Shifting Sands at Work

This article focuses on career planning. People can't easily set a career course to conquer them because there are no precise paths or peaks. Careers resist planning, preparation, and past experience. Changing jobs is a mountain, but changing careers is a desert. No planning can prepare one for the news that one's company is downsizing or being acquired by another organization. During the recent merger of AOL and Time Warner, for example, the organizations' executives were triumphant in conquering the summit of the deal, but they were ill-equipped for crossing the desert of merging two profoundly different cultures. In just two-years' time, the company announced a loss of more than U.S.$100 billion, the largest in corporate history, with AOL dropped from its name.