Part 4: Bull or Turtle? Negotiating for your Program's Resources
"The Great Uncertainty" Series: Preparing for your program's cancellation
With escalating economic uncertainty in the United States, many businesses are in a holding pattern, freezing wages, hiring, promotions, and raises - reluctant to spend more and not yet shifting to a new strategic direction. It’s clear that business as usual will not hold, and a wave of reorganization is coming. As a program management professional (PgMP), how will you approach negotiating for your job and your program’s resources in a tumultuous business environment?
In other words, are you a bull or a turtle?
The Great Uncertainty Series
Over the last several months, the changes in the United States government have caused great uncertainty. As much of the work under fire is administrative, program management professionals (PgMPs) represent a large segment of the workforce severely impacted by the upheaval.
This series, “The Great Uncertainty,” offers advice on preparing your program and your career for the prospect of cancellation. These insights come from a mixture of my experiences with program decline and cancellation and what I’m reading about in the news, particularly here in Boston. Check out the previous installments covering program challenges, advocacy, and preservation, specifically for project and program management professionals.
Count Your Resources
If you suspect a reorg is on the horizon, you must take inventory of what you’ll be fighting for. You can divide resources into two buckets: your job and your program. Yes, they overlap highly, but be cognizant of situations where what is good for you can be bad for the program and vice versa. For instance, how willing are you to have your staff cut to maintain your job? It’s best to consider all your resources along two fronts, not one.
Job
For your job, salary and benefits are the obvious resources that come to mind. A standard practice in an economic recession is freezing raises, promotions, and hiring. If things get heated enough, a percentage of all or most employees’ salaries can be cut across an organization (10% was common practice in the Great Recession). Currently, around Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey is freezing hiring across large swaths of the state government. President Alan Garber of Harvard University announced he’ll take a 25% pay cut on his salary this year. These leading actions imply more to come for the general population.
Beyond your salary, there are softer components that you rely on to be successful and happy at work. These resources revolve around your place and standing in the company. Components include your title, manager, staff (count and choice), department, desk/office, remote work options, and project/program assignments. Finally, they can tread very soft, such as your reputation and how your contributions to your program’s accomplishments are recognized. In difficult times, leaders are incentivized to take a larger share of the credit. Making sure your name is on that slide deck and you are the leader speaking to the program’s work can easily evaporate in the shuffle of a reorganization.
Program
Accounting for your program’s resources follows a similar pattern to your job’s resources. Upfront resources are your budget, staff, office location, equipment, etc. In between, there’s the ability to administer needed promotions and raises to keep essential personnel and discretionary management practices, such as determining remote work schedules for the team. Finally, soft power components include access to leaders, program reputation, and support. These aren’t necessarily items that will be discussed directly in a conference room. However, if your program’s thrown into a blender, you can lose crucial ground for long-term success.
The main lesson is to think of your resources very broadly and consider how essential each is to your career and program’s success. For inspiration on taking a different perspective on resources, I highly recommend listening to Freakonomics' “When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee,” which goes into detail about lesser-known benefits for professional American football players (first-class airfare matters a lot if you are a defensive lineman) and how these benefits differ substantially across the National Football League (NFL).
Your Negotiation Environment
Next, you must consider your negotiation environment—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Admittedly, you’ll likely be in the ugly.
The Good
Negotiating for your program’s resources can be a reasonably straightforward process during good economic times. Publicly, you get to pontificate from a well-heeled presentation about your work’s value with advocates sitting in the audience. It can be a massive career highlight. Behind the scenes, negotiations may be slightly contentious, particularly if a raise or promotion is on the table. Still, the money’s available, and if you’re knowledgeable, well-spoken, and well-organized, you can make a strong case for both your career advancement and the program’s needs.
The Bad
Every career professional will hit “bad times” in their organization, requiring budget crunches and reorganization. Given the larger disruptions around the United States, that's happening to many folks. For example, around mid-May, research funding cuts came through to my alma mater at the Harvard School of Public Health. Over one hundred researchers received emails that their federal funding grants were cut, ending their life’s work, and necessitating the need to lay off staff. In these cases, the ability to negotiate was non-existent.
The Ugly
Conversely, I suspect many PgMPs will find themselves in a squishy middle for negotiating for resources at work. As many organizations are tightening their purse strings, the door to negotiation may be closed, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s locked. Assuming your program is strategically important to the larger business goals, you have leverage to discuss what’s happening to your job and program.
Negotiation is not limited to program leadership either. If you are a coordinator or project manager within a larger program, you are still an essential piece to the larger puzzle. Given the larger changes around your work, you can foster conversations about how to best prepare yourself for success.
Your Negotiation Mentality: Bull or Turtle
When negotiating for your resources, your underlying mentality will be a vital personal decision. There’s a spectrum here: being proactive vs. reactive or offensive vs. defensive. I like to describe this spectrum as bull vs. turtle (i.e., bullish or turtling). Both can be successful strategies that require mindfulness. First, to make sure you're making this decision based on what is most advantageous to you and the program, not on your natural predisposition to conflict or institutional culture norms. Furthermore, to make sure you don’t trip into the toxic sides of either of these approaches.
Bull
A bullish approach means you proactively advocate against eliminating resources and push back if they do occur, particularly if those cuts are unequally distributed across your organization or department. You pay tremendous attention to getting into the room with leadership. You speak often and eloquently about your program, its benefits, and why it’s essential to stay fully funded for the foreseeable future. If you hear about cuts, you're back that day to push back and try to stop the “idea” of cuts, layoffs, etc., at your program from burgeoning.
The upside of being a bull is that you will voice your concerns and ensure that the facts are on the table for leadership to make crucial decisions on your work. The other upside is that you are bringing attention to your needs, and the squeaky wheel often does get the grease. The downside is that you could bring negative attention, exposing yourself to potential retaliation, particularly if you challenge your leadership on unfair business practices, corner-cutting, or nonsensical decisions. Further, the process is exhausting: emotionally, you need to negotiate through conflict continuously, and mentally, you need to develop arguments and gather evidence to defend your position. This work is time-consuming, which can detract from the actual program’s work, slowing down potential program accomplishments.
Turtle
The opposite approach is to turtle. According to Wikipedia, “Turtling is a gameplay strategy emphasizing heavy defense, with little or no offense.” To turtle at work means you dedicate your time and energy to succeeding at the program’s work and communicating those wins upward. You trust that the successes will speak for themselves, and your leadership will make decisions in your best interest. You speak up minimally about leadership decisions, even when you disagree. You work to stay positive, maintain friendly relations, and not ask for too much.
The upside of being a turtle is that leadership is often under significant pressure. In an environment where everyone is angry at them, the empathetic person can stand out as an ally. I appreciated it when a staffer gave me breathing room to get their promotion through the HR gauntlet and didn’t continuously ask me for status updates. The downside of the turtle approach is that you are not talking about your program’s value directly against the impending cuts. You must place significant trust in your leadership and reduce your chances of involvement earlier in the decision-making process. You may learn about a decision that negatively impacts your team when the negotiation window has closed tightly. Finally, if you work in a community of bulls, you’ll likely be perceived as the adjustable person. More negative change might come your way simply because you’re providing a less troublesome route to solving the immediate problem for leadership.
To Bull or Turtle?
If/when cuts come, you will want to consider the pros and cons of a bull vs. turtle strategy. The most significant factor in your decision will be your risk tolerance for losing your job or program altogether. The Bull strategy is higher risk, higher reward. You are more vulnerable to losing it all quickly or holding onto everything for the long term. The Turtle strategy lessens your risk for immediate termination, but you’re vulnerable to a slow and steady decline without a clear pathway to recovery. It will always be a gamble, but particularly as these decisions have long-term consequences on your career, you will want to be mindful of the advantages and disadvantages of your chosen camp.
Mistakes to Avoid
Don’t let your natural demeanor or workplace culture call the shots
In the past, I leaned more passively due to my character, which was highly conflict-averse in the workplace. Further, the cultural norm in my past organizations promoted that patience and appeasement were rewarded in due time. All this served me well…until it didn’t. Conversely, I have many colleagues whose character leans bullish and are outwardly comfortable in confrontation. They would likely struggle to keep their viewpoints to themselves if the situation required turtling. In choosing a strategy, you need to go deeper than what your natural disposition and institutional norms support. Your plan should be based on a strong assessment of what’s best for your career and program, and you should be prepared for either approach if one day an event requires flexibility.
Don’t be the demonic versions of a bull or turtle
Then there are the awful versions of these approaches. To be a bull does not mean you have permission to be a bully. This is not a free license to become loud or enraged, but rather present and vocal. Professionalism dictates that we don’t throw temper tantrums, yelling and screaming in a way highlighted by many a movie protagonist. Instead, being a bull means you're willing to get in the room, call out what you need with the evidence to back up your value, and potentially point out your leadership for misjudgment or unfair treatment.
If you choose to turtle, there’s a rarely recognized issue of becoming “toxically neutral,” where you appease regardless of the context, ignoring clear violations against yourself and your staff. In such a case, you are actively avoiding your leadership responsibilities. When you are turtling, it is not the same as being a pushover. It’s about choosing a quieter, defensive approach, remaining armored to defend your position if decisions turn too harshly against you or your program.
My Recommendation: Bull
While a bullish approach involves significantly more immediate risk, in my experience, it is more likely to yield the conditions needed to preserve one's work, team, and resources over the long term.
I have often leaned toward turtle in negotiations and, in at least one crucial situation, recognized that I was toxically neutral to the detriment of my employee. In these circumstances, I was financially vulnerable and mentally unprepared to lose my job. My singular goal was not to get laid off, which I accomplished, but as Thanos considered:
In all these circumstances, unfair and unreasonable actions were taken against my work and professional self, which left me depleted and aggrieved. I ultimately could no longer see that doing a great job would lead to success and shifted towards de-vesting in the job (i.e., quiet quitting). Over time, I was left without the conditions to have a productive career and moved on. In reflecting, I’ve acknowledged that I don’t want that ending whenever things go badly at work. I’ve mindfully built up my skill set, confidence, and yes, financial stability, so that I can take a bullish approach. Consequently, I have seen the outcomes change for me positively when conflict arises.
Troubled Waters
This week’s musical accompaniment is “Troubled Waters” by Alex Warren. Per the solid baseline, this is a regular song on my running playlist; you’ll hear it right in the intro.
While the lyrics outwardly speak to a romantic relationship, try imagining the words as a workplace conversation. You can’t quite yell “say you won't let me drown in troubled waters alone” at your boss, but the lyrics hold an essence of what you’re really asking for when negotiating at work. To save your job and program.