Part 1: The Challenges
"The Great Uncertainty" Series: Preparing for your program’s cancellation
If you live in the United States, there’s no denying that we stand in an era of great uncertainty, particularly surrounding our jobs. Many program management professionals (PgMPs) work in the highly impacted government, non-profit, education, and healthcare sectors. While many have already lost their jobs, more remain at work, and it is unclear whether their jobs or entire programs will survive the retraction of federal funds and general belt-tightening. For those who remain at your posts today, there are actions you can take to mindfully prepare.
This three-part series, “The Great Uncertainty,” offers advice on how to ready your program and your career for the prospect of cancellation. These insights come from a mixture of my experiences with program decline and cancellation as well as what I’m reading and hearing about in the Greater Boston area. Part 1 sets the scene and covers key challenges that PgMPs face in the affected industries. Part 2 will cover actions you can take to preserve aspects of your work and advocate for its continuation. Part 3 will focus on how to start assessing your next career move if a change becomes necessary.
The Retraction of the Program Management Profession
I live in Greater Boston, where the headlines are full of news about the cuts or threatened federal funding reductions for Massachusetts' major industries - medicine, science, academia, and non-profits. Further, a historically large wave of layoffs recently occurred at the state’s largest employer, Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB), a conglomerate of well-known hospitals and healthcare providers such as Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Reading local news outlets, the heartbreak of losing one's job is front and center, with a recognition that the work done by these doctors, scientists, and researchers is tremendously valuable to society. This quote from the New York Times article “With Universities Threatened, Can Boston Still Be Boston?” expressively captures the sentiment:
“Some will leave their science behind, and it will end -- after a huge investment, it just falls off a cliff,” said Dr. Wendy Chung, chief of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. “The instability is very hard for people who are so hardworking and dedicated to their mission -- they can only be pushed so far before they break.”
While MDs and PhDs are often the face of the work under scrutiny, they represent larger teams that often include numerous project and program management professionals. If you are among that number, your work may be under threat, and you are experiencing the same prospect of job loss and professional heartbreak.
Common traits of PgMPs who work in these industries…
These PgMPs work on initiatives intended to help expand human knowledge or provide services to improve the lives of vulnerable persons. They are often mission-driven individuals who hold substantial subject matter expertise within their niche field; many with a Master's level education or higher. For example, I worked with many PgMPs at Boston Children’s Hospital who held Master’s in Public Health (MPH) degrees. They entered program management careers as the best way they could improve the healthcare system.
These PgMPs hold full-time roles from the coordinator to the director level. Many others have hybrid positions where they are “customer-facing” and also hold program management responsibilities on operational improvement initiatives. In healthcare, this includes doctors, nurses, front office staff, social workers, department administrators, etc., who care for patients while also supporting or leading initiatives to improve the healthcare system for their patients’ specific needs.
These PgMPs risk seeing their work cancelled due to the negotiations over federal research dollars and generalized layoffs caused by budget shortfalls. For example, MGB’s CEO, Dr. Anne Klibanski, communicated that the focus of the recent layoffs was primarily on reducing the number of managers and administrators. The Boston Globe reported in more detail about the termination of several patient-facing programs and related professionals, including:
- The termination of the Clinical Pastoral Education program at Massachusetts General Hospital and the layoff of the program’s director.
- The layoff of the “Clinical Program Director” of domestic violence programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
- The termination of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Living Tobacco-Free program and the layoff of both of the program’s employees.
Programs will be under the knife, particularly as financial uncertainty heats up. Massachusetts is notably one of the hotter targets for such disruptions in the United States, but it represents trends that are occurring or could happen anywhere across the country. For PgMPs working in these highly impacted sectors, staying on track with your professional goals and career development will be deeply challenging for the foreseeable future.
Core challenges faced by PgMPs today
PgMPs working in the government, non-profit, academic, and healthcare sectors, who face the threat of layoffs or program cancellation, should consider the following challenges:
· Pigeonholed Expertise: In many cases, your work is novel, and a similar job in your specific expertise does not exist elsewhere. A layoff or program cancellation may represent the end of your work on that specific subject matter.
· Embedded Financials: Along with decent salaries, many of the institutions, at least in Boston, still host pensions and have solid benefit packages. Leaving has major implications for your retirement plans and healthcare provider network access.
· High Emotional Stakes: As a person who chose a career in the government or non-profit sectors, there’s a strong likelihood that your work’s mission is personally meaningful. Culturally, these are also industries where people do spend their entire careers at one organization, and you may have planned the same. Your program and job’s threatened demise represent a professional heartbreak to many personal aspects of your life, including community, that must be acknowledged and grieved.
· Adverse Market Conditions: Job fluidity is extremely low right now. As mentioned, layoffs due to budget shortfalls were already underway this winter, indicating that numerous PgMPs are on the job market looking for new roles. Further, many institutions enacted hiring, promotion, and salary freezes. If the federal government goes through with the level of budget cuts as threatened, these adverse market conditions will escalate rapidly. They might also be around for a long time if these industries must completely reorganize.
· Unprecedented disruption: Given the scale of dollars under negotiation and the social objectives behind those threats, the job challenges for PgMPs in these industries could be more substantial than the COVID-19 pandemic era or the Great Recession. Those past crises enveloped these industries, but as a part of the larger casualties. Meanwhile, society actively worked to uphold the stability of these sectors as essential to making it through the crises. This is the first event in my lifetime where these industries are an active target for reduction and reorganization. The assault factor adds something brand new to one’s level of disconcertion when making plans for the future.
Across the country, PgMPs must deeply consider whether they want to or even can maintain their careers in these industries. For those still in their roles, there are mindful actions that you can take to advocate for your work and even preserve your program’s findings in the event of cancellation. For those thinking about “what’s next,” the job search likely will not be an easy hop to a similar position at the company next door. A deeper, agile strategy will be required to find a new, meaningful position with stability and career growth. The upcoming articles in this series will cover these topics and hopefully help you prepare for the harsher realities of “The Great Uncertainty.”
Check in on Tuesday, April 29th, for “Part 2: Program Advocacy.”
Update: I’m adding a soundtrack to this series. If you’re feeling low, check out this single by Noah Cyrus featuring the Fleet Foxes. It’s in an easy range for singing.