sites invariably require filling out, these mini stories - the smaller and more concise the better -of one's working life might just incite the interest of some sufficiently curious, perspicacious and farsighted reader looking for just that wealth of experience, expertise, quality, talent and potential that only my specific CV contains!

Beating my own drum? Darn right I am! If I don’t do it no one else will and why would they? they’re so busy beating their own! Yep, its a cruel, narcissistic, numbrilistic, best person first world and with the state of the job market as it is today you’ve got to be dum or set up for life not to want to (or have to) beat your drum... a lot louder than the others.

That's reducing the situation to its simplest form, some people are much more discreet and register with social networks for the fun...yeah, right...anyway there’s a lot of people connecting because they're looking for jobs, either because they don’t have one and want one, they have one and aren’t optimistic of their future or because they are so darn opportunist they've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. I’m not in the first situation so I would have to be in one of the latter, right? …

And why would I be that? Why would I want to go "oppotunity" hunting? Well, the other day I was sitting listening to my client talk about their particular woes and worries and I thought it would be a good idea.
What woes and worries? Well it would appear that their own particular multinational company of an employer is in the throws of a programming/initiating a social restructuration plan and, using every trick in the book they are hastily but methodically writing to do so, is contemplating diverse and various means of inciting their workforce to look elsewhere to see if the grass is greener.
When I heard the modalities of their social plan , employees could receive, amongst other things (?) a lay off package of something like 1.5 months per year spent in the company, I a little too glibly mentioned that if my particular company made me such a proposition I would be off back to the UK so fast there wouldn’t even be any shoe marks on the floor! But I reassure you my company would never be so gracious so it ain’t likely that I'll be off any time soon, at least not of their instigation.

I must admit my remark did rather took aback more than one of the attendance. But one person in particular did sit up, the same person with who I had recently debated the average time people should stay in a company before they had accumulated experience and expertise and should consider moving on to greener pastures. Let me explain. my personal vision – the fruit of ± 25 years in the hotel and restaurant industry – is that the average time to spend in any company and before a certain age is reached, i.e. 30, should be 3 years!

I know that up until 15/20 years ago in most western societies , and I am stretching this to include Japan, the aim for most people leaving school or college was to find a place in a company and stay their until retirement, priming job security over adventure and riches (riches? ok)… earning more and more money as you progress so as to ensure a comfortable life style and an intelligent pension plan …but things have changed. In the 90s Japan underwent a cultural shock so deep it changed they way of looking at their professional life forever!!! A lifetime job was a thing of the past and more and more people started adopting what I call the “American School room” approach. This consists of the teacher inciting students to change their seat in school classes every so often so they don’t get in rut and get to physically and metaphorically look at things from a different perspective.

As I said I spent some 25 years in an industry where such an approach was encouraged and so when I see people in my work entourage, close or not so close, in a rut or insistent on clutching on to their current job, in spite of the fact that the future could actually be quite dismal for them, I want to go over and shake them.

But then who am I to do so? They have mortgages, loans and young kids at the small school on the corner. Their life is there and friends are all around them. Why would they contemplate exchanging such a nice easy life? OK so there’s a crisis but they have a job (for now) so why should they put all that in peril, up root, move elsewhere and start again? Because of the crisis?
Yes so there’s a crisis and when the person I was talking to the other day quietly pointed out that I too had been in the company 10 years I said yes but I’m 53 and have undergone a change in job role during that time. He saw my point of view but like I said he was rather caught off balance by my mind game, remember I said at the top I’m not adverse to a change and if the right offer comes along? Believe me I have no affinity so strong where I am at the moment that I wouldn't consider a change be it in the UK or Kyrgyzstan.

Squaring up for things to come

July 25

Strange how time works! Summer holidays now seem like a long time ago … whereas it only seems like just a year ago, not 2, since I got married but there you go and here I am, busy living life today, neither overly thinking of the past, nor musing over the distant future.Starting back at work in June, after a month’s absence, was more like picking things up after a long weekend. The problems were still there except that what had seemed way off in the future before the holidays, with bags of time for thought and preparation, was now much nearer…and decisions, hard ones, would soon have to be made.

Coming back and knowing what was in store got me thinking about my own immediate future as well as that of my team. Would the team still be there in 6 months? Would I? Should I anticipate or even precipitate? Rather rhetorical and philosophical questions because being responsible for a team of ±10 culturally different, free thinking, free speaking members I am supposed...no, it’s expected of me, and rightly so… to anticipate and know into what we’re heading and gently nudge the team there… Nudge them there? Yeah! Get to know my team!

So, in all logic, I know the time is coming when I will have to face up to some lively meetings with my team, notably when the axe finally falls and it certainly will. I also know the fore-coming announcement will confirm them in their conviction that, like lambs to the altar, they are being offered up in sacrifice to improve cost optimization, re-equilibrate off-shoring to “Right” shoring and shore up stock options. Then, at that precise moment in time - and with the selective and retentive memory I have - I will not fail to recall certain recent events to their instigators, instigators who had along the way tried and failed to destabilize me, failed in their actions because of misinformation and misconceptions, failed for the wrong, misguided numbrilistic reasons.

While on holiday, and free of day to day work problems, thought was given to my current position and alternatives. I’d initiated contact with a company in Beijing and although it wasn’t so much a serious contact as a trial to refine my communication - from the decisive “Elevator message” to the more “expansive” résumé (Where I am coming from what else would you expect?) - for future contacts…who knows it could have come to something and if it had, with wife and furniture, I would have been off in a flash ……but it didn’t and I’m still here, browsing through other potential contacts and eyeing network feeds because like a lot of my peers I believe in being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right person.

So. With that thought in mind, and my eye on the network discussion feeds, I’m squaring up for a stormy autumn and believe me, whatever may come and from whatever direction it may come from (to paraphrase a famous Swedish singer talking of his divorce to his no less famous Swedish singer wife) it will all be experience and useful matter for a Blog!!!

The meaning of it all

February 01

As mentioned in a previous entry the last couple of months at work have been spent trying to reconcile conflicting interests: Applying the client's business strategy - with its potential impact on me - and defending my company's interests. Where the conflict arises is in harmonizing different interests and understanding the sense of it all for me, personally.

I have to explain here that my company is in the process of renegotiating our contract with our client and that my client's procurement service have inserted a clause in the contract stating that a re-evaluation of the workforce volume, of what we invoice the client, could be envisaged. This is a polite way of saying that if "Procurement" so decided a reduction in our workforce was to be undertaken. It's important to note this because it sets the context for the rest of the story.
...I have been trying to persuade my client to think big, think global and exploit the resources at their disposition, exploit the advantages of their Near & Off shore sites, for a new business and retrieve a part of this new business for my team. Doing so would cover a certain slice of my team's activity for the financial year that was just beginning to take shape.

The challenge was to do all that and get the best possible out of it for my team, company and me. But the results were not apparent. Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture but until now I'm not seeing any long term solution, just a case by case response to individual problems but then as I said I'm not aware of the big picture, the agenda - apparent or hidden for that matter. (Every now and again I hear and see things that confirm the impression I have that others within the client's organization have their own (hidden) agendas that central management dedicate a certain amount of time and effort to the controlling and curtailing of. I even get the feeling my team is occasionally used in the curtailing of certain ambitions.)

But back to my problems. The possibility of laying-off members of my team is very real so the prospect of obtaining a fairly sizable chunk of a new business would guarantee work for my team and stabilize the team until, hopefully, the end of the financial year.It was here that another conflict arose. I could not accept to take on this new business at any cost and during one meeting with the client's business manager and newly appointed ops manager I made this perfectly clear, very much, it would seem, to their consternation... How could a contractor, in such a situation - yes they were aware of the situation with our contract - pass over a golden occasion? Well it’s easy! Motivation...motivation and conditions of acceptance! The ops manager wanted me to take on all the business at all costs and distribute it amongst my team because that's what he did when he did my job (I'll explain this later*)! I had already explained to the ops manager that this was not possible. My project managers were already fully booked with a legion of small accounts and projects that occupied them full time and brought in very little revenue and I wasn't going to push walls to fit in more! This met with further consternation and interrogation! Why not get the team to work overtime! well why not? ... and yes there is a slight hint of irony in my words!

This new business was a occasion in a million, I was told. The chances of replicating it again this year were very, very slim so I should seize on it, I was lead to understand! ...and there I was again with my motivation... Yes I would like to take on this new work, I told them, but they would have to do what was necessary to make it possible, e.g. take away some of the small accounts that absorb us so much and how about some financial incentive? What about a reconsideration of the contract we (my M.D. to be exact) are still trying to finalize? Not their role they let me understand. They did, however, say that a re-evaluation of the contract was always possible! Well why not! and there I go again with my irony, mainly because I felt as though I was hearing what they thought I wanted to hear. All that was missing was the paternal tap on the shoulder.

Another reason for irony is that I spent a lot of time and energy over the last year (my wife can vouch for that) trying to convince the business manager to liaise with the then ops manager, who doubled as financial manager - in charge of the contract with my company (get the ramification? No? OK I'll get there) to get some sort of a operational team strategy set up to handle such requirements. The equation being: New business = evaluation and assignment of the required resources = work for all, including my team = an improved ROI.
But they don't seem to see it like that. For a business that sells "Translation & Localization" services in a Global Communications environment it sometimes seems to me that this very same business is in need of some training in internal communications (talk to my hand). The people concerned sit in adjoining cubicles but could well be across the other side of the planet for all the apparent good their physical proximity was. For a business that wants to develop and apply their strategy on a global scale it’s sometimes hard to fathom where they're going but then again I am only a contractor and not privy to all their strategies and agendas. But at the end of the day the problem is evident. The client, and here I beg to be proven wrong, does not have the means to exploit the near & off shore sites as they would like. The resources are not available and hiring within the client's organization is not easy as it would seem so they resort to persuasion, not to call it "Brow beating", to get my team to do the work. It’s not through altruism that they're giving us the work but through lack of (rapid) alternatives. The problem is that the psychology applied is not subtle and unfortunately "be thankful we don't give the job to someone else" leaves me cold. The Damocles sword is already over my head and I'm no longer predisposed to patronizing attitudes.

* BTW The operations manager I refer to in the above is in fact the person I took over from when he left my company to join the client's in 2005. The captain leaving the boat before it runs into an ice field....a metaphor to illustrate the state of our business when and since he left and other off shore sites started ramping up and taking over business we had been doing until then. The same ops manager who followed a strategy of expansion and development during his time as team manager now admitted invoicing the client a surcharge to cover the extra work. I can't recall if any of my team or I saw anything of the surcharge! Whatever, he apparently didn't understand that things had moved on in the 3 years since his departure and that such measures are no longer taken (either that or he's playing it close). From our point of view the notion of incentive and motivation had been profoundly altered since his departure...management techniques have also been altered since he left, options have been closed and budgets rethought... very certainly corrective actions to rectify some of the "Techniques" he applied during his time as my team manager. (In a following meeting with my M.D. the ops manager asked my M.D. to explain my reticence to take on extra work at any cost. My M.D. diplomatically explained the current situation. Our company could no longer surcharge the client for even the slightest extra "effort" and as such could not recompense the team and so motivate them to working overtime. On the contrary - with the prospect of a reduction in the workforce, a reduced end of financial year bonus and a freeze on wages - just how can you be expected to motivate the workforce? Certainly not by cramming them with more work than they can reasonably manage and then tell them they should be lucky to have a job!!!)

Conclusion I need to get a better understanding of where the client wants to go. I will adhere to and apply the client's strategy but my role and motivation as a contractor but also as a resource of a certain expertise and value add has to be understood. Meeting the challenges my client sets me is an essential part of my job and enormously stimulating but not at any cost. Not like its being done so far. Not as long as certain elements try to play my team against others factions. Not as long certain elements of the client's team adopt a "Kleenex" or condescending attitude towards my team and myself and lastly but most importantly: Not until the client's director decides otherwise.

One last point. In the current situation its better not to be ambiguous. Furthermore the attitude of certain elements within my client's organization, elements who relish in pointing out that my project managers and I are not part of their team, elements who relish in putting us in our place should perhaps understand that as long as we are under contract with the client and an integral part of the business. It’s frustrating to hear some of the gratuitous, counter-productive and pointless remarks (and yes I do have examples). If these elements persist in adopting a "Kleenex" attitude towards my team so be it but then they shouldn't then be surprised by the boomerang effect or by what may be seen as an apparent lack of flexibility by my team. What's in it for them? What's in it for me? An extended contract with workforce flexibility and recognition for implication and special efforts? I'm open to negotiation!