Staying Too Focused May Not Be Good Career Move

These days, most businesses are preoccupied with how to add workers, not get rid of them.

But therein lies a problem: When a company grows so quickly, sometimes the people it has can’t keep up.

It’s the corporate equivalent of the doctor who trades in his wife after she put him through medical school. After going through such an intense and exciting learning experience, it’s hard to stay put with someone who maybe hasn’t changed all that much.

The folks who outlive their usefulness tend to be at higher levels of a company, said Gerry Sargent, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm in Houston. They’re fired when they can’t keep up with the pace of company expansions.

Maybe someone is good at running one location but doesn’t have the time-management skills to run several locations, Sargent said.

Or maybe a manager who has done a lot of work himself when the company was small can’t delegate when the responsibilities grow, he said. Some folks think that by not delegating responsibilities, they will be more secure in their jobs.

Someone who can’t delegate, however, is often replaced because it’s impossible to maintain a larger span of control without passing on responsibilities, Sargent said.

And sometimes, more sophisticated technical skills are necessary as a company grows.

In another life, when Sargent ran the operations for a moving company in Wisconsin, the company went through four different vice presidents of finance in 12 years. The company went from $4 million in revenues to $400 million during that time and steadily needed more savvy financial skills from its vice president.

“When you start growing like that, a small company doesn’t know how to control cash flow or develop significant lines of credit or arrange for company audits,” Sargent said.

Jane Howze, managing director of the Alexander Group, a recruiting firm, often gets requests for executives who can keep up with a fast-growing company.

One of Howze’s clients in California, for example, hired a top-notch vice president of human resources when the biotechnology company had only 1,000 employees. But now it has 7,000 and does business in 50 countries.

It needed a human resource executive who could run an international operation and deal with benefits, ex-patriots, compensation and differences in culture - all the skills that the existing executive didn’t have, Howze said.

It’s not that the existing executive wasn’t doing a good job - he was, Howze said. The company just needed an international personnel expert.

Eventually, the international expert was hired, which caused the former department head to pack his bags. Most people will leave a company when they see they have been effectively demoted, Howze said.

But it’s hard to throw someone out who was a big reason for the success in the first place, said the human resource manager for one of Houston’s largest companies. It’s generally a leader and company officials feel a sense of loyalty to him.

So companies put up with a someone who maybe hasn’t caught on to new technology or surround him with good people to manage the change, said the manager who asked not to be identified. Sometimes, the executive is put in a less important job until he retires.

“I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do but that happens,” the human resource manager said.

So how do you keep from falling behind? Most people don’t keep up with the learning process, said Walt Smith, senior consultant with Drake Beam Morin, an outplacement firm in Houston.

Most people get so focused with the job at hand because they have to carry heavier work loads or have a lot of social responsibilities that they don’t seek out workshops and community college classes, he said.

Smith recommends that his job-seeking clients read Charles Handy’s book “The Age of Unreason.” It talks about people’s resistance to learning and why it’s hard to recognize change, Smith said.

It’s important to understand that resistance before you can do something about it, he said.

And you also need to constantly evaluate your career and where it’s going, Howze said. It’s critical to continue to expand the width and depth of your skills.