Are you obsolete? (In the Trenches).

When you're totally absorbed in a job or up against unending crises, you may not see (or you may ignore) that you're in a rut; your usefulness to the organization is ebbing and your management skills are moldering. You can be engaged in heavy mouse milking for years and not admit it. If you love what you do and you're cushioned by a supportive boss and co-workers who rely on your contribution, it's likely you've never considered your vulnerability. However, your boss and co-workers won't make the stay/go decision about you should the organization hit wind sheers. An outside consultant who knows nothing about you, but runs the numbers on your contribution versus your salary and benefits, may make it. His or her only standard may be your replaceability.

Are you vulnerable, regardless of length of service and skill sets? There are ways to test vulnerability and assemble some hard evidence that your management role makes a difference. Here's how.

Are your skills state-of-the-art?

Are you tethered to a support person who costs the organization a minimum of $50,000 a year (including benefits) because your technical skills (common software, email, and voice mail) are between poor and non-existent? How do the other skills critical to your job stand up? For instance, marketing savvy, financial analysis, the ability to identify, frame, and solve problems. As a manager, how do you compare with others doing the same, or similar, job at competing organizations?

You must do a self-test for obsolescence. Only field research can provide the answers. Network with ACPE members and other contacts to identify industry stars to compare yourself with. What skills do they have? What do their job descriptions look like? Retained search consultants--if you build relationships with them--can tell you what organizations demand when seeking candidates for a job like yours. (If you can't find people who do approximately what you do, it's a red flag that says you're in trouble.)

If you discover skills deficiencies, can they be corrected through mentoring and/or continuing education? Don't be comforted by the fact that your boss' skills are even more outdated. There's nothing worse than being laid off because your skills are obsolete when, with some effort and a fire under you feet, you might have become cutting edge.

Is your role essential?

Where does your job fall into the big picture? Have you been in your job since 1995? Do you take all your vacation every year and never come back to problems no one else could solve? Does your work exclusively benefit internal departments, most of which are staff support? Is your department or division prime for euthanasia if the current management gets into a financial bind or is deposed? Would profits or customer satisfaction be damaged if your department disappeared?

If you conclude your skills are above reproach, but your position in the organization makes you vulnerable, you have two choices: Wait for the axe--which may or may not fall--or change jobs. If you consider the latter, you don't necessarily have to change employers. Could you reposition yourself internally by transferring to a more profitable or significant division? If the company is fighting for its life, a change may not be worth it. However, it could allow you to test a new role and refine your skills before moving into the marketplace.

Can you be replaced easily?

Let's assume your skills, both managerial and technical, are cutting edge. Could someone half your age at half your salary perform equally well? In other words, does experience influence outcome? People whose primary skill set is managing others need to think hard about this. Despite all the talk about the importance of experienced managers in producing results, it's still an imponderable. It could be argued that a medical director with ten years experience can solve a patient problem quicker than someone with one year's experience. His or her knowledge of the organization and its systems transcends anything a new manager could know.

A recent study indicated that longevity is important when the product or service has a "long shelf life,' for example, a law firm partner may interact with certain clients better because of his or her experience and history with the client. Experience is not so important when the product or service changes regularly--technology comes to mind--or is disposable. However, relationships built and maintained over years are cash in the bank, especially if top management believes the client is loyal is to you, not the organization. That makes it easier to justify one's existence in a service business.

But can you prove it?

If a thorough examination of your skills and your role convinces you that your contribution returns more to the organization than your salary, can you prove it? What if those consultants come sniffing in your direction? Can you quantify your contribution? How can you document that you're state-of- the-art or even ahead of the wave? Can you demonstrate that you, personally, and your experience, matter to clients or customers? Consider these strategies:

1. Put together a portfolio

Construct a chart that shows how you've Improved your efficiency over the past few years. Ask Human Resources what one hour of your time is worth, including benefits. That's your billing rate. Show that by decreasing the time it takes to do a task you've saved the organization a specific number of dollars. Let's assume your rate is $150. Your responsibilities include analyzing physician performance. Last year, it cost $1,500 to generate a report. This year it cost only $1,350 because of your experience and increased efficiency. Now, show that you caused your direct reports to improve their efficiency while saving money.

Show how you increased satisfaction--internally or externally. Raising customer satisfaction matters. It's also measurable. Have you mined your files for testimonials from satisfied, even delighted, customers or--here's a radical idea--solicited some from people who will put in writing that your work made a difference for them?

Here's another way to value your work: What would it cost the organization to recruit and train your replacement? How long would it take the new person to master the job? As a manager, your strongest argument might be that your job has value because you retain direct reports longer than other managers, saving the organization the cost of recruiting and training. Pie charts can be constructed to show that the average employee who works for you stays six months longer than the company average and three months longer than the department average. HR may be persuaded to share the average cost for recruiting and training a new hire. If the data are so terrible they refuse to share, use industry data from your professional society. Failing that, call the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

2. Ensure your boss' support

Suppose, after research and consideration, you believe you can prove your work makes a difference. Who do you tell? One of the unknowns in any layoff situation is whether your boss will argue to save your job. How do you stand with your boss?

Review your performance appraisals. Are there training or performance issues you haven't addressed because your boss never pressed and you got a raise anyway? If so, fix them this minute. A boss who values your contribution is worth cultivating, even if he or she is also vulnerable. Many people have kept their jobs because a motivated boss argued strongly for their retention.

Managers who've had to make layoff choices work to save the people who are easiest to manage and the most productive. They will sacrifice workers who are computer will-nots, those who always take the opposite view from the manager's, and those who lack people skills. Are you surprised?

How do you stand with your boss' boss? The higher up the ladder, the greater the influence on who stays and who goes. If you're invisible to your boss' boss, you have a problem. Your boss may never acknowledge your contribution. There is no organizational court of last resort, so raising your visibility outside your department matters.

3. Advertise your successes

Are you plugged into the grapevine or have you been lulled into non-participation by the booming job market? That's a mistake. The grapevine is listened to and believed, especially by those who don't personally see what goes on. If you're not sharing your successes with the grapevine--"Weren't the latest numbers great? The team was thrilled!"--you're missing an opportunity to toot your horn.

4. Cultivate recruiters

For top management, there is no clearer proof that your work has value than when you turn up with a written job offer. Someone else is willing to bet money your work will make a difference. If this seems obvious, why do recruiters tell us that about 60 percent of the potential candidates don't return their telephone calls?

Conclusion

What are the risks in continuing to do your job well, enjoying your life, and trusting that you'll survive? Anyone who argues that jobs are cut and created solely on a logical and sound financial basis needs a drug test. I have never heard a CEO, publicly or privately, make that claim. How many health care organizations have rehired the so-called redundant physician executive when they discovered those skills had more value than a superficial analysis indicated? How many organizations got rid of employees only to use them later as independent contractors--for more money?

The best reason to analyze your value to the organization is that if you are laid off, getting another comparable job--or a better one--will be far less of a hassle. You won't have to cudgel your memory for details of your past successes. Most of my clients are more careful about keeping performance data, testimonials, unsolicited co-worker compliments, etc., than they were five years ago. They also return every recruiter call and never fail to give headhunters names of as-yet undiscovered stars. They haven't completely erased the pain of the fact that organizational loyalty won't save them, but they're in recovery.

Marilyn Moats Kennedy is Managing Partner, Career Strategies, Inc., Wilmette, Illinois, and a long-time member of the ACPE faculty. She can be reached at 1150 Wilmette Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091, 847/251-1661, via fax at 847/251-5191, and via email at [e-mail].