Factors
Job Survival Today
Introduction
Balance.
Job Survival Today covers a complex subject. Sure, flick through the book to get the general flow of where you are heading. But we are dealing with your financial success, your contentment, and your happiness. Job survival is a means to an end; a very personal end. Job survival is a balance between your work and all the other aspects of your life. So give it the attention it deserves.
Understanding
You are misplacing the goal and wasting your time if you think you can charge through all the chapters in two or three sessions. Each requires very careful thought and reference to your particular circumstances. Be honest with yourself and give yourself time and place to digest and thoroughly absorb the suggestions being made. And the conclusions you reach.
Break your study of each chapter into chunks. Blue headings sections by sections perhaps? Or whatever segments you prefer. One technique for internalising the process is to rehearse each segment as if you were a mentor to someone else. Coaching them in your own words. Tailored to their, and the local, situation.
So make measured progress through this book. You have got ready access to the entire contents through whatever tablet or mobile devices, and apps that you prefer. Or sync. Recognition, reference, revision and reinforcement are readily on tap!
Commitment
Job Survival Today is not a singular exercise. It requires continuing confident commitment. Interdependent with, and upon, the reactions of others. Don’t let yourself down before you even begin. So commit to this task. Your balanced attitude is key.
Good luck,
Brian Monks
* * *
Job Survival Today
Chapter One
The Challenge
Far too common in many parts of the world are failures in a combination of factors leading to the unsatisfactory employment of people who wish to earn a living. Too many otherwise eligible people, usually through little fault of their own, are unemployed or underemployed. This is a major waste of national human capital and fosters personal tragedy. In 2012 US unemployment hovered near 8% with about 13 million out of work. Although dropping from close to 15 million in early 2011. But still with huge numbers reliant on foodstamps and support programmes, with estimates of another 12 million underemployed. There are over 18 million officially unemployed in Europe. The persistent flaws in the prevailing US political decision-making process regarding the economy, widespread European instability and fears about Chinese limitations and mistakes are immense challenges facing US leaders, and thus the world economy.
Some commentators suggest that the 2013 ‘sequester’ approach results from prolonged but misguided political and social expectations – giving us unsustainable government expenditure on selected voter entitlements. Government incomes are not matching the cost of the social and welfare promises that have been created. The economy shows improvement in some sectors – but the job market remains constrained. Owners are reluctant to hire. Pessimism is apparent. While governments figure the best recovery tool is to slash spending.
The very evident reality is that for a number of reasons - including social, the global economic system, technological and political - job survival will continue to be a major and ongoing personal challenge for most of us. As individuals, until satisfactory solutions are found and implemented, we have to learn to cope with it. You have got to take the initiative and equip yourself to survive under these circumstances, and to then prosper. Are there any positives in all this? In spite of the situation and because of the openings it presents? Yes - these circumstances breed opportunities. Grab them.
The pace of job survival today has quickened. In developed economies about two-thirds of jobs are now casual, part-time, or contract. Full time jobs are in decline while part-time employment is on the increase. Even a professional ‘career’ now has a different meaning. And so should your expectations. The need to apply the advice in Job Survival Today is increasingly relevant, pressing and frequent. Stay alert and be ready to extend the advantages that you do control.
An obvious fact of life in the 21st century is that change is a permanent challenge. You cannot escape it. The trick is to use it to your advantage. You must not only cope with it – for job survival today you must master it. See Chapter Six for more on this.
The ideas contained in this eBook are basic recipes for personal success. And can lift enterprise performance. None are entirely new or untested. Although the employment challenge facing us all may be increasingly demanding. Therefore they are presented in a timely, convenient, adaptable, current, easily accessible, and very practical way. The advice that follows is applicable at all levels of an enterprise. And can be applied in any sort of entity, big or small, engaged in tradable products or the delivery of services, creating tangible goods or harnessing knowledge, private business or not for profit organizations, state sector or listed corporations. Whether you are white collar or blue collar, uniformed, or favour jeans. Even the operation of a solo boutique shop can benefit.
Creating jobs, and getting jobs are outside the scope of this book. The focus here is your fundamental enabling goal for success – job survival. (Although mastery of the job survival skills that are covered contains attitudinal benefits in getting a job in the first place.)
Clearly, job survival takes on a different perspective for employer on one hand and employee on the other. As employer you have varying sets of stakeholders to satisfy, not the least being investors, shareholders or owners. Your job survival depends on your ability to satisfy numerous competing claims. Therefore you must maximise the mutually reinforcing strengths that contribute to operational effectiveness. And moderate the weaknesses. You are also responsible for assembling and maintaining a management team to assist you with these goals. Upon which their job survival also depends.
As an employee your own authority is more constrained but fundamentally your job survival also depends on the effectiveness of the enterprise and specifically, your part in it. The common thread, and the determining factor, is decision-making. Whether employer, or employee, you contribute to decisions directly or indirectly. How you perform contributes to the decisions, and actions, of others regarding your usefulness. Your performance also influences the assumptions that others may make about the role you are paid to deliver. How you react to decisions will also strengthen or weaken your job survival.
In all employment roles we must interact with others. No matter how competent we may be in our own jobs, we remain challenged by the perceptions held by those who influence our actions. And by the actions or reactions of those influenced by us. How your desk, bench, section, department or branch interacts with the rest of your enterprise system is an unavoidable and key benchmark. It is crucial to your effective job survival. You cannot operate entirely on your own. Ask yourself; who, or what, is the weakest contributing link in the performance of your task? What is the strongest?
Today federal, state, regional and local authorities are hugely challenged establishing environments in which wealth creation can flourish. Future prosperity is increasingly conditional on positioning local business capacity in the forefront of wider national and international business minds. Acting local; but thinking global. This requires an outward looking perspective, to seize opportunities, connecting with organizations that can reinforce local abilities, investing in education and training the workforce, and attracting appropriate business talent and investment.
Your current ability and potential in your specific career specialisation and the application of this skill and knowledge is just one leg of your capability. Another, which is the focus for this series, comprises your ability to integrate these attributes into effective local engagement with colleagues, and bosses, plus wide ranging business and enterprise contacts and networks. You contribute to the production of goods and services to satisfy the needs of others. For which you will be proportionately rewarded.
In today’s workplace and society, getting, keeping and succeeding in a job is conditioned by many factors over which most individuals have little control. It is therefore vital that we master our internal strengths and moderate the weaknesses regarding the matters over which we do have control. And to be very alert to the strength, nature and direction of pressures where we lack power.
This key point is restated. During these very demanding times, job survival depends not only on professional or technical ability but also on being compatible with, and valued by, the rest of the enterprise. Plus the wider human footprint that is covered by the assembly and delivery of your enterprise’s particular good or service. To succeed in most organizations we must initially learn to follow. The goals, scale and culture of the organization create an operating environment. Within this we must perform. Depending on the shape of the organization, and our relative authority- there will be an evolving matrix of followership and leadership.
This followership/leadership dimension is variable. And alters over time. Even the company President, CEO or Chairman has to employ followership attitudes in, for example, the process of seeking and accepting advice. While the Mom and Pop store, the sole trader and founder of an enterprise are inextricably linked to customers, distributors, suppliers, and regulatory authorities. And depending on the scale of the enterprise there is the looming presence of the investor scanning the operation.
Just as successful leadership is not exclusively dictatorial; followership is not simple blind obedience. It includes creative and cumulative contribution. It should be generative.
This book reproduces some of the matters contained in Executive Guidesheets, which are a component of the New Zealand Leader-Manager Concept.
Each chapter is relatively independent but the true value is
