01:56 PM EDT on Sunday, April 2, 2006

BY BRIAN O'CONNOR
The Detroit News

"There's one piece of advice I give to anybody who'll listen," advises George Lowe. "Start thinking about what you'll do next before it slams you in the face."

What comes next is a question slamming lots of people these days, especially at Lowe's old workplace, Ford Motor Co., where the company is looking to cut 30,000 jobs.

Lowe "graduated" from Ford in May 2000 when he took an early retirement deal. Within months, he was working on a book and had reinvented himself as a meeting planner, consultant and management strategist.

The key, he says, was finding new uses for the skills he had learned as a Ford manager. "I was thinking about what I wanted to do next well before the time came to depart Ford."

Lowe joined Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division in 1963 under a work/study program while at Western Michigan University. He worked in service engineering and marketing, then did a stint as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers.

After his return in 1971, he worked on teams that launched a new customer-service division. He worked his way up, even doing a stint in Mexico as director of vehicle sales and parts and service operations. By 2000, he was manager of customer satisfaction strategy when an early retirement offer caught his eye.

"Since the early '80s I've been paying attention to what it takes to have effective meetings," Lowe explained. "I was ready to peddle that message elsewhere. I had it down and I had proof of concept, so I knew the stuff. It's something that translates to any business."

It also translated to a book. Thanks to a contact from his Ford days, Lowe was able to co-write We've Got to Stop Meeting Like This!, a book on organizing meetings that was finished within months of leaving the automaker.

The book, he notes, is like a business card. "When I walk in and say I want to design your meetings, I can say I wrote the book on it."

Being on his own as a consultant means that there's no one to pay for his down time. If he's not handling clients, then he's selling new business. Vacations, too, are a thing of the past, Lowe adds.

"If you serve clients directly, they don't care if it's the Fourth of July, they're going to call," he said.

"This was an opportunity to do something different," Lowe recalls. With the idea for his consulting business already well in mind, he was ready to go when he saw a buyout package that promised financial security.

"I could afford to take the risk because I had retirement as a cushion. I didn't have to work, but at the time I got out I was 57 and was nowhere near ready to quit."

One key to success, Lowe notes, is networking. The connection to his co-author was essential in getting his first book published. Part of that was his personal philosophy while at Ford: Never burn a bridge. "You just never know when you're going to need a friend," Lowe notes.

For career changers, Lowe recommends reading What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles. "The people I know that have followed those directions are tickled pink," he notes.

He also emphasizes how transferable any set of skills really can be.

"A high percentage of the people who are going to be laid off have got something that maybe they don't know they have, in terms of a talent they developed while working for somebody else," Lowe asserts. "That could be a new business, or certainly a new job in a different location -- even if it isn't the car business."