Getting Fired is a Great Thing

It was June 1979, when I was on an airplane sitting next to Walter, my boss, flying back from Indianapolis to New York, after just signing up a very large data conversion contract from Indiana Bell Telephone Company.   I felt pretty good, having successfully negotiated the contract, until I turned to Walter and he said,  “Norman, you did a great job but I don’t need you anymore and you are fired!”

To put it mildly, I was shocked.  What a reward for doing such a good job! I didn’t even know what to say.  On the one hand, I was displeased, but on the other hand it was a relief for I was not at all happy working for Walter.  He was always highly competitive and not a nice man to work for.  I remember one day, he had an operations manager that he didn’t like and wanted him to leave.  Instead of asking him to go, he just removed his desk from his office.  When the manager came to work the next day and saw his desk gone he was furious and stormed into Walter’s office and quit.  It made Walter very happy.

At the time, I was president of Walter’s company but did not own any of the stock, but fortunately I had a three year contract and he ended up having to pay me more not to work for him then if I had stayed.

Just a few months later, I read the New York Times on Monday, August 13, 1979 and saw that productivity in the United States had declined for the first time in 33 quarters.  For some odd reason, I went to the Greenwich library and researched the word productivity.   I found very little in the library but became fascinated with the concept and I decided to publish a newsletter on the subject and started a new company called Productivity, Inc.  The company very quickly grew to over 100 employees, took me to Japan 72 times, published hundreds of books and discovered many of the Japanese manufacturing secrets, JIT/Lean, TQC/TQM, 5S, Kaizen Blitz, Quick and Easy Kaizen, etc. and helped American companies and others to be much more successful.

Question yourself.  Are you happy with your job?  Would you rather be working for yourself or for some other company?  What prevents you from changing?  Instead of waiting to be fired, like I did, maybe you should begin to build a new set of plans to create a new future for yourself.  Think it through carefully; do the necessary research; make new contacts, and set a date for the change to happen.  Then walk into your boss and thank him/her for the past opportunities given to you and just say “goodbye.”

Just imagine if I didn’t get fired.  I might still be working for that “stinker.”