Depending on the openness of these executives, a courtesy interview sometimes concluded with honest feedback on what may not be working for them, as well as the hard truth about their prospects for a job, short term. Five to ten such meetings per week, half of them out of obligation, all of which were not billable. A soft form of philanthropy when it hurts to give either time or money.
A variable that caused me grave concern in late 2008 was how behind our business was in social networking, which was growing explosively as a way to connect with talent. In fact, this revolution was a possible category killer for executive search. With the advent of Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Classmates.com, and industry-specific online marketplaces where people could find each other more easily, we were entering unknown territory. Was the business of recruitment becoming less relevant? Were we being demonized by the digital explosion?
During the previous recession, in 2002, with excess space, time, and staff, we effected a business transformation. We entered the career transition business, led by my colleague Bill Holland. The plan was to use this strategy to hedge our recruiting business and repurpose our unused space and people. Correspondingly, during 2008, and later, in 2009, NEXCareer became a healthy story within our portfolio. We assisted thousands of executives looking for work, which partly offset our losses from our core business. It also hammered home how challenging it was to look for work; few of our clients were successful in getting a job.
Another headache was my overzealous commitment to pro bono service: efforts through the business on behalf of feelgood, non-revenue-generating, not-for-profit organizations and associations. As the market decreased, the need for more creative ways to fundraise increased, requiring me to give more time and attention to the valuable causes and organizations on whose boards I sat, including The Power Plant, Canada’s leading contemporary art gallery; Marketing Hall of Legends of Canada, which focused on honoring executives for lifetime marketing achievement and on mentoring future legends; and the Young President Organization, a global group dedicated to creating better leaders.
Remembering the dark days of previous recessions, I was beginning to think of checking in with a coach – maybe in December – to regroup, lick my wounds, and try to refocus and come up with new ideas. Deep down I was just hoping the storm would pass. Did I even want to be in the business? I was starting to manufacture answers, such as, It’s been 20 years – should I move on? Meanwhile, less work for me as a commissioned agent meant my income would be a mere fraction of what I had earned the year before – 70 percent lower, in fact. It’s tough to keep your chin up when you face a pay cut this size and think you may lose your business, too.
The funny thing about facing imminent
death is that it really snaps everything else
into perspective.
—JAMES PATTERSON, AUTHOR
September 2008
My wife, Leslie, first witnessed it at the school drop-off in September. Fees for the school year were pre-paid seven months prior. The chatter this year was that a large number of families were opting out of the expense of private school for the coming year and were preparing to reassign their kids elsewhere. (Fast forward to September 2009: When we returned our kids to school, enrollment was down 15 percent.)
Mothers talked openly about the stress at home. Impatience, arguments, and verbal fights were on the rise, as husbands experienced unprecedented work pressures. Those who hadn’t been terminated had to do more with fewer people, or come up with solutions to problems they had not previously encountered. The market crash, the credit squeeze, and a nebulous future were creating financial and emotional pressures that few in our generation had ever experienced.
“I am trying to compartmentalize, but my work and financial stress has spilled over into the family,” a friend shared with me. “I have a debt load I can’t sustain after my salary was rolled back. I think I’m going to lose my job.”
I knew I faced some tough decisions at home. Our own budget was ridiculously bloated in light of thin times. I put the evil day off a little longer, however, by concentrating on the troubles at work.
We now were parting company with friends and colleagues and asked more from our staff. Salaries were frozen, some rolled back. Some people started to job share, or take a reduced workweek. Clients were asking us for considerations, sitting on their payables – our receivables. Some went bankrupt without ever paying us. Some were heading for bankruptcy while we served them and never bothered to warn us that we’d probably never be paid. They expected us to suffer alongside them.
“Hey, this is only a $50,000 fee for you,” one CEO would tell me. “Suck it up; I just lost my business.”
And then necessity forced me to cross the line from the business to my life.
Regardless of your habits and social standing, making serious adjustments to the way you live is not easy. I had to confront my own feelings of entitlement, of having earned it, of having paid the price. I have close friends who lost their jet, and they’re still scarred by it. Deep down I thought it should have been easy for them to move on. But because the jet represents success and achievement to them, losing it represents the reverse: failure.
Perhaps I could procrastinate a bit longer on dealing with my financial plight, I thought. Instead of deciding what expenses could be cut at home, I reflected on how compartmentalized I had let my life become. My overall life scorecard was warped by too much weight on success at work. If things were going well there, I felt the wind at my back; if not, I could barely move.
I started to think about changing my own wiring; I had put too much emphasis on revenue, profit, income, and growth. Of course, a change like this is easier said than done.
I came to realize, for the first time, that I hadn’t handled big downturns gracefully. The 1990-92 recession was the catalyst of my separation from my first wife, leading to divorce. The 2001-03 recession propelled me to a new personal “best” of 210 pounds on the scale.
I needed to rework my scorecard to suit a different purpose. Earlier I had built a map of my life’s priorities to help me stay true to my commitments.
My Life Map
Earlier, the map had helped me explain to my kids what my commitments were to them, and where they fit in my universe. They understood that, while I couldn’t tuck them in every night, they were my first priority. It also showed them what my other commitments were, such as caring for my widowed mother and playing various roles in my community.
Now, I was going to use the map to explain why I was going to need to also spend more time at work. Ironic, considering that the exercise was meant to decrease the stranglehold of work on my life.
I stuck with the map exercise. I wanted to make sure I would focus daily on a specific positive outcome for each of the key stakeholders in my life, and on my health, my marriage, my mother, my kids, and my community. I defined a goal for each and some smaller actions I could take that would move me toward achieving the goals. In anticipation of how I was going to handle the business and its effect on our household, Leslie and I revisited our family values, which we had developed when our kids were younger. We came up with a list of values, in no order, as a way to drive our major life themes, as opposed to following a more traditional spiritual path.
Family Values
Contribution
Excellence