Page 190 - James Caan - Get the Job you Really Want

I think that everybody, in every job function within an organi-
zation, can do that. If an employer ever lets you go, irrespective
of what reason you are given, I would argue that more often
than not it is because you don’t perform, you don’t contribute
and you are not delivering.

You might hear about cutbacks, or that the company is
scaling down. But I have sat through dozens, maybe hundreds of
meetings advising the board of an organization which is down-

sizing. It is the same in every situation – you go through a list of
people and very quickly it becomes clear who is dispensable and
who is indispensable. I would love it if the employees could sit
in on those meetings, because they would soon realize that the
conversations are not rocket science.

The board goes through the list and someone asks, ‘So, how’s
Bob doing?’
‘Oh, we can’t let Bob go. Bob does this, he does that, he

brought us this customer, and he’s grown that account ten
times over.’
It takes five minutes, and everybody agrees that Bob has got
to stay.
You move on to another name on the list, and this time

the feedback is, ‘Well, he’s not doing very much for us at the
moment. He’s not really contributing.’
The decision is so easy, but it is because that person made it

easy. He gifted them the opportunity to let him go.
A great tester is when somebody goes o≠ on a two-week
holiday, and nothing changes. There’s a big message there. In
one of our businesses somebody took a three-week holiday and

178 get the job you really want