Chris
“Letting the World Know that You Are Still Breathing has Value"
I knew what was going to happen before I even got to work. For four or five weeks, I got all kinds of signals: the requests for in-depth reports, what initiatives I had led in the department for several years, and the results. Regularly scheduled catch-up meetings with my manager were being canceled week after week. It was a Monday morning. I got up and checked my phone, and there was a message from my manager, who just happened to be in New York that day and wanted to have a catch-up meeting with me at 9:30. I knew my job would be eliminated before I even got to work.
Since I was a senior manager in the organization, I was not asked to pack up my boxes and leave the premises that day. I was kept on for several months. As my final day was approaching, I was getting mixed signals. On one hand, I was told I should take time for myself. And then I was also under pressure to complete projects and have things very nicely tied up for the person who was replacing me. I told them they couldn’t have it both ways.
In my last three months, I was obsessed with working hard and leaving my professional reputation intact. I wish I hadn't worked as hard as I did because, ultimately, it didn’t make a difference even though I felt better about myself at the time. To a degree, it also made me think that I was over-accommodating. The right balance needs to be struck. However, I would have done it the same. It's just part of my psychological profile. But at the same time, while I was working as hard as I was, I had colleagues of comparable seniority who were not coming to work during their severance period. So, the feeling was, "Am I just a chump?"
I won't compromise who I am or how I work because it's part of my core values. My work ethic is just that—a work ethic. The fact that I completed so much work and there was more to be done without people to do it helped me leverage some extra freelance consulting work with the organization, which helped me financially during a transition period. I banked that money, which was good because I needed it later.
After I was officially done with my job, I was a little spent the next day, completely uncertain about the next chapter. Ironically, I left on a Friday and a month from the day I left my job, I had a job interview, which, in many ways, would have been an ideal job. I was underprepared for that interview. I was underprepared in presenting my suitability for the position. And obviously, I bombed the interview. That prompted anxiety that lasted for a few months. I didn't do too much during that time. I did my consulting work, and I was definitely licking my wounds.
My transition and transformation:
That particular window of three or four months wasn't particularly productive. I thought it would be time to lose weight and get back in shape. I was trying to do everything. I decided I wanted to get a PMP certification for no particular reason, so I went through 30 hours of online training, which was challenging. But there was no real purpose. I felt I had to do something, so I was grasping at straws of what I needed to do to make myself attractive in the job market. I didn't have a plan. I was haphazardly applying for jobs that I heard about online. I was rudderless. In hindsight, if this happened again, and I had the financial resources I had then because I had the benefit of severance and a comfortable level of savings, I would have made it more about the emotional recovery. I would have taken that trip to Cuba and Vietnam. But at the time, I felt it was irresponsible to do those things, even though I had the resources to do so.
I wanted to work for a mission-driven organization. I wanted to change my focus and work within a different kind of space, and I did a lot of unique things to get there. I set out to achieve this change, a true career transition. I had this counter-psychological reaction. I crafted a plan that helped me optimize my natural desires and tendencies to want to self-improve. I took classes, volunteered, and balanced that with aspects of the reinvention I was less comfortable with. The reinvention plan could include things that I really enjoy doing. But I had to balance that with activities I didn't like doing. That was a good compromise. But the most important part of my journey was talking about what I was doing and telling others what I wanted to do and to show them.
I took a fundraising-intensive class. I met a lot of people. I volunteered for a telephone fundraising solicitation at a non-profit. I wrote about that experience and an article for LinkedIn about the change of working in an open-plan office environment. My new narrative was that I was capable of change and reinvention, and I was reconsidering my values and biases. The subtext of all these activities is to consider me and take a chance on me. I even took a LinkedIn learning class on Salesforce and posted about it on LinkedIn. Then I got a note from someone I had met at NYU asking if I would consider helping with the Salesforce implementation at a tiny non-profit. So, I was volunteering a couple of days a week. Funny enough, Salesforce ended up being a requirement for my next job. It's the tiny, inconsequential things you can do and let the world know what you are doing because you never know how people will react. It's like creating a mosaic of your professional history.
What I learned about myself:
I learned that I suffer from an essential lack of confidence, and being laid off bruised me. It was not a happy time. I left my job at the end of March 2017, and by January 2018, I was interviewing for a position in Washington, which I viewed as an easy solution. It was continuity in the same industry so that that job would be a quick fix to my problem. I was returning to the workforce at a senior level and was lucky to have landed. At least that’s what I thought. That job was an ill-considered decision because my heart wasn't in it. I tried to convince myself that it was and that I could contribute something. I ignored the cues from the hiring manager that this would be a difficult turnaround situation.
Part of the cues I was missing was that the expectations for a reasonable turnaround were unrealistic. I underestimated the impact living in Washington away from my family, even during the week, would have on me emotionally. There was a logical and emotional side to this. The logic side told me it was market-sizing my industry, and there were simply no opportunities at my level in the magazine publishing industry due to well-known disruptions. The recognition that having worked at a mission-driven publisher, the opportunities with that kind of brand were even fewer. I wanted to do something outside of a commercial or mass setting. And finally, I recognized that my heart was no longer in publishing. I didn't want to do something that I had already done better someplace else. In the twilight of my career, I at least wanted to say that I did something different, even if it wasn't at the same managerial level that I had been used to operating at. I just wanted it to be different.
I was digging deep into my values and what was important to me. When you lose your job and change your spending habits, you learn what is and isn’t important to you. That is important because only some realize or reach that point of recognition or awareness. I changed my spending habits because I feared never being employed again. I had to make those eight months of severance last a year and a half, and I did.
This experience helped me discover how much I love to learn. I learned that I am more adaptable than I ever thought I was. I learned that a little humility is a good thing because many aspects of the job loss process are humbling and continue to be humbling even after my transition and transformation. I had no idea what I wanted to do, where I was, or what I was doing. The awareness was not there initially; something changed for me, and I went about this course. I created a plan, and I was incredibly strategic about it. I did things outside the box that were uncomfortable, but I did them, and I saw myself in a different light.
Looking back at who I was when I had this life-changing event, I am certainly calmer, and I'm still very much the same person. Everything that happened during the unemployment period prepared me for changing careers and finding myself in a situation where my managers are 20 years my junior and I have 20 years more experience than them. That was a very sobering reality when I was evaluating my prospects. At the same time, when I considered the transferable skills I brought into this through my many years in direct marketing, I also recognized that I was bringing something unique to the table and that I needed to carve out my own unique value proposition. I became aware of my fundamental competitive streak because I optimized my value by having unique technical skills and the desire to be the best, the most competent.
I know there was nothing I could have done differently to prevent the layoff from happening. This had to do with the dynamics of the environment. There was nothing that I could have done to compensate for a corporate merger or the presence of toxic personalities that had their own agendas. There needs to be a general acceptance that if an organization employs you and unless you are a sole proprietor, every organization will undergo managerial and structural changes. I was certainly guilty of being complacent, but complacency sets in for many reasons. I was increasingly dissatisfied during my last year at the company I had been with for ten years. But who rocks the boat? And if you're fundamentally optimistic, as many people are, you think it will get better. Optimism keeps people entrenched. If you're vested in a 401(k) plan and accrued a month's vacation, these prevent clarity from evaluating one's situation in an organizational environment.
I now define myself as a late-career, former executive who transitioned to a staff position in a different industry. I'm still a voracious learner. I'm a person who's better equipped to deal with organizational change because the skills that are acquired through a position of transition are permanent additions to one's skill set. I'm a better communicator. I'm more honest with myself. I will always be a self-doubter, and there will always be an element of self-doubt, but it's easier for me to put it to the side now. I'm still very critical, and that's just human nature. That's who we all are.
I set out on a new career path. The work I'm doing now is making a difference in the world, and I am definitely learning new things. For that self-doubter who has lost a job or is going through a career transition, who wants to make a change but says, "I'm later in my career; there's no way I could do something like this," you just need to have a roadmap to do it. You need to prove yourself, and you can do it. You can talk about making the change, but you have to put the action behind it. Get out of your way, and just do it. You will be thankful that you did.
Where are they now:
Chris left the ACLU in January 2023. He is now the Senior Manager of Planned Giving at another organization, and things are going well.
