K. Jennings-Hancock - Good Business in the 4th Quarter

Good Business in the Fourth Quarter

....By Kathrine Jennings-Hancock

This is good business in the fourth quarter of 1999:

At eight a.m. I said good morning to my boss. He grunted a "good morning," giving no indication that it differed from any other morning we had passed. His phone rang, and I screened the calls. His mail came in and I opened it. We discussed the items in his Palm Pilot, and edited several documents. He mentioned a Friday lunch appointment, and I thought nothing of it when his boss arrived unannounced from our corporate office.

He went into my boss's office and shut the door. Not surprising, in the midst of budget finalization. When discussing numbers, it's best to shield your conversation from the rest of the office with a good, solid door -- especially when your numbers are as puny as our company's have been over the past year. But such is life. Such is the economy. Such is the unsettled state of doing business as we all anxiously approach the dawning of the dreaded Y2K.

Corporate emerged twenty minutes later, and told me to have a good day. I intended to. I was on my way to lunch.

"I need to see you," my boss said then, and I entered his office. He closed the door, and I braced for I'm not sure what. Something confidential. Something regarding a department head, maybe, who'd been spending too much. Something, but not what he said. "I'm leaving the company," he announced. "Today. Now, actually." He glanced at his watch, as if expecting it to bleep an appointment reminder: "Leave Career, one-fifteen p.m."

It was then that I saw the agreement on the conference table, one quarter inch of even white sheets with a glaring red 'Confidential' across the masthead. My stomach twisted, abdomenal sign language signaling this one was for him.

If the peace sign is the official emblem of the sixties, I truly believe the separation agreement is, if not the official icon, certainly a close runner-up for the symbol most accurately symbolizing business in the nineties. Thirty years ago, people were fired. Today, you sit them down, ask them to resign, then offer to 'create termination' if they can't fit resignation into their schedule. It's terribly civilized. Perhaps it's designed to allow some measure of dignity. To allow, "Honestly, I just got tired of the company and quit," rather than the often more accurate, "I got the boot."

"I've resigned," he said then, "to pursue some other directions," and the knot twisted, expanded, and wedged itself securely over any appetite I'd had for lunch.

By two, he was gone.

At two-thirty I met his replacement, shaking hands with a shorter, darker haired, better dressed and only subtly intimidating version of the man who had just left. He radiated determination and spoke in veiled enthusiasm, while I felt as if I'd been unwittingly captured by a very bad episode of Candid Camera. How was it possible to discuss scheduling, staff meetings, and the state of our website just seventy-five minutes after my boss (I reminded myself not to call him that any more, not even mentally), a man with Little Leaguers at home, had left the building?

The answer is simple: That's how you survive the business world of the nineties. Hard times come (hard times being whenever dollars decrease, labor rises, and the situation festers in that fiscally unhealthy stasis over a prolonged period). If corrections are not implemented, people are removed. Their framed awards disappear from walls, family photos are swept from desktops, and within the space of seventy-five minutes, there is no indication they ever occupied either the office or a place in the lives of their co-workers. This is the best way to handle employee removal, the preferred method for a painful situation, much as today's high speed drill is the only choice for tooth repair, replacing the slow grinding drills of the 1950's.

I give my new boss all due credit. He adroitly mentioned in our first conversation (how he segued from scheduling meetings, I will never remember but always wish I could) that 'a decision had been made'. My boss (do not call him that, he's gone now) had been a decision for the good of the company.

When a leader is removed, the troops mourn. Today the word was out, and the loss seeped through all departments like poisonous mustard gas through the air vents. Before my second cup of Morning Thunder, I'd been approached by a half dozen co-workers wanting to bend my ear about how awful it was, what a rotten thing, and did I have any information I wanted to share? What did I know? Had I heard anything, seen anything, could I shed some light, or say something? Was someone next in line to be gone?

"Just give it time," I said, and said it repeatedly throughout the day. "This is a good thing. It really is best for the business."

My words were met with twisted frowns to shame even the most contorted Bitter Beer Face. But I believed my words, being a staunch supporter of Acting As If. It's easier to act the way you wish you thought, than to think yourself into acting what you don't honestly feel. It's been my experience that if a pilot is taken off a flight, the smart move is to sit back and give your full support to the new pilot in command. You'll be much more apt to land safely if you do this.

I separated, in my mind, personal from business, as methodically as an egg is separated from its yolk for a recipe. I allowed myself to think about the person who had either resigned or been asked to leave (perhaps 'the person who was resigned' is the better terminology), but only during my lunch break. For so long as I was carrying out my job, I chose to think only of his replacement. He appeared to 'know his stuff', and exuded confidence that now, the numbers would climb upward. This could only be good for all of us, and excellent for the business.

Less than twenty-four hours after my boss left the property, I found myself fully aligned with his replacement, even looking forward to working with him. Looking forward to making the company stronger, and if you'll spare my use of an overused term, happily anticipating 'moving ahead'.

It felt like the right way to feel.

Until I allowed myself to think, as I drove home, about the man with the family. The man with the resume in hand who would search for a new company to belong to. The man who left so abruptly, he was given no opportunity for good-byes to a staff who honestly and sincerely liked him. Thinking about the man, the knot returned, settled, then neatly and effectively cut off my appetite for dinner.

It was then that I questioned my own level of humanity. Was I less of a person for feeling this optimism, for slamming shut the door of mourning so soon? The rapid about-face in my loyalties either meant that I had forgotten the human element of the business world, or that I had finally mastered the fine art of surviving within it. The decision as to which was the better way was one I opted not to make. I merely separated it from my thought processes as methodically as the egg, again, from the yolk.

Yesterday before lunch, he was my boss. After lunch, he was a decision that had to be made. This morning he was 'the person who used to sit over there,' and this evening he is someone I used to work for, but now I work for someone new. Loyalties shift, emotions step aside, the focus turns to forward directions, and a person is relegated to a decision which had to be made.

This is good business in the fourth quarter of 1999, up close and more personal than I would have preferred.

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