Monday June 15th, The WSJ had an article “Negotiating that Raise or Promotion” (Tessa West) I will comment on today.
Unless you are self-employed, most of us today aren’t negotiating for raises, we’re “negotiating” for holding on to our jobs and not being axed in a crashing economy. Forget the raise -nobody is giving any raises, folks. I’m thinking 30% of investment bankers are going to lose their jobs in the next year or so – and they don’t even know it. Who goes out the door first ? Juniors, of course.
I said negotiating with your BB as in Big Brother. See, I call your boss the Big Brother. (of course I know the biggest brother we often use the word for is the government, but what are you going to call your boss, Little Brother ?)
The only way you’ll still have a job in the next few months is if you’re hooking up yours to your boss’s.
We’re not living in a normal economy. We’re living in an economy suffocated by incompetence and artificial status hierarchies.
Back to the article
Tessa West says you need to ascertain your boss social hierarchy status: “hierarchies constantly shift”. Of course they do.
“What does your request ‘cost’ your boss in social capital ?”
Tessa West
“What problems does your request solve for your boss ?”
TW, The Wall Street Journal
Oh ya, like you thought bosses are those little angels here to help people in need. You can read the rest of the WSJ article at your leisure.
Know this: the boss, BB (nice sounding name by the way, bee-bee), whatever, only cares about his/hers social (organizational) status. You either understand this or you don’t.
What have you done for me lately ? is the name of an old song by Janet Jackson, but it is also your boss’s OS.
There you go, Adam Galinsky, “getting inside your boss’s head”.
Here comes my 20+ years of experience dealing with bosses: a very confident boss is just as bad, or worse, than an insecure boss. Bingo ! (Please don’t make this quote into another meme, I’ve had enough of those already).
You need to bring your boss up the ladder of confidence or he’ll lose you faster than a speeding bullet.
With a very confident boss, and we’re talking C-level here, you need to get him out of the stratosphere and back to breathing though the face masks we’re going to be using around one another for at least some time. Unless you’ve discovered a Covid-19 vaccine, he doesn’t care about you.
Talking about Covid-19, remember: there’s no such thing as an “invisible enemy” (I know you’ve heard that term a lot lately.) Your boss is vulnerable no matter what industry you work in or how high up in the hierarchy he’s in.
Let him know the higher up they are, the harder they fall.
I wrote this Book, The Book of the Underdog for people like you, who’ve had enough of being pushed aside and away. After dealing with the wild card bosses are for a very long time, I gave you straight up the truth about bosses, careers, negotiations and lifestyle improvements. Written in 2018, BOU is still the Manual for handling your bosses.
The message is that “most leaders benefit from a running-the-company mate. A good number two can back them up, reinforce their message, and handle major responsibilities with the same broad view as the top person.”
Rosabeth then gives three guidelines for establishing a successor:
1. Alignment: which messages, values and strengths are clearly reinforced by Number Two ?
2. Differentiation: does Number Two bring up complimentary skills and abilities ?
3. Succession: can the CEO (Number One) hand over power ?
These three things are salient, However, CEOs, bosses in general, do not happily hand over their titles to underlings, except when 1). Jumping ship to a better appointment 2). Retiring and 3). Out of the job on health issues ! Only on one of these three specific situations you see a boss hand over the keys to the castle !
Never seen any of my bosses saying this to me: “Here you go, wonderful, have my job, it comes with a huge desk and my secretary.” Rosabeth in fact briefly acknowledges it but only in passing:
“In fact, some CEOs don’t want a strong number two, perhaps finding it threatening that they could be surpassed.” (Rosabeth Moss Kanter)
That’s a time we can call our own: UlysseNardin Marine 1846.
Max Cantor readers: Which watch tells your time ?
Marine 1846 – https://t.co/d0IYk3u0YU pic.twitter.com/S9DJxDx0mK— PortoMirabello (@PortoMirabello) June 12, 2017
“Bosses love to overstay their welcome.” -Max Cantor truth pill #5
“In Silicon Valley, they do that with Founders stock.”-Max Cantor maxim #6
That’s happening even when they are no longer needed or work well. More and more CEO’s need to be pushed out. It’s happening at the largest companies, at Ford with Mark Fields, and it is not just “because the stock declined by 40% under” him” or “he had no clear business vision”. We’ve learned today of Jeffrey Immelt at GE set to be replaced Aug. 1st. [retirement move announcement]. Jeffery Immelt didn’t wake up one morning and said to himself: I want John Flannery to have my job. He either planned to retire or was pressured to do so. At such a large of a company it would be safe to say they had a Number Two or a few of them ready to replace Immelt. The company had to nurture a replacement, and Number One had to help [bring that Number Two up to speed.]
Dangerous: When the CEO is readily identified with the company. Where people cannot even see a Number Two.
[Most-N.A.] planets have one Sun, a CEO once told me. He likened himself with the Sun. [Note: I didn’t appreciate it one bit.]
“Bosses think they are the best at what they do. Even if they are not.” -Max Cantor maxim #6
If you’ve ever interviewed for a managerial job, one of the questionsyou are asked is “How many people have you had authority over, or supervised ? If you fall within their guidelines for that position ( one to ten people, 10 to 30 people, 50 to 150, etc.) you may advance in the interview process, otherwise they’ll drop you like deadweight on a sinking ship.
Bosses measure themselves on how many people they’ve handled. That is dangerously subjective. Handling a department, division, or a company that’s large overall doesn’t paint a clear picture: if I’ve handled 50 people working in a hospital let’s say, that doesn’t mean I can handle 50 people or less working in a bank customer calling center.
I’ll twist that around and say your’re never wrong if you’re busy. https://t.co/3hXrXOXlit— Max Cantor (@FinancierGuru) June 12, 2017
GM #CEO Immelt is out. Finally. 16 years is enough ! $GM up 4.1% earlier today ! https://t.co/GfNC19Y39g pic.twitter.com/vs9ordbTTo— Max Cantor (@FinancierGuru) June 12, 2017
Note to my readers:
1. Please do not send me any Resumes. I don’t read resumes or follow through. Get a career counselor, web career services such as Vault or WSO. I do not provide resume feedback.
2. Thank you for your readership. I’m hitting 3000 page views per day, which is great traffic coming from almost zero just 10 months ago.
3. The best results accrue if you are frequent reader of this blog. If you’re a birdie, you snooped around once, saw something you didn’t like and left, you’re not serious about improving your chances and your’re probably not cut to be a leader. In fact, most people, are happy to labor under their boss whom they dearly love and revere -until they get fired.
