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Dick Satterfield | Could I, Would I, Should I Leave? - A Career Management Discussion
00:27:28
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The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.
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The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the Head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton.
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Welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer, Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, ebay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com here today with my guest, Dick Satterfield. Today's topic Could I would I Should I leave a career management discussion now? Dick is a former Proctor and Gamble sales manager who founded his own search firm over 25 years ago. Satterfield Renzenbrink Associates specializes in C level searches, including marketing, sales and finance. During the course of his career, he has placed hundreds of executives, but he has also provided career advice to thousands of leaders, including me. He's also a rabid Purdue basketball fan, having played there while in college. So all I have to say to that is, go Duke. So welcome, Dick. Thanks, Mike.
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Hey.
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All right, Dick, first question. Give us an overview of how people should be thinking of their careers and what's the right way to think about career progression? Because it's obviously not when you're halfway through or done. Give us, give us some tips here.
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Well, the first question I thought you were going to ask me was how did Duke do against Purdue in basketball last year and the Phil Knight Classic? But since you did. Yeah, you didn't ask that. I'll. I'll answer.
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I'm going to let that go.
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You know, I think I'm going to have a little bit of a theme here, and one of the themes is, are you successful and happy? And there are a lot of successful business people that aren't happy. There are a lot of happy business people that aren't successful. So if you happen to be successful and happy, you're very lucky. But what do I mean by that? So let's, first of all, let's talk about are you happy? Do you like the company that you work for? Do you like the people that you work with? Do you like the scope of your responsibilities. Do you feel like you have good work, life balance? Those are all things that determine whether you are happy, are you successful? So success is different for everybody. But in general, are you achieving your goals? Do you have. Are you working for the kind of company you want to work for? Are you working with the kind of people you want to work for? Is your job giving you the scope of responsibility you want? Are you getting compensated the way you want? Those are all things to determine if you're successful. But that's the big question you always have to ask yourself, am I successful and happy?
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So that's a really good frame, and I really like that. But one of the things about success is it's so contextual. Like, how do you know? I mean, one of the reasons a lot of people call you is you want to know, am I progressing really well? Am I getting paid fairly? Am I getting the responsibility I need? Because there's no roadmap for a lot of these jobs. How do you get the context for successful in particular? Because happy, happy, I think people understand successful, though, is harder.
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Yeah. And, you know, that's a great question as it relates to the success and your career progressing. That is the number one thing that determines your viability as an outside candidate is your career progression. So, for example, when we, or any of the people that work with me, when we look at resumes, we don't look to see what their accomplishments were. We look to see how often they were promoted. Because if they were promoted, that means they had to be getting significant accomplishments. If they weren't promoted, that means they weren't getting significant accomplishments, no matter what it says on your resume. So we look very closely at career progression, which we define as promotions, because.
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A lot of people, and there's also a lot of companies that will promote you in place. And you're doing the same job as a associate director and then you're a director and then you're a vp and they give you one person. Are those real promotions or are those fake promotions?
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Those are real promotions. We don't see as many of those now as we used to. I know exactly what you're saying. But generally speaking, when we. What we consider promotion is when your scope of responsibility increases. There's just not many times now where people get a promotion that's not increasing their scope of responsibility.
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Got it. And so one of the things you get, people always want people management, and then they give them one person to supervise. That is in your mind a real promotion, or is that A fake one.
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That would be a quasi fake, quasi fake one.
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Because it's like, yeah, it's just an extension of you when you're managing one person.
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Right.
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Okay, so let's go to the theme of the show. I think that is great framework to, to, to roll out the show. So the first real question in this would be, okay, you've got your resume, you've got your career, you've got all this. Could I, as in could I actually leave now? Why? It's probably true that most people can quit. Isn't there times when it's too early or too late to actually leave? And this is on the Could I even leave?
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Absolutely, yes. And I'm glad that you framed your question that way because it can be too early. And my definition of when it's too early, if you're currently working for a good company, you're working for a pretty good boss. But most importantly, you're still really learning. It's probably too early to leave. When's it too late to leave? I think it's too late to leave when leaving would disrupt your family situation. And I primarily mean location. You know, a lot of people say, well, you know, I'll just commute. Well, there's three things that you must be able to have in place if you're going to have a successful commute. Number one, is it a definable time frame? If it's a definable time frame, let's just say that you have a child that's a junior or senior high school, you know, you're only going to have to commute for a specified time. The second thing is, are you in the same time zone? And the third thing is, do you have a direct flight? If you have all those things in place, there's a possibility that a commute can work. And certainly we know with COVID there is confusion right now as to whether you need to be in a workplace, don't need to be in a workplace. Although what I am seeing is that there is less and less flexibility on doing things remotely. At a minimum, you have to do them in a hybrid. But if it's going to disrupt your family situation, it's probably too late.
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So I want to ask two little follow ups. How do I know when my learning has slowed down enough for me to consider leaving? Because all the companies, if I'm doing a good job, if even if they're going to leave me in place and give me quasi fake promotions, they're going to tell me I'm learning stuff. How Do I know I'm really learning stuff very simply.
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When you're starting to do the same task day in, day out, same projects day in, day out may have a little bit of a change. That's when your learning curve is stopped.
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So if I'm doing the annual plan for the fourth time, there's probably not so much learning in it for me.
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You're not learning much anymore.
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Yeah. Got it. And then one other thing about too late, you said when it disrupts the family thing. But what if I stay in one job too long? Is that too late as well? Like, I've done this one job for business with one company for many, many years.
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It's. No, it's not. But it's going to be more and more difficult because, again, remember we talked about earlier, we're going to be looking at how rapidly your progression is. And if you've been in the same job for a number of years, then the natural tendency is, well, this person doesn't have the ability to handle broader responsibilities, or they would have been given those in the past.
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Yeah. And there's one other thing that I think, having been in Silicon Valley for a while, there's also. Are you too inflexible to learn a new thing? Because you've only been experienced with one culture and one way of doing it?
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You know, Mike, one of the things that I tell people when they leave, let's just say they've been with one company for 15, 20 years. And that's a time where a lot of people are thinking, maybe it's time to leave. And what I see so often is they end up leaving and they just take so much time. Is this the right job? You know what the odds are if you've been with somebody for 15, 20 years, you're only gonna be at the next company for a couple years. So really, it's a very simple thing that you need to ask yourself. Am I more or less attractive to companies if this next job doesn't work out? Because the odds are it's not gonna work out. And so don't beat yourself up by, is this the perfect next job? Because it's not. In almost all cases, it's not. But are you positioning yourself for a better next job after that?
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So now we're into the would I question. So you're saying, I'm unhappy, there's no path forward, I hate my boss, I'm underpaid, When should I start looking? And how do I go about that and, you know, like, give everybody a thing of all Right. I've decided, you know, I can leave. Would I leave? Like what? Put. Get people's heads around that.
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Okay, so the single biggest thing, there's two things that I want people to walk away from our conversation, the successful and happy thing. But the second thing, if you're going to make a move, try very hard to do it while you're employed because you have so much more leverage. What you want to do is, ideally, you always want to go to a job not away from your current job. And if you are currently employed, you have leverage. Let me just tell you this. Let's just say that you're in transition. It's not like I'm saying that you can't find a good opportunity if you're in transition, because you can. In fact, I would argue, like, for example, towards the end of a year, you're always better off if you're in transition because the company thinking about hiring you doesn't have to worry about paying you for all the bonus you're leaving on the table. Right. But you have so much more leverage. Here's what happens. If you're unemployed, you're in transition, and company says, well, you know, what's your compensation? You go, well, you know, it's 300 plus 50 target bonus plus equity. You know what? The company that's thinking about hiring you thinks it's zero. It's not what you told them, it's zero. So it's hard to find a job while you are employed. But here are the steps. And if you do these steps, I promise you that you'll create multiple offers for yourself. Step number one is create a target list of companies from the outside looking in that you think you might have an interest in going to. And what I love about that is you control geography when you do that. Second thing that you do is you develop a list of people that know you, that are kind of movers and shakers that know people. You then take the list of the companies that you're interested in, you show it to the people, and you say, who do you know at these companies? Because, Mike, what we always want to do is we want to get a personal introduction. Yeah. Now, most of the people that are listening to this are not checking job boards and things like that, but occasionally they'll go, well, I heard about this job and I'm going to apply. No, no, no. You need to figure out, how can you network in there? And what I have seen is people, when you give them a list, it makes them so much easier to engage. We are all better editors than we are creators. And what you'll also find, if there's a really good company that they have good contacts with, it's not on your list, they're still going to give you the name of that people. So you do that. Now you get personal introductions. The third thing is you have to have a good network of search people. And contrary to popular opinion, as search professionals, we are not looking to add to our database. We're looking to add good names. And the best good name that I had are people that I placed that recommend somebody else to me. And so what you want to do, if you're thinking about looking, is think about people, peers that you have known that have taken jobs that you yourself might have been interested in. You call the person up when you say who placed you in that job, they give you the name. Could you introduce me to that person, to that search firm professional? You're going to get through. I promise you they're going to take your call. And by definition, you know, if they've placed other peers of yours, you know that they specialize in finding people like yourself. If you'll do those three things, you'll create options for yourself. Now, the last thing is really important. You're working. How do you have time for this? Well, you know what? You've got to make time and just decide that I'm going to spend 30 minutes a day, I'm going to close my door, I'm going to spend 30 minutes a day on this. And if you'll do that, that's two and a half hours a week, that's.
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Ten hours a month, not counting weekends, not counting. Do this on weekends and you can.
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Do it on weekends. So that is how you will create options for yourself. And it works.
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I like this. But I also think it's crazy to think that you would spend all this time going to grad school or all this time working on whatever project you're working on at work and then only 10 minutes on your career.
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So.
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So I think this whole dedication of giving your career some time is helpful. What if you do happen to not to be in that. I'm out of a job now because the company cut me or it didn't work out or whatever. Any. I assume all the same tips still apply. What else?
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Except now you have. You have no excuse on the time.
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That's a good.
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You have no excuse. And Mike, here's another thing though, that I want to tell you is that when you are in transition and it's not a Bad thing. It's not. It just happens sometimes. And we can look at lots of careers of people that have been in.
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Tons of people have been on the show, including me, have all been in transition, so.
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Exactly. Exactly. So it's not a bad thing. But here's something that's really important. If you have a spouse, it is really important that you advise your spouse as to what is going on in your job search. Because your spouse, a lot of his or her identity is wrapped up in your career. And one of the things that I see all the time is that just that process that I just described, it's a little bit like if you and I are playing ping pong, if I hit the ball to you, you got to hit it back. And once in a while when you're doing a job search, you know, you're trying to plant lots of seeds and nobody's responding back. You can't force the issue. So it's okay to go do some things that you enjoy. It's okay to play golf in an app, because just follow the process. It'll work. But keep your spouse advised as to what is going on.
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Got it. All right, so now we've gotten to, you know, could I, should I? And now it's would I? So I've gone through this process. An offer materializes hardly ever. Or maybe sometimes the offer is so clear that you should take it. Everything is right. Sometimes it's not as clear as you mentioned earlier. And that person, after 15 years leaving the job, should you accept it? Like yes or no? What, what, what, what do you advise people to when they get the offer? They're near the offer. How should they be thinking about it?
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The single biggest thing you should be thinking about, am I poised to succeed in this new role? The people that are listening to this, they know what they're good at. They know what they're not good at. Is this new job really optimizing what I am good at? That is the single biggest thing that you should do. But let me step back a little bit from that. Every time you decide that you're going to go through an interview, your attitude should be, I want the job. Nobody can make you take a job you don't want to take. But if you don't get a job offer, you can't take it. And I speak this from personal experience. I'll never forget when I was at Procter and Gamble. And you remember this, Mike, they made you feel so guilty if they, if you, you know, you felt guilty if you would interview with Anybody. And I'm halfway into it about the morning session. By the afternoon session, I kind of get interested. And by the end of the day I think I'm going to do this. So I called the recruiter the next day and I said, I'm in, I'm going to take this job. And the recruiter said, well, that's too bad because so you're going to go through this process, go through it with the intent of getting offered.
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Yes. It's not practice and you can always turn it down, but you should, you should give it your best shot. So one of the things that is hard sometimes is the job spec. And depending on who you're interfacing with in the company makes you feel like they really want you to succeed and you think you can succeed. We've had a lot of people on the show say that the job specs are sometimes not that true. How do you know it's true? Because you're going to make this jump. And if you want your every chance of succeed, what questions should you ask as you get ready to accept this job to ensure that success is what you think it is?
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So remember that interviewing is a two way process. The company's interviewing you, but you're learning a lot about the company. And one of the things that you learn about the company is their speed to make decisions. If your interviewing process and the whole process just lingers and lingers and lingers, then you better know that when you join the company, it's going to take them a while to make decisions. That's not a bad thing, it's just a fact. And when you are being interviewed, you have to interview the people too. And like your hiring manager, one of the questions that I would definitely ask is what are, what's success going to look like in three months, six months, a year? What's it look like? What things do I need to get done that's going to make you able to see whether the job specs are consistent with what needs to be done.
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I run a lot of questions through too of sample decisions and who controls them, like how many voters there are on moving money, approving creative, anything like that. And if the wrong answers come up, I think success is going to be a lot harder. So, so I get this offer and I decide I'm going to take it. I go into my company, I take it, they counter me, they give me counteroffer. How do I think about counteroffers?
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You never know how much they love you until you want to leave it.
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Yeah. But then it's usually too late. But. But.
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Right. So no, but I've got some real. So, you know, I've heard some people on your show before, and they have lots of data. So far I haven't given data, but I got some data here.
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All right, knock yourself out.
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85% of people who accept counteroffers are gone within a year. And it really makes sense if you think about it. When you first go in there, they probably don't want you to leave because it's going to cause disruption. So they'll make, you know, it doesn't cost them anything, cost them a little bit. But to make you a counteroffer and all this kind of stuff. But here's what you've shown them now. That you're willing to leave. Right? You've shown them that you're willing to look at other outside opportunities. So in reality, what they're doing. And you would do this too, if you're a hiring manager, you're starting to think, this person's going to leave. Who am I going to get to replace this person? And you may even start an active search or at a minimum, going to start looking at other capabilities. So counter offers virtually never work out for both parties.
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I'm where you are. You're just renting.
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You're just rent.
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You're postponing a problem because the reason, unless the real reason they were leaving was just money, which is very rare.
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Very, very, very rare.
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Yeah. Okay. And then, so I'm sitting here, I'm taking this new job, but I'm worried because, gosh, you just told me a lot of the jobs you take, the second jump doesn't work out. How do I think about asking for severance when I go to the new company? Is that a normal thing to ask for or how do I even think about it?
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The two hardest things for candidates when they're thinking about taking another job are talking about vacation time and severance. It's just really hard. So the first thing that you want to try to do is if you're being placed by a recruiter, you want the recruiter to manage this process for you. And by the way, the client wants you to manage it for them, too, because they don't want to be negotiating on this stuff. But severance specifically, generally speaking, there are company guidelines. But remember this, the only time you get to really negotiate severance is before you start with, you don't get to.
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Negotiate severance on the way out.
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Right. So it's really important to have clarity on that. And it's definitely okay to ask about it, but you've got to get it in writing. You absolutely have to get it right. And as a general rule, if you are being asked to sign any sort of a non compete, there definitely should be severance on the back end.
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Got it. So I shouldn't call from my Caribbean vacation to ask for severance to the hiring manager. That's what you're saying.
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Exactly.
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Okay, very good. So biggest mistake people make when managing their career front to back. You've seen thousands of them. What's the biggest mistake you've seen?
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They don't manage their career, they don't think about it. And you have to be thinking about it. You have to write out. When you're starting in your business, you have to write out your goals and then you can go back and look, am I meeting my goals? And. But I see so many people, Mike, that don't think about it. Then all of a sudden they get a call from a recruiter. Well, maybe I ought to think about it. Here's the other thing to be really careful about though. I see so many people aspire to a job. They're not going to be successful. All of us have limitations. And just make sure that you're not aspiring to go into a job in which one of your limitations is really going to be highlighted.
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So any specific advice to our marketers out there listening to the show?
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Yeah. Yes. So this is a tough time for marketing people. Not going to finesse that because historically people have viewed marketing as an investment. Today people are viewing marketing as an expense. So what you want to make sure that you do, when you are presenting yourself, it's, you're talking about things that you're going to do to drive the top line or cut costs. You're not a marketing person. You're a business person who happens to be in marketing. And I really believe that strongly that you need to do that right now. Got it.
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Thank you. That's very consistent with a lot of our other guests. So last question is two parts. You can pick one or both, but you have to pick one funniest, at least one funniest story or one piece of practical advice you would give our listeners that we haven't discussed yet. Both parts are one.
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Yeah. And I, I wish I could come up with a funny story. But you know, honestly, most of the time that I'm talking to people, it's not really funny kind of stuff. Right. I mean, this is kind of life and death kind of situations. But I do think that the practical advice that I would give is stay on top. Stay ahead of your career. Return every phone call that you get from a recruiter. It doesn't matter whether you're interested or not. You want to develop a good network. And so we remember the people that call us back. We remember the people that try to help us with searches that we're working on. You want to have a good relationship with recruiters. So that's some practical advice. Don't ignore recruiters until you need them. Call them when you don't need them.
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I think that's super good advice and I think a great way to end the show. So thank you Dick and thanks everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. Look for more of our shows on Evergreen, Spotify, Apple and YouTube, which include a content streamer's view of media and the marketplace. An experienced CMO and board member with technology chops talks about marketing. A 360 degree look at the CMO interview and are you the strategist you really think you are? Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton at CMO Confidential signing off.