The Employee Guide to Corporate Divestitures

Excerpt from Outsourced - 12 New Rules for Running Your Career in an Interconnected World

Table of Contents

Introduction
Shift loyalties.
Prepare to work in new ways.
Manage your “me” issues.
Go searching for cost savings.
Pay attention to the new performance measures
Focus your energy on adapting.
Protect the communication pipeline.
Be a relentless learner.
Achieve some early wins.

Introduction

Careers just aren't what they used to be, are they?

You join some outfit, and the next thing you know the part you work for gets pulled out and plugged into a completely different company.  You get no say in the deal.

Makes it tough to plan your job future because organizations won't sit still.  They're constantly reshaping themselves.  Today's business landscape keeps shifting as companies merge, restructure, reengineer, downsize, outsource, and divest.

As usual, people get caught in the middle.

Of course, sometimes it works out great.  On other occasions it causes a career relapse.  Almost always it's a gut-wrenching experience that puts you on the edge of your seat until you figure out just how you'll be affected.

We might as well get used to all this.  What you're witnessing here is a revolution.  A worldwide upheaval is underway.  The old organization model is coming apart.  And so is our familiar concept of careers.

So go to school on this.  The people who get with the program are the ones who'll come out ahead.  The folks who figure out how to win in the new scheme of things will have an edge on everybody else.

The secret is adaptability.  Using your energies to adjust—to take advantage of the situation—instead of fighting the inevitable. 

Getting divested could look like a curse, but it might be a blessing.  And how well you manage yourself through all this may make the difference.  Almost always our destiny is determined not by what happens to us, but by how we handle what happens.

So take charge of yourself.  Now.  And build your career according to new rules.

Shift Loyalties.

Getting divested does something funny to our sense of justice.  It gives a person this vague feeling—sort of like being adopted by a stranger, and not having any say in the matter.  Some people have a little trouble making the necessary emotional shift.

We might compare it to the situation where a professional athlete gets traded to another team.  All of a sudden the person is wearing a different uniform, and working with a new bunch of people.  The big challenge here is to put your heart into playing for the new organization. . . .