4 Ways To Avoid the Axe

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Just because you’re a quiet achiever doesn't mean you won’t be fired.
Believe me, I've seen it.
I've sat in boardrooms and watched the decisions being made as to who gets fired, released, retrenched, and outplaced.
Who gets axed and why?
Often it’s the person who is simply unknown to management: the introvert rather than the extrovert, the demure rather than the outgoing, the task-oriented rather than the people-oriented.
Yet my psychological profiles of retrenched employees reveal that they seldom lack skill, energy or ability but they fail to publicise internally their competence and achievements.
So when the axe falls it's on them.
It works like this: during tough or turbulent times,companies do what’s required for their survival, not yours. Corporate firings are motivated by the desire for greater corporate efficiency, not by poor performance of employees. Suddenly, cutting back to core business means cutting back to core employees. Core employees are those who blend in noticeably with the prevailing mood of the company. When companies downsize, reduce ‘head count’, cut costs, and slash overheads, the quiet achievers are easy targets.
Don't get the chop. Here are 4 Ways To Avoid Being Axed:
1. Find a Fit. Wave the company flag, sing the company song and achieve through established channels. Even US Presidents become unemployed if they don’t follow the rules, get along with their work mates, or fail to fit in. If the leader of the world’s only superpower has to accommodate others in order to be keep his job, so will you. Is this always easy? No. Is it always necessary? Yes. So find a way to fit in.
2. Become skilled in the art of self-promotion. You don't have to change your personality, become a blow-hard, be super-competent or fawn over the boss. You simply need to consistently inform others of your successes. Does IBM make the best computers in the world? No, but IBM markets its competencies well. Does McDonald's make the best hamburger? Does Coca-Cola make the best beverage? Do you get the point? Learn to communicate effectively the competence you already possess.
3. Attend to politics. You don't have to be a Prime Minister or President to grasp that every job has a political dimension that’s as important as the job's actual tasks. Office politics is just an aggregate of relationships. Politics is people, and they are all around you, all the time. So pay attention to what’s going on around you.
4. Wise Up. Blithely trusting that doing good work is enough, or being oblivious to the political dimensions of your job is not only naïve, it’s immature. Wise up. If your political skills don't match your professional skills, you are expendable because you lack the ‘emotional intelligence’ required to operate successfully in business today. If you don’t invest time and effort to ensure that you are perceived correctly by others, then their conclusions about you may not be supportive, accurate or fair. But that's your problem, not theirs.
You alone are responsible for your career.
Take charge of it,