ADVICE: Aoife Coonagh answers your career questions

Don't become the work dinosaur

Dear Aoife

I got an awful fright last week. I'm 45, one of a team of "young men in a hurry" hired about 15 years ago to turn around a genteel but moribund consultancy company.

I've done pretty well since. Anyone with any spark then got fast-tracked and I'm now a director of a thriving division, have a nice home, three holidays a year and the other rewards that go with it.

Back to last week. Like every other business affected by the construction downturn, we have had to take stock. We held a company-wide managers' meeting and at it, one of the younger people, a guy I had hired and mentored, came out with all guns blazing criticising the ideas put forward from the top team, including myself.

For a while I was pleased. He wasn't right about everything, but he was right about enough, and it was this questioning gene that I had spotted in him, when hiring him, and later when encouraging his upward path.

Then the awful truth dropped into place. This was me 15 years ago, challenging the older generation, and piteously exposing their staleness and inadequacies.

Now I'm the tired old dinosaur facing 20 more years of "same old, same old", if I'm lucky, and the "we're being very generous , y'know John, in the circumstances" routine if I'm not.

I don't feel I'm going to be kicked out in the next 12 months, but the long term looks bleak and I'm married with children to put through college.

I haven't slept a full night since that bolt from the blue. What's that saying about those who live by the sword?

Dear John

It's happened. It happens to everyone. It came to you a little early.

In an abstract way, we all know that young people coming up behind us may overtake us.

But your moment of truth is no less devastating for that. Seeing your young self, and realising that you are no longer that person is truly shocking in the real sense of the word.

You need time to internalise that, because nothing I can say will change it. Equally no law of nature or business says that constant upward movement is an entitlement.

What I do take issue with is your prediction of the future. "Young men, and women, in a hurry," do not turn into tired old dinosaurs, unless they allow themselves to.

And if your letter tells me anything, it says you have no intention of being a "lifer" going nowhere in your present company for the next 20 years. That's not you.

Okay, maybe you have got a bit comfortable, drifting a bit when the old hunger was no longer there. So you are no longer the fast-tracked young dynamo saving the company from oblivion. Maybe now it is time for you to save yourself.

Draw breath, take stock, look around. What do you want to do with the next 20 years?

Do a bit of work on managing your career. You probably have a very good informal support network, most successful business people do.

Don't be afraid to seek help. There are mentors and other advisors out there, and the process of engaging will help you to see your situation, with all its pluses - and they are considerable - and its possibilities. There may be another role in your company, or industry, which will challenge you.

Or is there something you have always wanted to do, some itch, either workwise or educational, that you have left unscratched?

So what if you took a pay-off, you could use it to buy time or education to put your career on another path. You won't lose the value of the experience gained in your high-flying days. Take your wife into your confidence, but remember this decision has to be yours if it is to work. It won't all be plain sailing.

A political "burnt out case" named Winston Churchill did not become prime minister until he was 65.

Despite his bouts of depression, "black dog" days, he called them, he successfully led his country through its "darkest hour".

Dealing with transitions in power

Dear Aoife

My mother used to tell me not to ask God for anything I really wanted for fear that I might get it. I didn't understand, but I do now. She'd be really proud of me, if she had lived to see her only daughter named chief executive of a major sales company.

However, the operative word here is "named". This business was run successfully by one man for nearly 50 years. He doesn't own the company, but he might as well do.

He is the company, and he listens to no one.

The board eventually prevailed upon him to stand down and I was appointed, to succeed him, but his cronies tacked on a 12-month transition period in which I am chief executive-designate.

We're now three months into the transition and I am ready, but he clearly isn't.

I've planned, I've listened, and I've been sensitive. And now I've begun to execute. Problem is this - any reforms, however minor, I've put forward has the down-side of appearing to criticise the old regime. Meanwhile, he carries on as before, with the added enjoyment of unpicking any modest reforms I have sponsored. If I could engineer an improvement in the weather, he would demand - and get - cyclones.

I know I must respect his experience and contribution, but in truth I could shoot the old guy.

The company could drift along towards the rocks as it currently is - 'drift' being the operative word, but if we are to grow, we need to start making changes, and soon. I don't believe those changes can wait while he serves out his year. Help!

Dear Anne,

You know what you have to do. You need to start making those changes.

And since you say you have planned, and listened, and clearly already know the business, then you need to start now. You could go the route of waiting out the year and spending more time building your networks and preparing the ground for change, but that may be difficult for you and very few businesses have the luxury of time nowadays.

So you have a few difficult conversations coming up. First of all, you need to speak with the man himself - and it's not clear whether you have.

He knows you are going to strangle some of his pet projects, and you cannot blame him for trying to protect them.

If it is possible to get him onside, then it is worth trying. Prepare carefully for a discussion with him, outlining the changes you now wish to make, and seeking his input on how best these can be presented as joint proposals, agreed by him and supported by him.

His authority may give the changes additional momentum. That conversation will need very careful preparation and you will both need to be absolutely clear on the behaviours and actions that must follow.

If that doesn't work, you are on to stage two - talking to the board.

Prepare a one-page plan with what needs to be done. First item on the list: time to move the chief executive on - gently, but firmly. You need to show the board - logically and unemotionally - that the transition phase, if it runs the full year, will become a negative and detrimental to your authority.

Clearly, you already have their confidence since they saw fit to appoint you in the first place.

I suspect from the affectionate note of exasperation that you may even rather like him. In which case, explore the first option fully - that of talking to him.

Up to now, your deference to him and your sensitivity may have prevented you having a full open discussion. Go for it girl!

AOIFE COONAGHis head of the career development unit at Carr Communications. The case histories published are true, but details have been changed to avoid identifying individuals and companies. If you have a problem you would like to see featured, or wish to comment, e-mail askaoife@irish-times.ie