It is excruciatingly difficult to relate the events of 9/11 much less characterize its debilitating effects without sounding bellicose and combative. The American public has endured and admirably survived but not without grief. To mitigate the feeling, metaphors of pugilism are what we find the most diplomatic characterizations without putting ourselves in the penalty box of decorum. Caught unwittingly in the middle of all the jousting pre and post 9/11 is John Q. Public, the resilient and good old denizen of the land of stars and stripes. As in most pugilistic competitions, we all look to see the hometown bet - our John Q in this case - prevail. For now, winning may not even be necessarily the prize given the below-the-belt hit he suffered in September and the already painful pummeling that the economy dealt him before the attacks. His wish perhaps for now is simply to survive the round. One quirk of this event, however, is the absence of the bell to signify the end of each round. In fact, there are no ends-of-the-round; we all tag-team with John Q to keep up the fight, and worse, the rules can change and our John Q can't do much about it but roll with the punches.
Fifteen months ago, while George W and Al Gore were taking political potshots at each other, our working John Q Public was racking up overtime hours trying to meet production orders that were coming faster than he can fill. Meanwhile, our John Q retail man was finger-weary ringing his registers. Also, our John Q investor was high on a hog counting his dividends. The paycheck was hefty and Mrs. John Q was never more pleased. Undeniably, this ten-year round of robust economic growth belonged to him.
Dark clouds were looming over the horizon however. In its October 4, 2000 issue, the San Jose Mercury News screamed on its front page an approval by Congress of a bill to increase the hiring of skilled high-tech foreign workers. This move appeared to belie the impending economic downturn. The rationale was to help John Q meet the demands of industry and alleviate the increasing workload. Yet, buried insidiously deep in the pages of the same issue were foreboding signs of nasty blows all aimed at John Q Public. These hits masqueraded in the form of massive stock selling in Wall Street, hemorrhagic lay-off in industries, and sales slump among the major retail chains. They were all coming dead aim at his chin. Our John Q was at the precipice of the country's ten-year economic halcyon.
About a year later after the Merc's ominous cry, the LA Times echoed an equally gloomy prognostication of the country's economy. It published a Labor of Statistics report that the jobless rate jumped to 4.5 percent, the highest since the boom began. The evident economic slide was slowly giving rise to an increasing number of jobless John Q. Publics in many companies across a variety of industries. The writing on the wall was clear: John Q was in for a brawl.
As fiscal year-ends for most corporations approached the mid-year mark of 2001, less than sanguine stories about corporate states of affairs spread at nano speed, as most bad news tended to do. Annual reports from high profile companies revealed ominous statements about their corporate health. Yahoo declared that its stock value plunged and had to institute massive layoffs. Boeing showed sales taking a nosedive (pardon the pun) and had to reduce costs by cutting its workforce. AT&T did not fair any better. Their cable and Internet business did not measure up against its competitors and had to resort to spinning off unproductive segments just to survive. The consequence was having thousands of John Qs being ushered to the unemployment line.
Fortune Magazine (Dec. 24. 2001 issue) recorded 98,522 John Qs were laid off from hundreds of once highly touted Internet start ups that went under. Industry estimates revealed that 384 of the high-flying dot-coms ceased operations in 2001 alone and it appears that the shake up is far from being over. Excite@Home, Webvan.com, Sega.com, eToys@com, are few of the notable names that bit the dust. And some notable others look headed toward the same direction.
Infosys Technologies, of Bangalore, the once high flying darling of the software industry, was not immune from the slings and arrows of the high tech industries's outrageous fortunes. Chastened and scarred by the dot com mania that swept the country in 2000 and 2001, the company frantically engaged in cutting costs ranging from health care benefits to a proposed hiring freeze and mandatory pay reduction. This left our John Q at Infosys dodging and weaving through all the cost-cutting jabs while at the same time asking the question whether the saving efforts were indeed fair, prudent, and honest. This suspicion came about in the light of a lingering extravagant practice that some employees still tool around town in rented luxury vehicles. It would be interesting to know what the more sensible shareholders have to say about this "brilliant' crunch time move.
In the midst of all this turmoil, John Q's financial portfolio was showing visible signs of strain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose barely a point from a year before. Had he been more attentive and a bit circumspect he would have seen that some of the leading DJIA stocks were showing an ominous slide. Home Depot stock was down 17%; General Motors stock tumbled 41%; McDonald's stock dropped 27%. We can thus deduce that from the sub standard performance of those stocks that contractors and home-building do-it-yourselfers were building less and deferring home repairs respectively. Also, car buyers were staying away from showrooms, and the fast food eating folks were opting for home cooked meals.
Enron's bankruptcy and further demise along with the loss of its employees' benefits and retirement funds delivered a solid blow to John Q's solar plexus rendering his legs perilously wobbly. Bruised and dazed our hero stood as he watched his stock portfolio erode away in the midst of a volatile financial market. Our John Q suffered a double whammy with the loss of job and disappearance of his lifetime savings. From every indication, the bout was from over and it seemed that the situation for John Q was going to get worse before it got better.
As a consuming society, we always looked to the retailing frenzy during the Christmas season as a year-saving performance of the industry. Ever wonder where the term "materialistic West" came from? However, when bellwether Federated Department Stores in New York predicted that revenue, and consequently profits, would be in the doldrums, our John Q of the retail industry went reeling against the ropes.
Even Coke's "Life is Good" slogan became a dichotomy for John Q. It was a commercial mockery so to speak. The world's most recognized name in the beverage retailing industry and the most admired corporation in the West bar none, had to bear the ignominy of a tarnished image of laying off 5200 John Qs in 2001. Making matters worse, Coke had to swallow the hard reality that Pepsi now wields 22% market share of non-carbonated drink in the US market over Coke's 14%. This predicament even worsened already lowered stock earning expectations of 11%-12% down from 15%-20% just a couple of years ago. Our John Q Worker and Investor were getting "killed' in this arena, to borrow their colloquial parlance. In the retail front, it must be an economic disaster of some magnitude when our John Q retailer cannot even make a buck off Coke anymore.
John Qs in the pharmaceutical trade were not as lucky either. The 9/11 attacks and the recession dealt the industry's retail operations a nasty blow that its workers and investors had to contend with a less than sanguine atmosphere. If Charles Schwab suffered a blackeye, it won't be a stretch to guess if our independent John Q brethren in the insurance and securities trade had concussions. Investment retailing, where money is the predominant commodity, left a lot to be desired as well. Ostensibly, Charles Schwab of San Francisco gave our John Q the jitters by laying-off 3400 workers and the word is that there may be more to come.
You would think that after all the pummeling and relentless barrage our John Q would be down for the count by now. Latest check showed him battered, bothered, and bewildered. One indisputable fact remained, however: he is still standing! His predicament, pitiful as it might look, is a testimony to rather than an indictment of his condition.
Thanks to the number of months - and years for others - he spent in acquiring marketable traits and honing his skills, his survivability seemed assured or so it seems. The relentless effort and countless hours of preparation he invested at work coupled with the excellent corporate sponsored programs designed by his host company to develop his coping abilities equipped our hero with the necessary skills and competencies to help meet the new demands of work. His reservoir of talents now made him more highly qualified to weather the problems battering his employers. His survivability, when carefully peered into, can be attributed to his inherent qualities and acquired skills. Undeniably, much also can be credited to his employers whose support system in the form of policies, practices, and culture promote growth, optimism, and survival.
One company that provided highly admirable support systems happened to be a homegrown corporate citizen in Charles Schwab of San Francisco. In 2001 Charles Schwab and another top-tier executive received a 50% pay cut and 750 other mid-level executives took varying cuts as well; a bold display of leading by example. Along with those exemplary gestures by its executives workers were provided top of the line provisions such as stock-option grants, education benefits, and generous bonuses for those re-hired within a period of one year and a half. Those corporate benefits have provided John Q with what Professor Herzberg at Case Western University quaintly termed as hygiene factors - extrinsic motivators that drive workers to deliver their best.
Record dot-com failures in 2000 and 2001 roused countless highly skilled-IPO-twenty-something-millionaire-wannabe John Qs out of their easy street reverie and onto boulevards of broken dreams and unemployment alleys. Except for burst bubbles for some and bruised egos for others they are, by far, the most technologically savvy bunch of the jobless world. These John Qs walk around with principal skills and working competencies in programming languages, shell scripts, web technologies, platforms and operating systems. They gratuitously mouth cryptic symbols and communicate in C++, PERL, JAVA, HTML, and SQL terminology that seems to be all their own. We can only raise the question of whether we should be sorry for them for embarking on a career in the IT field. Considering how society is constantly trying to keep up with the blistering pace of technological advancements thus increasing its dependence on John Q techie's over-blown fees, we are hard-pressed to offer him and his ilk a crying towel. John Q in this particular ring seems just fine.
Our John Q sure took numerous hits from the consequences of 9/11 and the insidious effects of the creeping recession. Although we cannot help but pity him, he can, now begin, however, to find solace in the thought that his company as most others, has evolved to become more solicitous and caring. Credit ought to go to our modern management practices that have seemed to become more sensitive and employee focused. Proof positive of this is how numerous services were delivered to support John Q during his most vulnerable states. They included counseling, job placement, career transition support, and employee assistance programs; they all lent a framework toward helping John Q emerge victorious. As today’s organizations strive to live up to their lofty mission statements and hope to develop into profitable enterprises as they’ve been conceived to be, they also look to John Q to be their strategic partner in the quest. The obvious consequence was for companies having to put in place generous offerings to train and equip workers as they faced and the New Economy. Most companies have adopted improved work methods and new technology to both re-skill and enskill their John Qs. Others have offered liberal opportunities for workers to acquire knowledge from academic institutions or ready - to deploy work-based programs all at company expense. Thus, we see that it seemed that John Q was being primed for these untoward and fortuitous events—not the kind of event he would have wished but all things considering, it was better than nothing.
These days, any company that is worth its salt or much less one that desires to survive and become a viable entity in the future must keep one eye on the bottom line and another on its John Qs. From this vigilance rises a practice and reason for doing things – a raison d’etre. From this in turn derives a philosophy that defines an organization and its meanings in turn rubs off on its workers. This philosophy we fondly call culture forms the company’s consistent set of values and beliefs that embody and reflect John Q’s as well. Some companies embrace an all-or-nothing, work hard/play hard culture; others meanwhile, practice the focused, molded-for excellence model. We can only look to companies like Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Skandia International, and yes, even the now shaken Coca Cola Company for exemplary ways with which they fashioned John Q.
Thus, during his tenure with his company, we now know that our John Qs mindset had been shaped along cultural modes that made him adopt new behaviors that made him adaptable when circumstances shifted. Thanks to emerging business gospels preached by Peter Senge, Frank Covey, and Chris Argyris et. al., John Q can be thankful that modern organizations now take into consideration his working styles, lifestyles and career files as they craft corporate strategies. What’s more gratifying is that they actively institute company systems and infrastructures to help develop, improve and maximize his talents making sure they are transformed into demonstrable skills on or off work. This corporate behavior of building the organization around the strengths of each John Q and making him marketable while employed offers great promise during times when he may need them most. We can rest assured, though the struggle is far from over, that John Q has the wherewithal to survive each punishing round.
