Careering Through JPL

Alice M. Fairhurst, September 19, 2002

"Story on the Story" by Susan Hendrickson

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Alice Fairhurst, co-author of *Effective Teaching, Effective Learning*,
presented an enthusiastic overview of her tenure as a JPL career
development and mentoring coordinator (1991-2001). Among other things,
Alice is an expert in Keirseyian Temperament and Myers-Briggs typology.
The self-described "jack of all trades" offered the audience the
following advice on career management:

(1) If one thing doesn't work, go learn something else. Go out there and
    challenge yourself someplace else. Don't stay a blacksmith when the
    horses are gone.

(2) You've got to have a network both inside and outside of JPL. Within
    JPL, network outside of your section. Outside JPL, keep up with your
    profession to know what skills are new. You've got to know what's
    going on, or you'll find yourself out-of-date.

Someone Alice had trained in "Temperament and Type" told her about a job
opening at JPL that would be perfect for her. Alice was hired, and she
was given the directive to involve all divisions and all job
classifications in career counseling. In the past, mostly secretaries
came for career development, but not enough engineers or managers.
Within two years she was helping the entire Laboratory and was a key
figure in JPL's many mentoring programs.

Referring to Kenneth Brousseau and Mike Driver's "career concepts,"
Alice's career path was partially "Spiral" because she changed at least
every five to ten years (she likes growth and creativity). She also
followed the "Transitory" model by making big leaps every two to four
years into new fields (for variety and independence). This prepared her
for what was soon to happen at JPL \[downsizing\]. Because JPL had been
very stable, many JPL employees chose the career strategies that work
best in times of stability: "Linear" (management seeker) or "Steady
State"(expert) careers. Those that preferred the career strategies of
change: "Spirals" and "Transitories" were few or even left JPL. When we
lost the Mars Observer in 1993 and JPL began to downsize and experience
high change, employees found that you can't do a "Spiral" or
"Transitory" if you don't have a network of connections.

At the time, JPL had a paternalistic reputation, and laid-off employees
were taken care of by assigning them to section 090. However, JPL is not
paternalistic anymore, and you have to manage your own career. If you
need career assistance, you should contact JPL's current career
counselor, Mary Ellen Derro. Alice found that employees are able to plan
well for projects but not for their own careers, so she demonstrated the
use of planning tools such as matrices and risk mitigation diagrams. She
also found it hard to convey to employees the importance of
understanding the political climate: too many had their eyes to the
ground rather than finding out what was going on. She began coaching
people for new positions, and she helped people understand employee and
employer perspectives.

During the downsizing phase, Alice began partnering with Deanna Kramer
in outplacement. People who came for counseling around this time were
sad, schizophrenic about their situation, or very angry. Deanna and
Alice tried to get them into their "neutral zone" by allowing them to
unload, with the ultimate goal of getting them into their "happy spot"
again.

Because her office was off-Lab, Alice had to work in borrowed offices,
and she sometimes even counseled out of her car. At that point she even
thought about quitting, but instead she stuck it out. Her efforts paid
off, because JPL was recognized for excellence in career development
from the California Career Development Association.

Skill development is so much faster today than it was even ten years
ago. At JPL, you might find that you need to train yourself, because
often the training budget is insufficient. Alice emphasized that you
have to manage your own career and keep yourself up-to-date. She advised
making sure you have transferable skills and joining a professional
association to develop a community of support for yourself.

After the successes of Pathfinder and Sojourner, Alice became an
internal organizational development consultant. She moved into her
13^th^ office since joining JPL ten years earlier (at that point she
knew she was a *true* JPLer!). Around that time, Alice observed a lot of
cases of employee burnout. There are system archetypes on common types
of problems, and one of them is found at JPL: If you put in more effort,
performance goes up, but over time the system encounters a limit that
causes performance to slow down, or even decline. As discussed in Tom
DeMarco's book *Slack*, the best way to solve this problem is to
identify ahead of time the limiting factors and ease the stress. You
have to ask what kinds of pressures are building up in an organization
due to increased pressure on performance, and what am I going to do
about it? If nothing is done, the organization's gasket blows.

At the time, Alice asked, "What are you going to cut out?" However, this
appeared to be a foreign concept at JPL. You can't keep piling on new
requirements without getting rid of things no one is willing to pay for.
Alice said that when employees are overworked, there are diminishing
returns on productivity, and employee health suffers. Hours worked get
higher, but energy level is so low that more errors are made which puts
projects at risk.

After ten years at JPL, Alice decided to retire to spend more time with
her grandchildren. She now teaches a Web page design course at Cal Poly
Pomona, and she continues to teach Managing Creativity with Donna
Shirley at the University of Oklahoma.