On the morning
of December 12, 1941, just five days after Pearl Harbor, newly minted Brigadier
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was summoned from Texas to meet with Army Chief of
Staff General George Marshall. He was directed to present Marshall with a
strategy within just a few hours to lead to victory in the Pacific. Without
delay, Eisenhower drafted a three-page memo outlining his strategy. His action
is illustrative of one of the most important leadership tools too seldom used
in health care marketing today: strategy.
Executives,
managers and others in transition (for example, many of President Obama’s
first-term marketing campaign staffers) need a personal strategy to guide them
in their careers. Their strategy should have benchmarks by which they can judge
whether the time is nearing for them to move on in their careers and not
overstay their welcome.
Successful
health care marketers typically possess a strong strategic bent, substantial
conceptual skills, an engaging personality, and proven analytical ability. Yet
few seemingly deploy personal strategies in their own careers. According to
executive search firm Spencer Stuart, chief marketing officers across all
industries average just 43 months in a particular job. This relatively short
tenure suggests that marketers would definitely benefit from a strategy to
guide them in their professional pursuits.
You, as a health
care marketer, must be able to discern when the time has come to leave behind a
comfortable, challenging, or captivating job-however difficult that may seem.
Knowing when it’s time to say goodbye is a sensibility that’s often lacking. A
career strategy can help immensely.
Robben Fleming
told me about five years into his job as president of the University of
Michigan that a decade was a “pretty good rule of thumb” as it enables leaders
to accomplish most of their goals and hopefully avoid “wearing out one’s
welcome.” Fleming left the university to become president of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting 10 years after he arrived in Ann Arbor. Like Eisenhower,
Fleming served in World War II and clearly grasped his mission. He had an
overarching strategy to succeed and the requisite skills to ably guide the
university during the turbulent Vietnam War years of student protests.
When you, as a
marketing vice president, director or manager, feel the need to make a career
move, chances are your instincts are probably correct. Even when close friends
or family members may not perceive your instincts as logical or strategic, it
doesn’t mean they are not valid.
Achieving most
of the goals you originally projected is an excellent benchmark for coming to
terms with a timetable to move on. But there are other cogent reasons for doing
so. Consider if any of these situations applies to you—or your boss:
§ You
have become seduced by the trappings of success.
§ The
relationship with your supervisor is in a downward spiral.
§ Your
skills have begun to erode.
§ Your
organization has become increasingly unreceptive to your ideas.
§ You
have become isolated from key constituencies.
§ It’s
becoming increasingly difficult to alter your course quickly.
§ The
organization’s culture is not in sync with your principles.
§ You
seem to have lost passion and vision.
The truth is
that people look for new career opportunities for many reasons, and they differ
with each individual. Whatever the situation, keep in mind five key guidelines
about leaving one job and settling into a new one successfully:
§ Don’t burn your bridges. Keeping relationships
at your old hospital or health system intact may help you in many ways in the
future, especially if you plan to stay in the same industry.
§ Leave something important behind you—something
you can be especially proud of, not simply something to put on your resume.
That will contribute to your own sense of purpose.
§ Take the lessons you learned and apply
them to your new situation, but be careful not to treat your new job as your
old one. Be open to a new environment and new ways of doing things. You have
great skills to bring with you, but they will be used in a different context,
so don’t expect people and situations to be the same. Learn the lay of the land
before instituting too many changes.
§ Be friendly and respectful to all the new
people you meet. Wherever you go, some people see new hires as a threat.
Treating everyone respectfully will help you earn the trust and support you
need and will let people see you as a welcome member of the team. Be open,
receptive and forge an honest working environment.
§ Challenge yourself to learn fresh skills
in your new position so you can contribute to your organization in important
state-of-the-art ways to bolster its competitive advantage.
When you confront
this question of whether the time has come to move on, perhaps Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s words of wisdom will help: “To map out a course of action and follow
it to an end, requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.”
Ritch K. Eich, Ph.D,
former Editorial Advisory Board member, is the author of Real Leaders Don’t Boss (Career Press) and served as the chief
marketing or public affairs executive at St. Joseph Mercy Health System,
Indiana University Medical Center and Stanford Medical Center. He is Principal
of Eich Associated, www.eichassociated.com.
