CHANGE @ WORK
Who’s the boss?

by PATRICIA KITCHEN

Staying sane during executive restructuring takes patience and common sense, experts say.

January 2, 2005 - Is it just me or does it seem to you, too, that just about everyone in this country must be getting a new boss? Just look at the organizations that have gotten - or have announced they will get - new top-level leaders:

Computer Associates, Business Week, NBC News, CBS News, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Marsh & McLennan, Fannie Mae, Nike, Continental Airlines, Merck, NAACP, a number of departments in the federal government. A new one is added each day, most recently the St. Louis-based brokerage firm Edward D. Jones & Co.

Yes, top execs are finding plenty of opportunity. An informal poll on CareerJournal.com found that 65 percent of executive visitors to the site are actively looking for a new job.

Great new opportunities for them, but nail-biting, jockeying for position and incessant analyzing of scraps of data for the rest of us when we learn we're getting a new chief executive.

This is the scenario especially in the first hundred days or so when the new guy comes in (fascinating that they are still mostly guys) but can't share any details. We're left wondering: Will we still be in the same business? Will we still have jobs? Will those jobs look anything like the ones we have now?

Questions abound because for a new chief executive "coming in the door, there isn't a hell of a lot he can say. He needs time to accumulate information," says Brian Sullivan. So, early on don't expect anything much beyond "Rah, rah, we're all OK, we'll get our arms around this," says Sullivan, who should know. He's chief executive of Christian & Timbers, a Cleveland-based executive recruiting firm that places these top dogs. Plus, he just started in this job in September.

So, what to do when our workplace is reverberating with the promise of news, but no accurate news is to be had? We can remember what Susan Spiner learned back in 1999 when three weeks after she came on board a technology firm in Manhattan, she learned at a sales meeting that a new CEO was coming in.

The higher level managers were aflutter, she says, as they realized they were in a "Survivor" situation and "some were going to be voted off the island but were not sure who." During that early information vacuum, there was supposition. There was deconstruction of the most minute comments. There was analysis of body language in meetings.

But she found that "the people who know aren't talking, and the people who are talking don't know." Eventually the new boss brought in his own lieutenants, which further disrupted reporting structures downstream, and Spiner ended up working for 14 bosses over the next four years - one for just one week. (She's now on her own as a technology consultant for media and entertainment companies.)

From that experience, she honed her ability to re-interview for her job with each new boss. Don't be defensive about doing this, she advises others.

"Thank God for the Internet," says Kevin Long, senior vice president for employee and community relations at Islandia-based Computer Associates, which got a new chief executive, John Swainson, an IBM veteran, in November.

It's too early for Swainson to announce any major redirection, since he's in that information-gathering mode Sullivan speaks of - holding town hall meetings, smaller group meetings, scheduling meetings with customers, investors and the company's other offices.
But that's not to say he wasn't Googled. And that employees wouldn't have contacted friends and former colleagues who've worked for him to get insight into his management style, quirks, interests and past actions.

Just don't be too quick to assume that all you learn translates precisely into a new situation, Long says. His advice is to keep an ear out for information that might be signaled in internal communiques. Indeed, the company is considering creating a blog to keep employees up to date. Also, "Keep an open mind," Long says. "You can drive yourself crazy if you automatically resist new thinking."

You might also want to steer clear of those perpetual naysayers who can find the downside to a sunny day. "Negative emotions are contagious," says Susan Battley, chief executive of Battley Performance Consulting in Stony Brook. Yes, worry is natural during what she calls the "fud zone" period - that's a time of fear, uncertainty, doubt. But "worrying out loud may be a way for people to offload their anxiety onto someone else."

Much better to divert your energy to useful activities such as working up various career scenarios based on the tidbits of information you do have. Plot out what happens to you and what you would need to do if the company grows in this market - or gets out of that one. Evaluate your skills and contributions and be prepared, as Spiner was, to articulate them. Develop a "board of directors" to help guide you through this and future periods of uncertainty.

"The more options we have, the more confident we feel," Battley says.

Indeed, "you can spend all day in anxiety and at the end feel exhausted but have accomplished nothing," says Paul Baard, a professor of communications and media management at the graduate school of business at Fordham University. "Anxiety is energy. Take that surge and make something useful of it, do purposeful work, do excellent work. Seek out work. ... You have a job to do. Do it!"

That's far better protection than running to your boss every day, asking if you are going to be OK.

Sure, the old power structure may be dismantled, says Baard, but "whatever skills that got you in with that old crowd, use them to get you in with the new crowd."

And keep things in perspective. Yes, your job is important, and Spiner says that despite the improving economy, she knows a lot of people who are out of work. But she also knows people in their 40s and 50s who are hospitalized with stress. It may sound dramatic, she says, but think of what the real bottom line is in this situation - "keeping your job or having your life."