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Be Prepared to Start Over—Again and Again

by Robert L. Dilenschneider

Institute, No.47, Winter 2008

A
ttitude and fortitude almost always trump résumé. In today’s corporate world you must be prepared to come off the canvas to fight again and again. Power and influence can be transitory and elusive. I know many men and women who had power only to see it slip or be ripped from their grasp.

Take, for example, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer. He started the company with his friend Steve Wozniak in the proverbial California garage. He built up Apple, only to be fired by his board of directors, mostly because of corporate politics.

What did Jobs do? He started another company, Pixar, which specializes in animation and has become dominant in its industry. Eventually, as Apple floundered under the stewardship of his successors, the board invited Jobs back as chief executive.

What happened then? Jobs invented the iPod and other hugely successful products. In effect, he remade Apple even as he remade himself, successfully battling cancer along the way.

Steve Jobs was prepared to start over at Pixar, and he was ready to start over again at Apple upon his return. He never lost his vision. He never lost his drive. He never let power go to his head. Steve Jobs is a real power player, and real power players have resilience.

Early in 2007, Jobs showed he had a few tricks up his sleeve. He conjured up the iPhone, a smarter than smart phone that does practically everything a consumer wants—other than brew coffee. Jobs was among the first entrepreneurs to understand the convergence of communications, computers, telephony, and video.

Power players like Jobs know how to come back. They never tell us in so many words. They engage us and permit us to celebrate their success with them. They are generous people. They understand that not everything is going to work. They find a way to make a comeback after a professional defeat.

Starting Over is the New Norm

In this age of corporate downsizing, mergers, outsourcing, layoffs, and mass dismissals, you may well have to come to terms with the idea that job security is rarely something to count on. Even though corporate profits rarely have been higher and even though the U.S. gross domestic product is surging past $13 trillion, companies are taking their cue from Wall Street: streamline expenses, cut the workforce, make even higher profits for shareholders.

In short, the era of the paternal corporation that took care of people from cradle to crypt is over. Many studies show that a typical professional in this early part of the new millennium will need to change jobs six or seven times. That means that you have to be prepared to start over and over again.

On the face of it, that may seem daunting. Anyone who’s been fired knows how terrifying it is to be stripped suddenly of job security, not to mention a regular income. Foreclosures suddenly stare you in the face. Health insurance is gone. There’s the social embarrassment of being canned from one’s job. Marriages sometimes unravel as economic circumstances worsen.

Real power players have resilience.
Like Steve Jobs, I am a graduate of the school of hard knocks. I’m experienced enough to know that regardless of attention to planning and research, setbacks are bound to occur. That’s simply part of the scheme of things. However, I’ve learned that when setbacks occur, you have to bounce back. You also must learn the lessons from the setbacks.

Whenever you have a setback—and we’ve all had many—say to yourself: “What can I learn from the problem? What can I learn from the humiliation? What can I learn from the embarrassment? What can I learn from this loss?”

Sometimes on a piece of paper, but these days mostly on my BlackBerry or computer, I put down two or three things that were fundamental to the loss or the embarrassment. Frequently it comes down to one thing: It all happened because of a judgment issue. It’s been said that judgment is intuitive, but judgment also flows from keen observation and analysis. Good judgment requires reliable facts.

Regardless of attention to planning and research, setbacks are bound to occur.
If your judgment fails you and you end up making a mistake, it’s natural to be upset. Don’t get mad. Don’t look to assign blame. It’s not wise to point fingers at someone else, however blameworthy your target may be. It’s even less wise to forget the lesson that my father, a newspaperman, taught me many years ago: Just put it out of your mind for several hours, and your outlook on that situation will change.

This is an important lesson when it comes to making a comeback. People will remember you for your tirades and tendency to blame others. Some people I know will meditate during times of crisis. Now technology has come to the rescue. Why not surf the Web at moments of stress? You’d be surprised how calming that can be.

Practice deep breathing. Sound crazy? It works.

What It Takes

You might ask, What does it take to make a comeback, to start all over again? Does it take nerve? Does it take smarts?

It certainly takes nerve, because once you have been brought to your knees, you say to yourself, “God, do I really want to do this again?” It also takes smarts. It takes the ability to figure out what your next move is going to be. It takes application and technology. I think that in today’s modern world, if you don’t rely on technology to do what you need to do to come back, you won’t have much of a chance. Technology, in the form of research services such as Lexis-Nexis, among others, can arm you with facts and figures that will strengthen your candidacy for the next job.

Striking back is a big mistake. Find a new set of friends.
Coming back is not easy. I always advise people who are trying to put their lives back together to focus on a very few things they want to do. Over the course of my life, I’ve decided on the three or four things I want to get done each day. The night before, I write out a small list to myself, and then, when I get up, I work on them. Do I get everything done? Not always, but I do focus on the things I’ve prioritized, and feel that by doing that I’m moving things forward.

Say to yourself: “I really want to feel good about myself.” Focus very hard on doing that, and it will help you overcome the problems that stem from humiliation. The humiliation usually hurts at least as much as the reversal in economic fortunes.

When people lose their jobs or have to change careers, they often feel a lack of worth. Once an organization has fired them and humiliated them and humbled them, it doesn’t care about them at all. The best thing to do is try to erase that organization from your memory. Just forget about it because it is not going to help you again. That is not to say that you should jettison valued personal relationships that transcend the workplace. You may find that some of those relationships can give you a boost in the next phase of your career.

Often people say they want to strike back: “I want to get Johnny” or “I want to get Company X.” This is a big mistake. Company X and Johnny do not care about you, so why should you care about them? Keep going. Develop a new network. Find a new set of friends. Reach out to people who not only will help you but who offer you the opportunity to help them. Be a giving person.
I realized the importance of moving on mentally and emotionally when I left Hill & Knowlton, where I had been a successful CEO. I said to myself, “What do I really want to do now?” Answering that question required a step-by-step approach, building a reputation and a business to become what the Dilenschneider Group is today.

Why was I so determined to start over? The reasons are very simple. First, I wanted to make an income for my family and myself. Second, I said to myself, “I want a fulfilling life.” Third, I saw the possibility of making a contribution to a greater whole: American society. I thought that was really important. I never had in my mind the idea that I had to show people who didn’t think I was going to be successful that I was going to be successful. Their approval didn’t matter.

Bet on Yourself

How was it that I, a successful CEO having built one of the world’s largest communications companies, found myself one sunny September afternoon stepping out of the Four Seasons and walking up thirty-five blocks on Park Avenue to my apartment to tell my wife, Jan, that I no longer had a job? My story probably mirrors that of thousands of other executives who find themselves unemployed and need to prepare themselves to start over.

I had worked for twenty-five years at Hill & Knowlton, a company of top-quality professionals. I was an administrator of more than 4,000 people, overseeing 86 offices not only across the United States but in far-flung places such as Australia, China, and Malaysia. I oversaw balance sheets. I assessed company strategies. I would hop aboard flights to Hong Kong to meet with Jardines or Hutchinson Whampoa, or to London to see Sir John Bond, or to Florida to advise giants like J. Peter Grace about their business development.

But then Hill & Knowlton was acquired by J. Walter Thompson. Despite all sorts of promises about how we were going to have autonomy, everything changed immediately. Then, to top it off, J. Walter Thompson was acquired by a British company, WPP. I soon realized that Hill & Knowlton was no longer the place for me, so I got out.

In my first moment of freedom I thought of a lesson that Andrew Chancellor had taught me many years before. Chancellor was a guy I had grown up with at Hill & Knowlton. He had been an editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He is probably one of the smartest people I have ever met. Andy could recite the names of all the kings and queens of England; he knew Greek and Latin; he was trying to study Sanskrit so that he could figure out how to deal with India’s ancient culture. Andy always said: “Be your own person. Don’t let the organization ever surround you and beat you down.”

On starting fresh, my wife asked: “So what are you going to do?”

“I think what I’ll do is call a few people I used to do business with and see if they want to work with me.”

I turned to the old rules that had served me well.
I called Wright Elliott at the Chase Manhattan Bank and Tom Lebrecque, who at that time was the bank’s CEO. They invited me for lunch the next day and became clients. I called J. Peter Grace, and he became a client immediately. I called Bob Diamond of Dun & Bradstreet and he became a client immediately. I called three or four other chief executives I’d known over the years. They all became clients immediately, and that was how I started over.

I turned to the old rules that had served me well: I figured out a way to serve those people and bring them value for what they were going to pay me. I found that the value really wasn’t in bricks and mortar or in developing press releases and hawking them to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. The value was in thinking things through and helping them cope strategically with their business problems. This approach has been at the core of my company since I launched it seventeen years ago. Clients cared about the quality of service they got, and I was offering continuity from the past to the present.

I had this advantage: top executives cared about what I was able to bring to the party. Nothing else. That is what made the difference. I was quick to realize that if I let them down for a second, it would be all over, and so I had to continue to produce at a high level, in fact, higher than before.

The United States is a country of second acts.
Whenever someone asked me to do something, I would do it, but I always asked myself, “How can I do more? Not only for money, but how can I do it better, and how can I provide something that this client isn’t getting and can’t get anywhere else?” It was a matter of mentally and emotionally stretching myself for a client, and it has worked out very well.

Another lesson that I learned in starting over was that you have to bet on yourself. That lesson was taught to me by dozens of men and women—Ray Chambers, who, with former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, had formed one of the original buyout firms; famous economist Henry Kaufman; Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who leads the top travel and leisure company in the world, and many more.

I know I will never forget a touching gesture by Rabbi Arthur Schneier of the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. When I left Hill & Knowlton, he called and invited me, a Roman Catholic, to his temple.

“I’m going to say a prayer for you,” he said. Then he gave me a pat on the back and added: “You are going to be fine. If I can help, let me do it.”

That prayer session with the rabbi was inspiring and gave me a special kind of hope. It brought home to me the realization that the United States is a country of second acts.
    

Issue No. 47
Winter 2008

 

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