Susan Gould, Author Free Agents

Bowen:     Susan, what do you see happening in the workforce today?

Gould:     Well I think that what is happening is that the workforce is changing, and while there are jobs being reduced in certain sectors. And, we see that all the time with announcements of layoffs, we also see that there are a lot of jobs being produced in other sectors. That is why I think the book has become particularly pertinent, because what we talk about is the need for individuals to really begin to think about how do they manage their careers; how do they look out there and see what are the new emerging markets, what new skills do they need to have and how do they begin to prepare themselves for this next iteration or change in the workforce and the needs of different companies.

Bowen:     So workers are no longer at the mercy of their employers?

Gould:      We try to turn that around because we really want people to think of it more as somebody who takes charge of their career, who recognizes that there is no longer longevity or security at any one company, and that the goal of individuals is to manage their own career and become their own free agent, figuring out what they want to be doing next, what skills do they need to learn, what professional development do they have to focus on, and then taking charge and doing that.

And I think if people are only thinking about "what is the company going to do for me," and "what do I need to do to fit into this company," and "what is my manager going to demand of me next week or next month or next year," then they will not really be taking charge of things. They will be waiting for somebody else to tell them what they need to learn or what they need to do or what the next step on the ladder is for them. And we really saw that that was changing enormously in that no longer were managers really willing to do that nor were companies willing to make that kind of commitment. They really wanted people who would take the initiative, would seek new challenges, would seek out new ways of developing themselves as opposed to waiting for somebody to basically tell them how they were supposed to progress, and I think that is the way that perhaps our parents thought about the workplace and their role in the work world.

We see it as a much more adult-adult kind of relationship, where both people are equally creating a reciprocal relationship in which the employee authors their skills and the organization offers the employee the place to do those skills or perform those skills.

Bowen:      So what happens to loyalty in this new kind of employee-employer relationship?

Gould:       I think that that also needs to be modified a bit. With the people that we talked to we really didn't sense that loyalty had gone away or was already dead. What we did see was that people were transferring their loyalty, and they were moving it from just the company or my country good or bad to the project, or the series of projects that they would be involved in, and that their focus was transferred in that way, so that loyalty took over for a project as opposed to the company. And if it turned out that there were multiple projects in one company, then that was really, you know, a bonus for them, but it wasn't the only way they thought of loyalty.

Bowen:      We in one sense have been talking about sort of a solution, what to do in the event of; or what to do in preparation for. In the context of our series, "Anger in the Workplace," what connection -- what is causing people to be angry or anxious, or both.

Gould:        Well, I think that probably you have explored that with lots of people who may know more about it, but it seems to me that obviously with a speeded up environment, more technology taking over, rapid change -- that does cause a lot of stress for people. And yet, I do think that when you feel that you are keeping yourself current; when you feel that you are more focused on what you can do for yourself and what you are learning as opposed to what the environment or the company or your coworkers are doing to you -- I think then you feel more in charge and you probably don't get so wrapped up in the emotions of anger but feel more empowered to try out some new skills and that may be one of the ways to avoid feeling anger. I think it would be foolish to say that when somebody feels that they are about to lose their job, or have lost their job, that they're not going to be angry. But if you can turn it more to what then can you do with that opportunity or challenge as opposed to just focusing on what has been done to you, I think you may get a different feeling about how to cope with it.

Bowen:       Certainly, some people feel energized by the thought of becoming a free agent. I know a number of people that I have talked to in difficult job situations have actually been looking forward in some respects to becoming a free agent. But others feel victimized by these kinds of actions. What accounts for the difference?

Gould:        Probably some of it goes back to basic human nature of do you see the glass half full or half empty. There are also different skills that we all have in terms of dealing with what you might call danger or fear in the environment. But generally speaking, with all the clients we have worked with, when we can get people to see how they can branch out and develop the skills they currently have in new ways so that they can be using them in other situations or settings. They tend to see it more as an opportunity, more optimistically, even those people who tend to be the least optimistic about changes that are going on in the workplace.

Bowen:     So in one sense this can be really an exhilarating opportunity.

Gould:        It can be very freeing, you know, you can feel that you have lots of possibilities open to you which you might not have thought about at all before, and opportunities to look at new companies and new industries and try something really new. I have had some interesting experiences doing a seminar for people that have been in their 50s and 60s who you would think would be the least optimistic about kinds of changes they can make for themselves in the workplace. Some of these are people about to lose jobs or who feel that there has been enough change, but what they were telling me a lot was that they were feeling kind of stale in what they were doing, and this was giving them an opportunity to rethink things and feel like they would get sort of rejuvenated and new energy back in their life.

Bowen:     Have you been involved in situations where whole organizations want to change the paradigm of their work force and help everybody become more independent-thinking?

Gould:        Absolutely. I did this for one of the universities in which one of their whole divisions really wanted to make people think about themselves much more independently and take more control over their personal career development. And it was very interesting because initially I asked them to list all of the fears that they
had now in this new work world, and of course all the fears you would expect came right out, rolling right out there, fears about obviously losing their job or no longer ever being able to get a job because their skills were antiquated or they didn't have the right skills any longer or things would be out-sourced and you know they would be in this position of working for another organization that they didn't want to work for, or not having an opportunity to work at all, that they would have to move. And yet, as we went through the whole process they felt less constricted in the way they saw themselves. I think that was very important, that they began to see that their skills, not only the professional skills they had but just their lifetime skills, could be put together in packages that could make them very attractive to employers. Also, as they took more control that they probably would have more control over what their employer would end up doing about their whole organization because they became much more entrepreneurial in their approach to how they looked at what their jobs were

Bowen:      What's the motivation behind, for a CEO or an organization to want to change that paradigm?

Gould:        Well, I think that organizations are seeing that they, as they flatten, can't have managers who micromanage as much. They need managers who look at things with a broader span of control, so then they have to push responsibilities down to lower levels, and when that happens you're not sitting on the shoulder of your employee as closely. You don't really know every time how they are going to respond to a problem in the workplace. You have to rely much more on their judgment. If you can begin to give them the sense that they really have the tools and have the ability to make decisions at lower levels, and to make effective decisions, and that they are accountable for those decisions and responsible, I think you get a much more effective work force and you bring value to the bottom line. If people are always thinking how do they add value to this organization, how do they remain an important person in the organization, and how do they create profit for the organization, they are going to be thinking much more completely about what their role is. They don't see themselves as just one tiny little cog. When they gain more responsibility about that they really get more excited about what they are personally doing, and they bring better ideas to the workplace as well.

Bowen:      I am just curious if you have encountered a situation where a CEO knows at least intuitively that the organization must become more independent but in the process it can be uncomfortable, even scary, for the CEO to lose what is otherwise a perception of control.

Gould:        It often depends on you know what this CEO is like. If people are very, very control oriented and need to know about how every bit of the company is being managed and need to know every bit of information all of the time, they are going to feel very out of control as they push decision making down lower and lower in the organization.

Bowen:       I have this image of the CEO almost becoming a parent of an empty nest.

Gould:        Well, and maybe parents of empty nesters also need to do this, but you become more of a coach or a mentor; you're cheering people on; you're giving them the direction. I see CEOs as really being most effective when they focus on 'what is the vision for this organization,' 'what is our overall strategy,' and laying out the broad guidelines of what we need to do and how we need to do it, and then letting people run with those ideas and really create the value. It means for individuals at the very top that they have got to really let go, and have renewed confidence and faith in those people who are working for. It's really hard, especially for somebody who has been completely in charge and has in a sense dictated the way everything was going to be and didn't necessarily feel that they had to disseminate as much information as they have to now, because one of the keys to success in doing this is really making sure that everybody has all the information they could possibly need on where the organization is going, how it is doing financially, and how the products are doing out there in the marketplace, and how satisfied are our customers. All of those things which tended to be pretty -- or often were -- compartmentalized or only kept for the most senior managers and the senior leadership team or whatever, as opposed to really being disseminated.

Bowen:      In talking about the kind of things that organizations should be doing, what should companies value in a work force?

Gould:      Well, I think they need to value people who are willing to take initiative, who are eager for challenges, who are willing to take some risk of the responsibility for their own professional development, who really do want to stay on the cutting edge, who push them hard to make sure they have all the technical resources that the employees feel they need, who are willing to take advantage of all the internal training, who think of new ways that they can disseminate training when they feel it is important for their coworkers and their colleagues, who are willing to really take the time to understand what the financial implications mean for the organization. Too often I have met people who tell me, "Well, I really don't understand what the P&L statements mean or the balance sheet statements mean for the company, I'm not quite sure about it all." And if we're going to give more responsibility to employees and treat them more as adults, then they've got to take responsibility also for understanding how they have this impact on the bottom line for the company, and I think companies are beginning to really value that. They value people who ask questions, who are willing to look beyond the old box, to think of new ways of doing things, and to you know create some closeness or intimacy with the customer base so that they really do bring back what is it that we should really be doing out there in the marketplace.

Bowen:      Do organizations feel a responsibility toward free agents?

Gould:        Well, I think you sort of get divided up between those people who are working -- if you're a free agent kind of an organization, then obviously you have a much greater commitment to those people and you really want to build that kind of a community. If you are referring to people who they view as consultants, probably that relationship is more difficult to define. For some companies, they do feel that they want to bring those people in and keep them as close to them as possible so that they really understand how the company is functioning and what the values and the culture and the vision of the company are so that these people can contribute as much as possible. For other companies, they look on people as, "We hired you to do a specific job, do it, and then move on, and we don't have any further responsibility for you," so I think that there is certainly different approaches out there in the work place.

Bowen:        In one sense though, isn't this whole concept of free agent sort of a way for organizations to rid themselves of guilt in terms of firing people?

Gould:        Well, that has certainly been said a lot and yet companies that I've done some work with have found that often times what they've done when they have had a lot of downsizing is that they have lost a fair amount of important experience and history of the company and some of the cultural piece of the company which they then find is really missing. So perhaps initially they saw it as a way of ridding themselves of cost and expenses and making a leaner, meaner organization But I think now they are beginning to see that maybe they need to also create more of a sense of community, that otherwise they are going to lose some really important things which can be valuable to them going forward as they try to create a bigger presence for themselves in the marketplace.

Bowen:      So how do they create that community?

Gould:      Well, that's hard. What we see is companies really working hard at doing that. It often centers around how do they both include people who work full-time for the company and people who are consultants. Involve them all together and create more of a sense that we're all in it together even if you're only working on a three-month project. Be in the office more often, come to some of our staff meetings, we listen to your input, we ask you when you're directly affected by decisions we are going to be making, we make sure that you really do understand what our culture is, what the vision is for the company and your role.

Very often I hear from people that they really want to try using the same consultants, that these are consultants that they've been satisfied with because they feel that they really then bring an additional commitment and knowledge about the company which is important to them. But when you're trying to create the internal free agent community, I think you need to really think about how do you enable the people who are there to get broader exposure within the company, to have more challenges, to go on perhaps more cross-functional teams, to learn more about what is going on in other pieces of the business, to continue to hone their skills, to continue to grow and develop, and even if there's not this ladder to climb to have lots of different kinds of experience so that people feel they are always adding to their skill bank.

Bowen:      In your book "Free Agents," you suggest that there are industries that are representative of these kinds of communities. You mention publishing for one. Are there other examples?

Gould:      Sure. I think that we've all seen how publishing, where we used to think of that as kind of a very staid industry in which people began in that industry and grew up in it and moved through the different editorial ranks and continued to stay there for periods of 20 or 30 years. Clearly, that has really changed. And very often we found that publishing companies were trying to either outsource or use consultants or freelancers to do most of the activities that you would have thought were kind of core to the company, like editorial work. And they kept the business core, the marketing piece, the PR piece. One of the issues they found was that the technology was moving so rapidly that, how do you keep people up to par and all their skills current on all the new technology. And in some interviews we had we found that the companies themselves had decided that they were going to keep the people they used as freelancers trained on the software that they wanted them to be using. Others expected them to just be knowledgeable on their own and use their own time and money to learn all this.

Another industry that clearly is using the free agent model is the high tech industry, particularly in Silicone Valley which is the area I know best in which people do see often their loyalty primarily to projects as opposed to companies, and they certainly feel that they could easily move between companies. One of the interesting pieces is that they talked to us about something we came to call the "no fault exit." That meant that people, if the a company wasn't growing as rapidly as they would have liked, or that the areas that they were interested in or projects they were interested in working on were no longer open or had already been completed, they'd move on to other companies with the understanding that they would just be gaining new skills, and the company that they had left would be glad to see them come back if they were so interested. So there is a lot of movement between companies and back to old companies and a lot of opportunity.

People build also their networks, and I don't think we talked about how important networking is in the free agent community but in order to really stay abreast of what is going on in the industry, and also to what is happening and what opportunities might be available for individuals, people do need to really keep their networks very active and keep in touch, keep their hands on the pulse of what is really happening. One of the best ways to do that obviously is talking with all the people that you've worked with previously and keep in touch with where people have gone and what new things are happening in their different companies.

Bowen:        The concept of networking has been very important for people who have been out of a job and who go through outplacement, and yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain traditional jobs.

Gould:        Well, I think a good example is somebody who has been a CFO. If they lose their job because the company has merged or been bought or acquired, what has happened is there is only room for one CFO. And if you only think of yourself as a title, then you really are in trouble because there is only one job you can hold, which is CFO. And you have to look at another company and maybe there isn't one around that is open for you, whereas if you think about all of the skills you have acquired as you have been being a CFO, and if you think of all the different areas you have been involved in, then you begin to think of yourself in a much broader context of what is the next possible job I could have. And if you can describe yourself that way, with your skills as opposed to just a job title, I think then that using your network becomes critically important, because those are the people who you know or who will pass you on to someone else who do believe that you can do a good job. And so if you can give them a hint as to what are the various kinds of jobs you could be doing, it gives them some opportunity to brainstorm with you to be more flexible in their thinking about what is it you do, what are the roles you can play. Whereas if you only you know focus on your title, then you constrict people's thinking I believe.

Bowen:        So the traditional methods of job hunting where people are looking for the same position or similar position in another company are really not going to work?

Gould:     They may not. But I do think that networking just becomes very, very important. When you think about how do most people get their jobs, most people do get their jobs through other people telling them about things that are happening in different companies, their company, or something they've heard about, or a friend they've heard from, or whatever, and they get referred to those people. Probably 80-85% of all jobs are gotten that way as opposed to either getting them through ads in a newspaper or through search firms or recruiters.

Bowen:      So how does one become a free agent?

Gould:        We found there were really four stages that people tended to go through as we talked with them. One was the whole business of separating. And that may be physically separating because a company has fired you or you no longer have a role there. Or it may just be the attitude you have to bring which says "now I'm going to take charge, as opposed to having my company just manage my life for me. I will be in charge of what my career will look like and what I will do," so that's the first stage, the separating stage. That may sound easy but it's really pretty hard and difficult because you have to really often contradict all these old myths that we've had over the years which talk about that if you just stick it out or if you've been someplace a long time you'll just continue to be there, and that isn't necessarily going to work.

Then you need to go into the redefining stage, which is where you reevaluate and look at all of your skills and your values and your knowledge base. And you sort of begin to think about how would you put yourself together, how would you describe yourself, with all of the different pieces that go into making who you are. We call that your portfolio of assets or your bundle of skills, but it is really, how do you package yourself. How do you define who you are now.

Then the next stage is the positioning stage where you both go out there and try to sell yourself in the marketplace, but you also need to be gathering a lot of information at the same time, which is really calibrating, do I fit? is this working? and being willing to step back and reevaluate how you're doing or focus on using other skills if the skills that you're trying to sell are just not selling in that marketplace.

Then, the last stage is the sustaining stage which is in a sense very difficult as well, maybe the hardest, because we all like to have the sense that we have this endpoint, we've done everything we're supposed to do and then we get to this point and then everything works out just perfectly. Unfortunately, that isn't always the way it works. In the sustaining stage it is making that commitment to being a free agent in a sense for life, to continuing to always be willing to redefine your skills and reevaluate them and to reposition yourself, to continue to leverage your skills, to learn new skills. That's kind of hard because we all thought we'd just get to this one resting place and then we would just be able to rest on our laurels, and that's what those of us who are over 40 or 50 say isn't really happening; you can't just rest on your laurels. I think that young people coming out of college today can see that more readily than maybe some of the people who are past their mid-30s or so.

Bowen:       Certainly the notion of being a free agent sounds attractive. In some respects it sounds like the only real alternative. But what are the larger social and cultural aspects of being a free agent?

Gould:        Well, first we should say that I don't really want anyone to believe that being a free agent means that companies no longer have responsibilities to provide benefits or things like that to their employees. But, in terms of the societal things, I think that people will for example need to recognize that learning doesn't stop when you either finish high school or college or graduate school or any -- there's no end time for that. We all need to think about how do we continue to learn, and how do we continue to focus on what new things are happening in the world and in the marketplace, and how do we position ourselves to be able to take advantage of new job opportunities. That means that we may have to recreate ourselves multiple times. It certainly means that the idea of working in one company forever may work for some people but it is unlikely. We not only may have multiple jobs in many different companies, but we may have multiple careers. The idea that you could start off in one direction and then as you see things changing or as your interests change, moving into other directions certainly seems to be a very plausible way of thinking about one's career.

Bowen:       I have this picture of sort of migrant workers or a nomadic society. Is there a downside to this? You know, the loss of loyalty, the loss of commitment. It sounds like it could be independent in one sense, but the downside sounds as if it could be perhaps totally impersonal.

Gould:        True, but you know, we talked to numbers of people who had been in the same company for 15 or 20 years, and they considered themselves free agents. We asked them to talk about it or define it, and they said that the thing that first of all they wanted to emphasize was that they had had in those say 15 years maybe five or six different jobs. They always felt that it was a more reciprocal arrangement or an equal arrangement between them and their employer and that they always thought about what kind of value were they adding and what were they getting in exchange from their employer. So they maintained a higher degree of loyalty to that employer but they also recognized that if the challenge wasn't there or if the company were to downsize or whatever, that they had learned a lot at this company and they would then be really well-trained and skilled to move on to the next company, and for that they felt very committed to the company because they company had enabled them to get that additional training and develop their additional skills. So I think that in some ways companies can create a sense of loyalty in employees in the way they also treat them and in the way they feel that they are building that community. I have seen companies in which, when somebody is going to leave the company really does help them think about who do their senior managers know that might help them in the job search? So, it's also a question, if they provided an enormous amount of value to the company, I think the company will feel a greater commitment to them. So it may be a lot about creating value on both sides.