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Q: I’ve
been in my job for six years, but there’s very little
runway for me here. Last week, a business acquaintance
offered me a job at his company. It’s not really my area
of expertise and the position is somewhat unclear, but it
seems exciting. Do I go for it? Name Withheld, Wayne, Pennsylvania
A: Does
your new opportunity seem exciting—or just different? We
ask because you have our alarm bells ringing.
Not that
we don’t like exciting jobs; far from it. It’s just that
we’ve seen too many people take a new job just to get rid
of the old one.
That
choice can work; we’ve all heard stories of people who owe
their careers to a spontaneous switch. But in general,
when it comes to managing your career, we’d have to invoke
and twist an old saying: It’s better to be smart than
lucky.
By smart,
we mean informed—which is exactly what you aren’t right
now. You’re just intrigued, probably because you’re a
little bit bored or frustrated at your current place.
Maybe you work for a family business and you’ve reached as
close to the top as you’ll ever get. Or maybe your company
isn’t growing. The specifics are irrelevant. What matters
is you seem poised to leap before you look.
Don’t—at
least not until you conduct some serious due diligence.
Start with
the opportunity itself. From where we sit, it’s pretty
confounding: The work isn’t exactly what you know, but of
even more concern, your role isn’t defined. It’s as if
your acquaintance is saying, “We’ll figure out the details
after you get here.” To which we say, “Run for the hills.”
Almost
nothing in management is more frustrating than being given
responsibility without authority. Your new boss, whether
it’s your acquaintance or not, will surely want results
from you soon enough. But without a clearly defined job,
you’re in trouble. You may not, for instance, be able to
hire people or spend any real money. Your coworkers may
shrug you off. Who are you, anyway?
This
dynamic has no better illustration than a story told by
Cathie Black in her terrific business memoir, Basic Black.
After a year of being wooed by company founder Al Neuharth,
Cathie accepted the job as president of USA Today in 1983.
On her
first day, however, she was mortified when an advertising
executive approached her to announce, “I just want you to
know up front, I’m not going to be reporting to you.” With
a sick feeling, Cathie recalls, she realized she had made
a classic mistake: “I had never nailed down, in writing,
the reporting structure and what my actual duties were to
be.” It took Cathie months to straighten things out for
herself at USA Today, although as everyone knows, the
story of her long run at the paper had a very happy
ending.
And your
new job might, too, if you get its specifics clarified
before signing on. Even so, there’s a second and final
piece of due diligence you cannot ignore, and it concerns
values. You need to make sure the new opportunity being
dangled before you isn’t attractive for the wrong
reasons—namely, money and prestige.
Make no
mistake. There is nothing wrong with taking a job that
increases your compensation or enhances your reputation.
But too often such jobs can come with a real cost to your
less-than-immediate future, not to mention your pride and
authenticity.
We have a
friend who grabbed an unexpected offer for its elevated
title—vice president—and a $25,000 salary boost, only to
end up as the fall guy for a company that was going down
the tubes.
Another
friend, a golf pro, gave up his job at a friendly little
club for the glamour of working at a fancy, big-name
course. But he went from partner to serf, treated by
members as little more than a scheduler. At the small
club, his wife was an office manager and playing member.
At the big, she is working in the bag room.
Yes, the
pro had feared this exact outcome. But he’d let the oohs
and aahs of his friends over the new job’s cachet drown
out the big uh-oh sound in his head.
Without
doubt, the offer in front of you could turn out to be the
breakthrough of your dreams. Maybe it will replace
monotony with magic. But don’t leap for it without looking
hard, both inside the new company for clarity and purpose
and into your own heart for a sign that the change is
worth its consequences.
*****
Jack
and Suzy Welch are the authors of the international
bestseller Winning (Collins). Their latest book is
Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest
Questions in Business Today (Collins). They are eager to
hear about your career dilemmas and challenges at work and
look forward to answering your questions in future
columns. You can e-mail them questions at winning@nytimes.com.
Please include your name, occupation, city and country. |
