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These Workers Made ONE Crucial Mistake. You Can Avoid It.
During the early 1990s, a beleaguered IBM cut more than 25,000 jobs worldwide. Many of its employees had spent their entire careers working for Big Blue.
Some of these laid-off workers, who were in their late 40s and 50s, found it all but impossible to secure work elsewhere.
“It was the end of an era,” said Eric Rolfe Greenberg, director of management studies at the American Management Association, in 1996.
“It was the last bastion of corporate virtue falling. It was like finding out your grandmother is having an affair. The era of job security had come to an end.”
In a foreshadowing of what happened during the financial crisis of 2008, unemployment snuck up on these workers.
As Nassim Taleb wrote in his book Black Swan, “When laid off, the employee faces a total void: He is no longer fit for anything else.”
Consider your latest project, top-selling product or career within an organization as a single asset.
It might offer valuable returns today, but you must always consider how you can get ready for the next crisis or opportunity.
