Want to become invaluable at work? Here’s how.
Murmurs about recession and downsizing abound these days: Amazon, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs are just a few of the major companies that’ve announced mass layoffs occurring in early 2023. And while the country’s unemployment levels were relatively low at the end of 2022 — just 3.5 percent, as compared to the alarming 14.7 percent we saw at the very beginning of the Covid pandemic — the chatter can still be nerve-racking.
Unfortunately, bad news can be just as contagious as good: Stanford business school professor Jeffrey Pfeffer believes that some of these layoffs reflect a social phenomena of copycat behavior. In other words, as one company announces layoffs, others get nervous and are more prone to do the same.
Think of it as a version of the butterfly effect: 50 years ago, meteorologist Edward Lorenz coined this term as he tinkered with weather forecast models, and discovered that tiny fluctuations in his mathematical model could produce enormous and unpredictable effects in his forecast. There’s a systemic effect happening here, as it relates to layoffs. One tiny shift (one company’s decision to downsize) can have a cascading effect throughout our entire corporate and financial system.
In this uncertain environment, you may start to panic about your own position being eliminated. But your best defense against this seeming career crisis is to check your mindset — and make a plan.
If you’re working at a company where there are rumors of downsizing, you could fall into one of the following two categories: Caught Off Guard Cathy or Anticipatin’ Amy. Cathy is shocked when she gets the tap on the shoulder and is asked to move on, despite all the years she’s put in at the company. Cathy thought she’d been doing the right thing by keeping her head down, delivering just what was asked for (and not a whole lot extra), and being a polite team player. She tends to wax on about the good ol’ days pre-COVID and has found it challenging to change along with the times.
On the other hand, Anticipatin’ Amy doesn’t get a pink slip.
In fact, Amy is invited to join a task force team that will work on turning lemons into lemonade, and steer the work culture in a positive direction.
The difference between Cathy and Amy?
It’s all rooted in Amy’s commitment to invest in her “creative capacity” over the years. Creative capacity is your ability to engage in experimentation, collaborate with ease and embrace curiosity — your own, and your colleagues’. And If you want to develop the creative capacity of Anticipatin’ Amy, try honing any one of the following skills, all of which are rooted in an abundance mindset — one of optimism, and boundless potential:
- Ask Better Friggin’ Questions: Develop your ability to pose new and different questions in meetings, and to your boss — even when that feels terrifying. You can tell a lot more about a person from the quality of their questions, rather than their semi-impressive answers. Don’t feel pressure to ask a torrent of questions — just be brave enough to raise your hand when you need clarification on something, and give context about why the question occurs to you. For example, something like “I’m curious about the article Jeff shared yesterday…” is a great way to frame your ask.
- Prototype internally: A prototype is a rough draft of an idea, and can start as a simple doodle that you show to people in order to get feedback. Prototypes are about experimenting and allowing failure to happen early in a process, and they can save companies millions of dollars if they’re baked into the culture. For example, a pop-up shop is a place where entrepreneurs can prototype a new product offering, or even a new retail space layout, with low stakes. Amy wasn’t afraid to prototype a few wild ideas for her company, one of which made its way into mainstream adoption.
- Work with rigor: Amy doubled down with rigor to demonstrate her value to the workplace. For example, she dedicated additional time to learning a new skill set that she realized was increasingly relevant to her team. But rigor isn’t working yourself to the bone — it’s about focus, discipline, and spending time on a task to develop mastery. Rigor is a critical component of creativity, and Amy’s rigorous work habits actually led to her finding more joy in her work — which was evident to her management and colleagues.
- Identify partnerships: Amy always understood the African proverb “alone fast, together further.” So she converted skill number one (“ask better friggin questions”) into her capacity to ask for help. That led to her meeting a range of people throughout the organization, and forming helpful alliances that she could later leverage in the new team she was asked to join.
- Commit to invisible work: Invisible work is the idea that our most productive moments are not when we’re on Zoom calls or going through emails. Invisible work happens when we step away from the computer and take breaks, go for walks, engage in meaningful conversations with mentors or mentees, or read fiction. They’re activities that activate neural synapses in our brain, which help to synchronize ideas. Amy committed to taking care of herself, pausing and allowing that invisible work to boost her productivity.
Which one are you — someone who sees the tides turning and adapts, or someone who gets caught off guard when companies need to cut staff? And more importantly, who do you want to be?
Natalie Nixon, PhD, is the CEO at Figure 8 Thinking and author of The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation and Intuition at Work.
