After 5 years conducting part-time consulting and part-time university teaching, I have returned to working full-time once again. My one predictable personality attribute is my unpredictability and choices that go against the grain. I will be leading two national industry verticals for CLA’s (Clifton Larson Allen) Human Resource Consulting and Outsourcing practice (HRCO). For those not knowledgeable, CLA is the 8th largest Accounting, Consulting, and Advisory firm in the U.S. with over 100 offices and close to 8 thousand employees. The HRCO practice is one of the smallest practices at CLA but has seen significant growth during COVID and has positioned itself nicely as an ancillary business line at the firm. I have been working with CLA for about 6 months as a part-time consultant and have enjoyed the work immensely.
So now I am beginning the next chapter in my work life with a return to a normal five day a week executive role. Some of my family and friends were surprised for a multitude of reasons. For starters I have had tremendous flexibility with my schedule working 4 and at times 5 nights a week teaching and consulting sporadically half a dozen days a month on client projects and teaching leadership at Con Edison in New York. The flexibility was a double-edged sword as I had more then a fair share of free time one and sometimes two weeks a month, but suffered from a lack of interpersonal connections, especially once COVID started in early 2020. Aside from my regular pickleball games three or four mornings a week with a small group of friends and a weekly tennis and golf game my face-to-face social interactions were close to zero. My one saving grace up until last summer was my dog Max, who kept me busy and kept me company on long lonely days. Max past last July after more than 17 yrs. as my best friend. His passing was in a strange way an inflection point for me to get back to a daily grind.
A second reason this came as a surprise is the reality of Ageism in the workplace. Although I am an accomplished senior HR executive with a strong resume of leading HR organizations successfully, the time clock was working against me increasingly each passing day. As each month went by it became obvious that my resume was not being considered for a multitude of roles that I was more than qualified for. There is a reality in today’s world of work that individuals that are over 50 years old (and white males) have gone from being the first choice to the last choice for executive roles, especially in HR. Working four and sometimes five streams of gig work and teaching grad school HR at Adelphi was my answer to the discrimination towards my grey hair and aging body. Thankfully, my career afforded me the financial security to do gig consulting for this period of time, but I was missing more than the social connections and the steady paycheck. I was missing being part of a team with a mission and vision. I had no north star pointing me in the right direction each morning. I know you might say that seems a bit cliché and it is. However, I was beginning to feel like a robot with my gig work. I had always identified myself by what I did for a living and had become irrelevant. Things that excited me such as speaking at conferences and writing for Fistful of Talent came to a grind halt during COVID.
Now I am starting my next lap around the proverbial track of work. I have close to 40 years of experience to draw on including 15 leading the HR function at three industry leading organizations under my belt. I am learning to be humble (a work in progress) and that I am no longer in charge. I am excited and at the same time anxious about this new role.
From adversity comes opportunity. COVID, a low unemployment rate, being in the right place at the right time are all factors in the next lap of my career. But so is the work experiences and wisdom that have been garnished in the years leading up to this. Hopefully these assets will be put to good use in my new role.
I will meet you at the finish line and let you know how my last lap went.
HumanCapital3 