My advice on not getting the axe

Today, layoffs are an inevitable, necessary and common business practice. I am by no means an expert at avoiding being laid off nor do I think what I provide in this article is anywhere near an exhaustive list. I am only offering my opinion & advice, which I consider to be common sense. However, my experiences have taught me, that different personality types can fail to comprehend this view point without being told directly, so here I am hoping that what I have to share helps others in their careers and in avoiding being laid off.

I have three simple rules that guide my daily activities and career. Pretty much everything I do ties back to these three rules. Often times great people that are adding value get caught in the mix and get laid off. I believe this is because of a deficiency in one of the three rules or principals that I practice.

Rule #1 You Must Be Adding Value

In my opinion Rule #1 is the easiest of the three rules, because your job requires you to add a certain amount of value. The company hired you into your position because you had skills or the right potential to build skills you could add value with.

Applying those skills is not difficult, however figuring out what to apply them on, and who to apply them for is far more difficult.

A mentor of mine often said ‘Do Important Work For Important People’ this was how he defined value at work. It was the advice he gave on how to get yourself promoted. He was not wrong, and I like to augment his statement when repeating it to others by telling them the hard part is figuring out what work is important and who will still be here next year in terms of the executive leadership level where often there is a revolving door and achieving difficult projects can take multiple years.

Answering this question of “Am I doing important work for customers, leadership, teams etc?” can be incredibly difficult to answer. In my career, I spend a lot of time thinking about what is truly important to our customers, our organization, our leadership, and our teams and due to the number of variables the answer rarely comes easily. The only advice I can offer here is that in my career one of the greatest thing I ever achieved was made possible because I saw a problem when no one else did and I stopped at nothing to fix it. When I highlighted this issue to leadership I heard crickets, I held meeting after meeting, built relationship after relationship and wrote solution after solution until I had an architecture that could fix the problems. And even though I had no allocated budget to fix it, I became the loudest sales person on the floor, turning everyone into believers and seeking out any VP with budget to fund my design.

FYI I am a cloud architect, I am not in sales, but that is a misconception among many people, architecture has a large requirement in sales if you want to achieve meaningful things.

Eventually after 2.5 years from start to finish, I achieved the victory that helped the companies availability & scalability for years to come. The only way I knew this was valuable was because I understood the problem, understood what would happen if it wasn’t fixed, and I genuinely cared about the negative impact it would have on our customers and our company if I turned a blind eye. No one asked me to work on it, even worse no one wanted me to work on it, so I worked on it in my spare time initially. I offer this anecdote as motivation, to trust yourself and your intuition. Never be insubordinate, but when you know something is important, never drop it completely, carry the torch and don’t forget to sell the solution so you can gain support & turn people into believers of your cause.

Rule #2 Make Sure People Know You Are Adding Value

There is a repeated theme among the successful people I have encountered in my career, and that is that they sell their victories or wins. Many personality types see these celebrations or loud pats on the back as unnecessary for what appears to be a small achievement and think “Get back to work. That was easy, why are they celebrating. So what, etc”.

The trouble is…if you don’t stop to celebrate the victories small or large no one would ever know you or your team worked on it.

Except maybe your peer or manager who may not have a seat at the table of decision in a layoff. Ensuring that people know you are adding value is of critical importance. However, you also don’t want to be cocky, arrogant, or over selling to the point that you annoy those around you because it breaks rule #3 ( just a sec we’ll get there). The right balance here I think is one message. When there is a victory send one short note (i.e. email), perhaps reflecting on that victory with an anecdote and thanking those who made it possible for their efforts. It’s important to give the credit of the victory to the people who made it possible and take none for yourself, especially if you are a manager or leader. This not only builds the confidence of your team and your reputation with your peers, but also serves to enable leadership to understand your value and mindset as a leader. I know you don’t want to spam your leaders, but victories aren’t spam. They inspire, don’t be afraid to share the story of peoples victories to help motivate others, and yes join in on the pat on the back for something you may have been able to do with a small shell script. (Sorry if this doesn’t translate well for the non-tech’s).

Rule #3 You Have To Be Likable

Perhaps rule #3 is the most difficult for some personality types. For me it comes naturally because in my life I care more about people than anything else. I genuinely care about each and every persons background, experiences, family, health, aspirations, hobbies, etc. Often times I devote my time in the office to purely social engagement (because I mostly WFH) and I do this because I believe it is the most valuable way to spend my time. I learn what others are working on, I show them how to sell their victories, I seek to educate myself through their knowledge and experiences and I pass along what I can to them from my own knowledge and experiences. I also genuinely care that they are happy, focused, and not experiencing great obstacles in their personal life. If they are I do whatever I can to help because I believe in humans putting humans first.

Before the job and career, your family needs to be ok. Before the job and career, you need to be happy and healthy. If those things aren’t true “being likable at work” will be difficult to impossible because it is less important. No one likes a negative attitude, and it’s hard to be positive when your dealing with family or health issues or both. When you see someone struggling with personal obstacles, listen & help them find positive thoughts & energy.

For those it might not be clear to, I have given you part of the answer. To be likable, you must genuinely care about others and you must seek to commit the crime of ‘soft talk’ at work, to expose your genuine self so you can get to know their genuine self. That is how relationships are formed and having deep meaningful relationships is what makes people happy in life. Being likable is about caring about others, and it’s about being a team player, which goes hand in hand. Celebrating mediocre victories, having a beer with them when their having a bad day or if they don’t drink alcohol a Starbucks & a walk are all nice gestures that should be common place.

I know that even if you follow the three rules, companies make mistakes. However, I hope this article helps those of you who took the time to read it to avoid the axe. I believe firmly in the three rules, again it’s not an exhaustive list, but this is part of my personal compass. Thank you for reading & your feedback. I also appreciate any shares I get because this may be common sense to you, but it’s not common sense to all personality types.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn on December 19th, 2016. If you enjoy my content please follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Also check out my YouTube channel for video tutorials.