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Q: What
criteria should be used to determine if you have been
with the same company too long? --Jason Morrow, Salt
Lake City
A: Your
question reminds us of a friend of ours, an investment
manager at a highly regarded company in the Midwest, who
drove to work one morning, parked his car in the usual
spot and then found he simply could not bring himself to
get out.
“I guess
I stayed on the farm one day too long,” he joked later.
When we asked him what went wrong, he answered, “It
wasn’t one thing. It was everything.” No wonder he drove
home and called in his resignation.
Obviously, most people don’t decide they’ve overstayed
at their companies in such a dramatic fashion. Usually,
angst about work creeps in, and then builds until it
consumes you. And that can happen early or late in a
career.
Gone are
the days when, after graduation, you took the best
available job and stayed for as many years as you
possibly could stand, frustration be damned. These days,
it is not unusual to hear of perfectly legitimate
careers built on multiple job stints.
So, to
your question, how can you tell when it’s time to move
on? We wouldn’t set out specific criteria as much as
offer four questions to help sort out an answer.
The
first is so simple it almost goes without saying, but
the fact that a lot of people don’t confront it,
including our friend who ended up stuck in his car—a
Harvard MBA, by the way—suggests we go ahead and put it
out there.
Look, do
you want to go to work every morning?
This is
not a matter to be overthought. Does the prospect of
going in each day excite you or fill you with dread?
Does the work feel interesting and meaningful or are you
just going through motions to pull a paycheck? Are you
still learning and growing?
We know
of a woman who worked in consulting for seven years. She
loved her firm and had originally planned a career with
it, but suddenly started noticing that she wished every
weekend was five days long. “Basically, I felt like we
were putting together massive books in order to make
recommendations to people who knew more than we did,”
she said. “Every day at the office, I felt a little bit
more of a hypocrite.” She now happily works on the
“front lines,” to use her phrase, in the marketing
department of a retail company.
Second,
do you enjoy spending time with your coworkers or do
they generally bug the living daylights out of you?
We’re
not saying you should only stay at your company if you
want to barbecue with your team every weekend, but if
you don’t sincerely enjoy and respect the people you
spend 10 hours a day with, you can be sure you will
eventually decide to leave your organization. Why not
make the break sooner rather than later, and start
cultivating relationships at a company where you might
actually plant roots?
Third,
does your company help you fulfill your personal
mission?
Essentially, this question asks whether your company
jibes with your life’s goals and values. Does it require
you, for instance, to travel more than you’d like, given
your chosen work-life balance? Does it offer enough
upward mobility, given your level of ambition? There is
no right or wrong answer to questions such as these,
only a sense of whether you are investing your time at
the right or wrong company for you.
Fourth,
and finally, can you picture yourself at your company in
a year?
We use
that timeframe because that’s how long it usually takes
to find a new, better job once you decide to move on. So
peer, as best you can, into the future, and predict
where you’ll be in the organization, what work you’ll be
doing, whom you will be managing and who will be
managing you. If that scenario strikes you with anything
short of excitement, then your runway is too short. Or
put another way, you’re just about to stay too long.
To be
clear: We’re not suggesting people quit at the first
inkling of discontent. No matter where you work, at some
point you will have to endure difficult times, and even
a deadly dull assignment, to survive a crisis or move
up.
But it
makes little sense to stay and stay at a company because
of inertia. Unlock your door and get out.
****
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. Please visit their new
website at www.welchway.com and submit questions through
the online form at welchway.com/Contact-Us.aspx. Please
include your name, occupation, city and country. |
