Having My Say

Just like James Bond,
always have an exit strategy

by Fred Crans

There is a folk song made famous in the late Fifties by the Kingston Trio about a man who gets caught on the subway after an unan-nounced fare increase. With no change for transfer and unable to get off, poor Charlie is doomed to ride forever on the MTA. The song begins with this stern warning, which I am also using as the introduction to this article:

Throughout history, the people of Boston have rallied bravely whenever the rights of man have been threatened. Today, a new crisis has arisen. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, better known as the MTA, is attempting to levy a burdensome tax on the population in the form of a subway fare increase. Citizens hear me out. This could happen to you…

Let’s suppose that you are a supply chain director. You are knowledgeable, dedicated, honest, energetic, committed to excellence — just an all-around crackerjack leader. Every day you show up on time, plan the future and deal with the present. You motivate your staff and delight your customers with the service levels you provide. Your yearly performance reviews are way above average. You may have even been identified as someone whose proverbial star is on the rise.

Then out of the blue something happens that rocks your world. You come to loggerheads with your boss — or worse yet, the CEO — you know your employment is in jeopardy and you are stuck without an exit strategy. What do you do? How should you react? How do you go about keeping the family fed and the career path intact?

How successfully you react to such a situation is a function of many variables, among which are:

• The "real" severity of the crisis

• Your career path stage

• Your available options

• Your responsibility matrix

Let’s look at this issue from three stages in the career path, play out an event scenario and see what each an appropriate response would be.

• You are 35, you have your B.A. and are the director of materials management for a standalone hospital. You have worked at the organization for 10 years and are perceived as upper-level management material. You are working on your MBA.

• You are 45, you have your MBA and are director of materials management for a mid-sized integrated delivery network (IDN). You have been in healthcare supply chain management for 20 years.

• You are 55. You have been in healthcare supply chain management for 30 years. You have an MBA and are well-known in the industry. Your current position is vice president, supply chain, for a large IDN.

At each of these stages in your career path you are the same person, right?

Of course not.

At each stage of your work life you have different experience levels and capabilities, different personal and professional goals and different responsibilities. How you react to a workplace event will be influenced by the following:

• Experience level in the supply chain

• Years of experience with the organization

• Educational background

• Gender

• Personal goals & responsibilities

• Perceived capabilities

• Age

So let’s fabricate a situation in which something happens that is so dramatic and volatile that when the dust clears, you know your current employment situation is in jeopardy. And then, let’s see how you might approach the situation…

The Scenario

As a member of the Supply Expense
Reduction Team, you have been asked by the chief operating officer (COO) of your organization (who acts as leader of the group) to "quietly" prepare a market basket of items in order to investigate opportunities associated with possibly changing the group purchasing organization (GPO) that your organization uses. You report the request to your boss — the chief financial officer (CFO). You receive permission to go forward.

You prepare a market basket and submit it to two competing GPOs, but do not send one to your current GPO because you have been told to do this "quietly." In the course of the discovery phase, you are asked to sign non-disclosure agreements by both GPOs in which you promise not to share their response with any competitors. You sign.

Responses come in and you have your staff analyze them. Your staff prepares a spread sheet, and you give it to your boss. A few days later he tells you that the CEO is prepared to sign on as a shareholder with your current GPO. You ask him if he has read the spreadsheet you sent him. He responds with, "What spreadsheet?" and you remind him of the one you had just forwarded. You tell him that both of the other GPOs were tracking at a significant savings over your current one.

He reads it and says, "I’ll tell the CEO. We’ll have to discuss it." A few days later a meeting is scheduled and you arrive to see members of your current GPO sitting in the conference room with a copy of your detailed analysis.

Needless to say, not only does the meeting go badly, but you can tell early on that the CEO has made a "Jeopardy!" decision — that is, he knows the answer he wants and no matter what questions you ask or points you raise, he will arrive at that answer.

During the course of the meeting, the discussion gets heated and you argue your point strongly — perhaps too strongly. Your boss offers no help.

When the dust clears you fear for your personal liability for having signed the non-disclosure agreements and you know you are in a deep, deep hole with both your boss and the CEO for having advocated long and hard for the change with your GPO officers present. What do you do?

1. Take stock and review the situation in detail. If someone attended the meeting, discuss it with that person. Make notes that recall events in as much detail as you can provide. It is important to paint as accurate a picture as you can. Be critical with yourself. Sometimes in the heat of the fray your imagination embellishes the facts and depending on your personal nature (optimistic vis-à-vis pessimistic) you may have incorrectly assessed the tone and/or damage done in the meeting. If an associate whom you trust can be brought into the situation for discussion purposes, do it, but keep your narrative as fact-based as possible. Keep opinion out of it.

2. Add up the results. When you have finished your analysis, attach a severity rating to the event (0 being not so bad, 5 being expect the axe).

3. Examine your available skills and options. Take stock of your educational background, your standing within both your current organization and the industry as a whole. Make a list of the people you know that could help you — either with advice or with leads to other employment. Call them and talk.

4. Infuse your personal demands. If you have a spouse or partner, if you have children in school, if you have financial demands, these things need to be considered. Hint: Don’t talk to your spouse or partner until you have had time to cool down and come back to a point where your reaction is reality-based as opposed to an emotional one. Personal demands, restrictions, etc, — more than anything else — can limit your response options.

5. Decide what to do.

6. Move forward.

Getting back to our career stage parameters, what could you expect?

At 35, at a standalone hospital and without your MBA, you are still building experience and market value. You may be a hot shot, but there are a lot of folks who already have their MBA at that age, and if you have only worked in one organization, you are dependent upon whatever relationships you may have built to find employment outside. Age is not against you, nor is gender (any more than it always is). If you have already plotted a career path for yourself, now is a good time to go for it. If you are married and have children, chances are they are young enough that a move to another place will not be damaging. Also, if your personal capital is strong within your current organization, you may be able to "mea culpa" your way back into everyone’s good graces.

At 45, with your MBA and at a mid-sized IDN, you should have built up enough
experience and relationships to be able to make the move up to the big time. But your personal responsibility matrix may be working against you. You may have children in high school and children that age rail against the wind when faced with moving. Also, the big jobs are few and seldom do they open up when you want or need them. This might be a good time to consider consulting. Once again, age and gender play no meaningful role.

At 55 and on top of the world, your career is at stake. If you have built great relationships and are perceived as a reputable commodity, you should be able to make that one big last move to nirvana — wherever that may be. But there is an equal or greater chance that where you are at the moment may be the apogee and everything else represents a trip back to the hard, cold ground. At 55 both age and gender are in play. At this age you may have to face the fact that unless you are willing to take hat in hand and apologize, your next job may involve a blue vest and a yellow smiley face.

There you have it. The lessons to be learned here are:

• Build relationships

• Build expertise

• Remain current and marketable

• Develop a contingency plan

• Conduct an assiduous self evaluation
regularly

• Know that at least once in your career you will face such a situation

Do these things, and when the fare on the MTA changes without notice you will be able to reach in the secret compartment of your billfold and find four quarters. HPN

Fred W. Crans is director of materials management at The Finley Hospital, Dubuque, IA. He can be reached via e-mail at fred.crans@finleyhospital.org.