A million little pieces... the whole truth

My son is 8 and I thought that I should explain to him that because I lost my job, we'd have to watch our expenses. The next day he went to Kimballs with his grandmother. She asked him if he wanted an ice cream and he hesitated then said, "usually my Dad pays, but now that he's unemployed, is it OK?" You can image how I felt when that got back to me. I'm very proud him for his willingness to make a personal sacrifice. I have to say though, it hurt my pride when I heard this. I felt like I was letting him down.

Usually you are, or are not employed. I'm actually neither employed or unemployed. That will probably take some explaining. I began running a division about 9 months back which had one major account representing 85% of revenue. The account wasn't doing well, though at the time the customer was talking about increasing the contract ceiling from $43M to $75M. Two days after I took over we got the word that they would only be increasing it to $46M and we were currently at $42M. That meant for the next 9 months I'd be downsizing the company to meet our ever shrinking revenue stream. During this time we laid off 110 employees of our 120. It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

Today the division is limping along. We have some revenue, but not enough to cover all of our expenses and certainly not enough to justify a General Manager so I put myself into the bucket of layoffs. I'm fortunate though that the company asked me to stick around for a few months in a part time capacity to help wind down operations and to try to help close one pending sale that could be rather large. If the latter happens, the CEO has indicated he would do a spin off and asked if I'd be interested in running it. Herein lies the kick. There are a lot of 'ifs' that have to work out for this to happen, and even if it does, I'll be working without pay for an indefinite period of time until the company could support my salary.

So now I'm not really unemployed then but I'm not really employed either. If it sounds like denial it probably is, right? I have to admit, the situation makes me very uncomfortable. There is a stigma you feel when you are unemployed. You wonder if 92% of the population is still employed, does that put you in the bottom 8%? Having laid of 110 people now, I know for a fact that employment does not equate to talent or ability, and yet, being unemployed, makes me feel insecure. It leaves me wondering what other people are thinking about me and that is a very uncomfortable feeling.

I believe there are 2 kinds of people in this world (I can hear my wife groaning already). The first is the kind who wants to have the greenest lawn on the street so he works really hard to constantly improve his lawn. The second is the kind of person who, late at night, pees on his neighbor's lawn figuring as long as his neighbor's looks worse, he is ok.

I'm the first kind of person. I believe in working hard for what you want. I also believe though that options are a good thing so I figure I need to have two plans, plan A is in case things work out at my current company, and plan B in case things do not work out.

So here is to planning plan B and where our journey begins. I really don't know where it will end but along the way if you have any insights, please share them.