Business Without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know (31 page)

A personal crisis is something unexpected that requires extra physical and emotional attention: an illness, a death in the family, a tax audit, etc. Since such events happen to everybody, this secret explains how to prepare ahead of time and what to do when a crisis actually hits.

Every boss has a level of tolerance when it comes the intrusion of a personal crisis into the work routine. Some bosses are understanding of the occasional crisis, while others only care that the work gets done.

To discover your current boss’s tolerance level, observe how he or she reacts when other people encounter personal crises. Whatever level of sympathy and empathy you observe from your boss is exactly what you can expect when it’s your turn.

For example, I once had a boss who accused me of “goofing off” when I was absent from work for a week in order to recover from nasal surgery. I was surprised and alarmed, but I shouldn’t have been, because he’d been similarly unsympathetic to my coworkers.

Knowing how your boss tends to react provides guidance for how much groundwork you need to lay to protect yourself in the event that you experience a crisis.

If you are one of the lucky few who still get paid vacation days, it’s prudent to hang on to a few of those days, just in case you need them. Since you’re owed them, it’s harder for a boss to complain if you suddenly need to take them.

If you get in the habit of waiting until the last minute to complete your projects, even a minor crisis—like a head cold—can mean that you’ll miss your deadline. If you regularly complete your projects early, you’ve got some “padding” if something goes wrong.

However—and this is important—if you simply
hand in
all your projects early, your boss will move all your subsequent project deadlines forward, thereby eliminating your padding. Instead, get your projects done early, hold on to them until the deadline, then turn them in.

Just to be clear, I am
not
suggesting that you pad your time estimates in order to goof off. Instead, I’m recommending that you use the extra time to work on future projects, thereby making it easier to get those future projects done early too.

A side benefit of finishing up before your deadlines: it gives you time to think about the project a bit before you turn it in. When I do this, I usually think of a few quick changes that make the final result far better than if I’d waited until the last minute.

However, the main reason for habitually finishing projects early is that it allows you to create the ideal crisis management situation, which is one in which you can cope with the crisis without anybody at work really noticing that anything’s wrong.

In “Secret 9. How to Play Clean Office Politics” I explain how to collect favors and keep track of who owes you what. A reason for having people owe you favors is that you can call them in when you’re
in a pinch: “Hey, something came up at home that I’ve got to handle. Could you finish up the Acme project for me?”

That’s a reasonable request if you’ve helped that coworker out, or if you’re certain (and your coworker is certain) that you’ll be able to return the favor later, as evidenced by the fact that the two of you have traded favors in the past.

Please note that asking for help with your work is
not
the same as asking your coworkers for emotional support. I may sound heartless, but your coworkers don’t want to deal with your personal problems. They’ve got their own problems to worry about.

Sharing details of your personal crisis while at work increases the negative impact of that crisis on your workplace. If your coworker is truly concerned, empathy will make his or her work suffer too. If not, you’re just being a bore.

Even worse, your coworkers may see your crisis as an opportunity to advance their own careers, such as getting your plum assignments reassigned to them.

Rather than depending on coworkers for emotional support, I recommend creating and maintaining an entirely separate support network of non-work friends, family, health-care providers, and so forth.

If the groundwork you’ve laid is insufficient to allow you to handle the personal crisis, you’ll need to work with your boss to change your deadlines, reassign projects, and generally ensure that your crisis doesn’t intrude on everyone else.

The best way to approach the negotiation is to make it about getting the work done, not making your life easier. If possible, come into the discussion with a solution rather than just an announcement that your personal life has created a problem.

Of course, this is difficult to do when you’re simultaneously
dealing with a personal crisis. The last thing you need, frankly, is to be worrying about work priorities that probably seem trivial in comparison. To you, anyway.

But probably not to your boss and your coworkers. While they may feel some sympathy and empathy, they still have to get their own jobs done, meet their own deadlines, and now (probably) take on your work as well.

Therefore, you should try to make at least a good-faith effort to figure out how you can cope with your crisis without inconveniencing everyone else. That being said, there’s a point at which you gotta do what you gotta do.

Deal with your crisis, even if it means blowing off work, missing your deadlines, and forcing everyone else at work to adapt. As long as you’ve tried to limit the impact of your problem, you can cope with it with a clean conscience.

Take care of yourself. They’ll manage without you.

Contrary to popular belief, a layoff in your company need not be a personal disaster. In fact, if you prepare ahead of time and keep your wits, you use the situation to your advantage. Here’s how.

When layoffs happen, many people are unprepared because they’d rather not face the truth. Emotionally, it’s much easier to accept the assurances of management that everything is proceeding according to plan and your job is not in jeopardy.

However, you always want to make career decisions based on reality, and the reality is that layoffs are usually preceded by any or all of the following:

If any of the above red flags pop up, activate your escape plan immediately. (See “Secret 22. How to Achieve Career Security.”) If you wait you’ll end up competing with all your coworkers for the same jobs, because they’ve probably got most of the same contacts that you’ve got.

Similarly, if you’ve been thinking about starting your own company, this is the time to get serious. Write your business plan, seek out investors, and get everything lined up so you’re ready to jump, if it’s necessary to do so.

While you’re developing other opportunities, find ways to make yourself even more valuable to your management.

One easy way to do this is to remain calm during the crisis. Since there will be plenty of weird emotions floating around before and during the layoffs, anybody who keeps contributing (rather than freezing up in fright) is likely to be valued.

Beyond that, increase your contribution, especially in areas that your boss finds personally difficult. For example, if your boss lacks the technical chops to command the respect of the engineers, become your boss’s spokesperson to that group.

Yes, it’s challenging to do this while you’re simultaneously developing other opportunities. Unfortunately, this is one of those situations in which you may have to sacrifice your personal life, at least for a while.

If you can’t become indispensable, consider moving into a group that’s less likely to bear the brunt of a layoff. If the layoff is due to a merger or outsourcing, you should move into whatever group is least likely to be affected.

For example, suppose you work in customer service and your top management has been having meetings with a firm in Pakistan that specializes in customer service. This is a good time to make the move into sales or marketing.

Similarly, suppose you’re working in the marketing group and your company has just acquired a firm that manufactures a product intended to be sold alongside your current product set. There will undoubtedly be redundancies in marketing, so consider moving into engineering.

Having observed layoffs in several large companies, I have noticed that they tend to take place in the following order:

That being said, very stupid companies run by very stupid executives tend to do very stupid things, such as firing the sales force before firing the marketing folk.

Making yourself indispensable and moving to a relatively safe group are defensive moves intended to keep you employed until you can find something better elsewhere.

Make no mistake about it: layoffs are the death knell, if not for your company then probably for any chance of enjoying work or experiencing career growth.

Most of the time, layoffs create a downward spiral, ending only in bankruptcy or some other company’s acquiring the shell of what your company originally was.

Even if that doesn’t happen, things are going to be unpleasant at best. Your company will ask for longer hours, give lower salary increases (or even decrease your pay), and eliminate whatever small perks you might be enjoying.

Furthermore, the longer you remain, the more failure starts to cling to you. Best you get out while the rest of the world thinks your company might be the comeback kid, instead of waiting until it’s roadkill.

While the practice seems to have become less common, some companies still begin the layoff process by asking for volunteers, and giving them incentives to leave.

If you’re offered a package, take it. Chances are that if you remain, you’ll still get laid off but without the extra benefits.

I worked with a guy who was offered a severance package of two weeks’ pay for each of the twenty-five years he’d worked for the company—basically an entire year’s salary.

He passed on the package, hoping to keep his current job, without bothering to line up anything else. Two (miserable) years later he was canned with minimal severance.

The perfect scenario is for you to take the severance package and go to work someplace better the next day. The next-best scenario is for you to hang on to your job until you find something better. The worst-case scenario is for you to get laid off without having lined anything else up.

Regardless of which scenario plays itself out, there’s a unifying element: you’re outta there. But let’s suppose that it’s the worst-case scenario. As a very wise man once told me: “Everyone I’ve ever
known who got laid off was upset when it happened but within eighteen months was saying it was the best thing that ever happened to them.”