Young People, You Should Force Yourself to Grow Systematically

Published: 2019-09-03

Some time ago, the semiannual macroeconomic data were released. The situation shows internal and external troubles; official statements say domestic economic downward pressure has increased.

To weather the economic winter, companies have rolled out the tried-and-true measure of “cutting costs and improving efficiency” — layoffs. Employees in high-tier cities can feel this directly.

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Layoffs are a market-driven action, and market forces imply “survival of the fittest.” The “less fit” here is not absolute. For example, if a company shifts its overall strategy and your department is treated as expendable, you become collateral damage — a broad sense of being “less fit.”

Today I want to talk about those who, after being the last to go at a large company, suddenly feel their skills and experience evaporate and are left at a loss.They are often concentrated among people over 30 who already have a certain amount of professional experience.

Midlife crisis in the workplace

In this round of layoffs, Tencent prioritized cutting more than 10% of middle managers. Middle managers are mostly in their prime middle age.

I read an article about a middle-aged man who, pressured by family obligations after leaving his job, hid his unemployment from his wife and two children. He continued commuting every day while in fact spending time at a café, anxiously preparing for his next job on his laptop. Repeated interview failures made him realize that the experience he had worked so hard to accumulate over the years was no longer in demand by society.

Many people like him, through years of effort, see their thirties — the golden growth period — turn into something like the twilight of a career.It may seem sudden and unexpected, but at its core it stems from a lack of early-career self-awareness and a weak sense of crisis.

In fact, this type of person exists in large numbers in the workplace, especially in big companies; the layoff wave has only exposed some of them and drawn attention.

Mistaking the platform for yourself

Whether in traditional industries or the internet, when companies grow large they inevitably develop some ailments. As a system, the company can acquire “big company sickness,” and so can the employees within that system.

Working at a big company for a long time, you hold a lot of resources — supply chain, brand, users, traffic, and so on; playing any card can move the market.Accustomed to the respect and favor of partners and clients, it’s easy to confuse the platform’s or system’s capabilities with your own abilities and become intoxicated by a false sense of achievement.

This ailment often lurks during times of industry prosperity and individual youth, and it manifests during economic downturns and middle age.

Guo Degang once told a story on a show. Years ago, when Yue Yunpeng first became popular, he was tempted by fame and riches and became somewhat lost and swollen with pride.

At that time Guo went to Yue Yunpeng and doused him with a cold dose of reality:

“Do they hire you to act because you are a great actor? Maybe you can act, maybe you can’t.

But remember, you are a crosstalk performer. People hire you not because you’re a great actor, but because you do crosstalk at Deyun Club — you have some name and charm, and they hire you to add color to their production.

There are so many professionally trained actors from Central Academy of Drama and Beijing Film Academy who have no work — why would they hire you? Is it because of your outstanding acting? No! When you were selling noodles at a noodle shop, why didn’t they hire you then? Do you really think you are Master Yue?”

Recognize yourself clearly; don’t mistake the glow provided by the platform for your own shining capital.

Falling into the trap of being a “customized” employee

My father worked at a state-owned enterprise for nearly 30 years and is about to retire; he worked that single job his whole life. In recent years the company’s performance declined; the once-secure job is now threatening every employee’s livelihood. Young employees in particular worry about how they’ll be placed if the company goes under.

My father later told me, “These younger folks who, like us, stayed at the plant for 10 or 20 years are ruined — when they come out they can’t do anything, they have no competitiveness. How could they not be anxious?”

Many face the same problem: after years in an industry they only understand the work at hand and know nothing about other parts of the company; being separated by one team feels like being separated by an entire industry.

Adam Smith used the pin factory example in The Wealth of Nations: no matter how hard one worker tries, they cannot make 20 pins a day. But after 18 distinct operations and division of labor, each person can on average produce 48,000 pins a day. This demonstrates the efficiency of specialized division of labor.

The progress of all mankind is the progress of social specialization and division of labor.Every business owner wants to improve efficiency and cut costs in order to earn more. The bigger the company and the more mature the industry, the more a job will be split into many pieces, with each person specializing in one part.

But for talent this is disastrous, because you become a company’s “customized” employee — like a screw that has a specific size and material usable only in one place; moved elsewhere, it’s useless.

To avoid being customized and prevent your value from being tied to a single platform, the fundamental path is to actively forge your transferable capabilities.

Transferable capabilities include problem-solving, collaboration, communication and expression, and rapid learning, among others.In this fast-changing era, any scarce knowledge or skill can soon be replaced. Only robust transferable capabilities let you remain self-reliant; they are the tool to respond to change with constancy.

Systematic growth

If a company is a system, the foundational abilities that support its operation are the sum of all employees’ transferable capabilities.

Therefore you need compound, systematic growth — not just doing your current tasks well but continuously training yourself — to break new ground and build foundational abilities that transcend the system. Otherwise, you can easily become a highly dependent component of the system and be unable to achieve greater development.

Always maintain clear self-awareness and a vigilant sense of crisis. The sooner you grasp the importance of systematic growth, the more confidently you can exercise your autonomy in the future.