4 signs its time to look for a new job

In an “at will” employment arrangement, your employer can part ways with you any time for any reason with or without cause. Rather than feel like powerless pawns on someone else’s chessboard, employees need to put a price on their tenure and ensure that employers compete to keep them on board.

It is easy, with the passage of time, to get consumed by work and forget that your own career is a work in progress. How much you grow - in stature, employability, compensation - is a function of decisions you have more control over than you realize.

I tend to look for 4 signals in the workplace, and if any of the following 4 starts coming through loud and clear, it is time to start updating my resume. If more than one of the following come in, well, you get the idea.

Am I getting too comfortable?

A friend of mine from my Google days told me that he interviews for a new job during the same timeframe every year, and he picks companies and roles where there is a realistic chance he would accept if offered. The entire experience serves as a good litmus test to assess how well his current role is serving his career.

The process of updating his resume and explaining his work forces him to keep his resume updated and track whether what he is doing aligns with his long term goals. Remember, explaining what you do and why it matters to someone outside your sphere of influence takes practice. It is easy to lose this touch when you do the same thing with the same people for too long.

The process of putting yourself before someone else’s evaluation--where acquired credibility and familiarity will not bail you out--can be educational and humbling. How many callbacks you get may be a function of the skills you list on your resume as well as the potency of your employer and area of endeavor.

The kinds of questions you get and the level of roles you are considered for will offer at least a rough diagnosis of what your current career would offer you outside the comforts of your current role.

Health checkups are good not just for your body, but your body of work as well.

Is my boss respected in the company?

For me, the strength of my immediate supervisor is key to my “stay or go” matrix. An effective supervisor is to an employee what a solid script is to a movie actor. Very rarely can the latter make up for deficiencies in the former.

You always need to watch for how well respected your supervisor is within your company, both vertically and laterally. Whether they are in the room when leaders make key decisions, whether they understand why certain workstreams need to be prioritized (and are able to convince others), whether decisions made bear their fingerprints and input - all are indicators of virility in the workplace, a soft power whose presence or absence will affect your own influence and impact.

I once had a boss who was a nice enough guy--had the book smarts, managed up well enough to protect himself--but rarely put his views on the table with enough conviction to drive the debate. His own peers routinely characterized him as “passive and laissez faire,” and his direct reports had to work that much harder to get our asks prioritized. Over time, it felt like I was doing his job besides mine and getting paid just one salary for my troubles.

This may sound callous, but when it comes to influence, you either have a seat at the table or you are on the menu. Credibility is currency, and this is not a matter of nice guys finishing last, but rather that no one cares whether they finish.

If your boss is not a go-getter, go get a new boss or a new role.

Is senior leadership creating unproductive conflict?

Senior leaders often create rivalries to keep their ambitious charges alert and competitive. Greenlighting multiple duplicative efforts could mean teams learn from and challenge each other. At its best, this Darwinian model ensures consistent internecine competition and the best ideas rise to the surface.

At its worst, you end up with duplication and your projects will look like Walmart on Black Friday. Left unchecked, this may lead to parallel power structures, unhealthy rivalries and poison the culture. It could also create the sense that senior leadership is trying to hoard power by keeping teams at war with each other.

As Ron Carucci writes in the Harvard Business Review, in such situations, people act with self-protection and self-interest. And when things don’t go as hoped, people point at one another in blame rather than healthy accountability. Executing critical decisions is difficult when team members don’t trust one another.

Senior leaders who create such a culture must realize that individual contributors and mid-level managers also have power by way of tribal knowledge and influence. They will find ways to slow walk decisions if they know that those decisions were made by people who aren’t aligned.

This often happens in companies that are cash flush and process rich. In time, they will find themselves product poor. Before you face career bankruptcy, find yourself something worthy of your time and talents.

Is senior leadership too detached?

One of the mantras of new-age leadership is “bottom up,” where ideas and initiatives will emerge from highly driven teams and employees while senior leaders will act like advisors rather than side-seat drivers.

A senior leader once told me that she uses this management technique to minimize the number of decisions she has to make and that only the truly critical decisions end up at her desk.

Taken to an extreme, however, I have seen that senior leaders often lose the confidence and ability to make any decisions. The ability to make decisions is like a muscle; left unused, it atrophies.

A while ago, I was in a situation where two senior directors in the same group were openly at war with each other. They kept memos from each other, undermined each others’ direct reports and created a toxic atmosphere. Escalatory meetings between junior employees and HR were de rigueur.  As an outside stakeholder whose priorities were tossed around as sticks and stones in this game of thrones, I wondered why their boss--the EVP--did not act.

I set up a 1:1 with her, and laid out how paying enterprise customers were suffering and roadmaps were stalled, all of which tracked back to the personnel issue she could fix. All I got were mealy mouthed platitudes about how these leaders needed to show personal responsibility, as if the issue were happening in a galaxy far away rather than her own organization.

Inertia is a powerful drug. If you find it pulsating through the veins of your leadership, look for the exits before you get hooked as well.

Your career is your best asset and your own responsibility. Protect it. Look for the lifeboats before the iceberg cometh.