Daring to tread the unknown path is key to the career cycle maturity curve
After completing the training in London and visiting the European landmarks, we were ready to start our journey home.
The weather and landscape in Europe were changing from the thinning winter to the burgeoning spring, with sprightly flowers and renewing foliage. The sight of Tulip fields with blossomed flowers spread for miles in the Netherlands was ominous of the transition of Europe from the gloominess and lethargy to the sunshine days ahead. Even in London and the English countryside, the moods of people and nature were visibly on an upswing.
When I returned to India in mid-January 1990, after four months in the UK and Europe, the political landscape, governance chessboard and the overall atmosphere in India were in flux. The country was struggling to come to terms with the virtual political coup that the mild-mannered Viswanath Pratap Singh, once the trusted lieutenant and mentor of sorts to the naïve Rajiv Gandhi, executed with the precision of a well-rehearsed archer.
As the plane lowered over the urban spread of squalor on the fringes of Mumbai airport on its approach to the runway, I was rudely shaken back to the reality of how deprived and unclean even the premier city of my country was! From above it looked as though the plane would crash into the slum-dwellers who were going about their daily chores unmindful of the metallic bird’s menacingly close approach!
In a week, I was back to my routine. Within a few days, Chairman Krishnamurthy visited our office. He was on the threshold of his inevitable exit from the company, because of his alleged entanglement in the Harshad Mehta scam, the revelations of which were getting nastier by the day. Apart from that, he was way too close to the earlier regime and the new Government of VP Singh had little interest in his continuing to lead the company.
Krishnamurthy was an all-out people’s man. He came around to meet employees one by one, in what turned out to be his farewell call. I could see the change in mood in the office. Earlier, people were too eager to be seen with him and used to fall over each other to catch a glimpse and greet him. Now, there was a visibly lukewarm response in general. How tentative and brittle are adulations and elation in the corporate circles!
The same goes for all celebrities whether in films, sports, or politics. One moment you are riding the tide of popularity and heroism and the next you are cast aside like you never existed. Illusion, Maya, is what makes celebrities and unmakes them too!
As he came across me, he came closer and was in his usual affable frame. He told me that he wanted to go out and pick up a few works of art, cloned replicas of famous classical paintings, reproduced by a local artist and available to exclusive clients. He asked me whether I could accompany him to the gallery, near the iconic Flora Fountain and I agreed with the same enthusiasm that I always felt since our first meeting five years back. There was a magnetic charm in his personality and his aura of a benign master, and a willing mentor, had always drawn me to him.
On the way to the gallery, in the car, when we were alone, just two of us, he talked frankly and forthrightly. He told about his being targeted by political opponents because they saw him as a convenient proxy to attack Mrs. G.
He spoke about his unfolding life after SAIL and he had his plate full. He asked me whether I would like to join him and his son to run an electric equipment unit in Chennai in which they held a major stake. I told him, I was already in a mind to shift to the private sector and had a few options in mind. Also, I wanted to take my own time to zero in on a choice as well as to talk to my family about the move. I thanked him for the offer and said my move would be a slow process and might take a few months or even years. He left the offer at that.
At the gallery, he chose a few paintings and asked them to be shipped to his New Delhi address. After a coffee with him and profusely thanking him for all the support and motivation he gave me, I took a drop back to my office. That was the last time I interacted closely with him. He left SAIL in a month and moved on. With multiple corporate engagements, investment forays, and continued unflinching association with the Nehru-Gandhi family, he smoothly and with determination took on his new roles. His trials and tribulations with the various high-profile issues dogging him continued. Even from a distance, he remained an enigmatic inspiration for me and for all those who could work with him. After years, he was cleared of the allegations of association with Harshad Mehta scam.
One of the key outcomes for me from the training and overseas exposure was a comprehensive shift in my concept of job and career. Earlier, during the decade and a half of my work life, the cocooned comfort in the Public Sector culture had tricked me into the false notion that a job and a career were almost synonymous and that a job was for life.
As my perspectives widened, I was convinced of how fallacious the equation of job with career was. Job is mechanical, devoid of an emotional connection and hardly has a long-term and sustainable meaning. A career on the other hand is a life-long, adaptable and learning-centric idea. In your career, you would transition many jobs.
The shelf-life of a job is getting reduced as the profile of jobs is transforming with the application of digital technologies in almost everything we do.
Technology, business models and governance processes are constantly undergoing enhancements, adaptations, improvisations and innovations.
If we see ourselves as doing a job and refuse to look ahead to future trends and possibilities, we will likely miss both the opportunities and the risks that will emerge sooner than we think.
A time will come when the job itself goes through the lifecycle decay and in that process, those of us, who haven’t cared to upskill, update and adapt ourselves to the changes around would become not just low-value resources in the changed context but would even lose our ability to reinvent ourselves and be ready for newer roles.
Back in the early 1990s, business and operating models, the structure of organizations and jobs as well as skill sets, systems and processes were all undergoing swift changes. Of course, the trend has accelerated and become more unpredictable than earlier.
Now, when I look back, I am amazed at how I was able to make an early decision to leave the comfort zone of PSUs and step out into the corporate world where competition, opportunities, skills and mobility were key levers to shape careers. Floating around in the still waters bores you; swimming against currents and cross-currents in the corporate waters are altogether different ballgames.
Many people get used to lethargy and sluggishness and find the comfort of the status quo a safe enough shell to withdraw into. My training, exposure and innate ambition prompted me to take the plunge into the world of challenges and possibilities.
I remember when I got the PSU job, it was considered the resting place for me till my superannuation at the ripe old age of 60. The change that I and my batchmates went through over the decades reflects a massive transformation that has been sweeping India’s business and career landscapes in the past few decades.
Many of us opted for the comfort and security of the original anchorage and remained struck in slow growth, inbreeding of culture and retirement to mediocrity. A few of us like fireflies leaping at the lamp, jumped at opportunities and took risks. A few lost out in the rat race and organizational politics. A handful among our cohorts, spurred by risk-taking and endowed with the good fortune of landing with great mentors, endured, survived and went on to make history.
I can vouch that the winners in life and career are not necessarily the brightest or the most talented. Those among us, the cohort of trainee executives, who made it big in our careers were the ones with better emotional skills, enviable ambition, tact, hard work and proneness to take intelligent risks.
Having decided to make my career shift to the private corporate sector, my next few months were focused on two things. Firstly, doing what my role demanded with the highest ethics, integrity and competence. Secondly, keeping abreast of the developments in my industry, company and overall business and economic horizon.
I started looking at opportunities for a career shift. I took an interest in networking opportunities at professional bodies like the Chamber of Commerce and Management Association. I volunteered to teach at a couple of management schools which offered part-time MBA programs. It kept me current and in touch with the emerging generation of executives. I renewed my contacts with senior professionals who taught us as faculty in my MBA program.
I also continued my writing on management and business topics for a few leading publications. Being in Mumbai helped me immensely to be visible, keep continuously learning and be current about the emerging opportunities in the corporate sector.
I knew for sure that networking and referrals were key to getting opportunities for career shift and growth.
The first lead came when a prominent corporate executive with RPG Group, noticing my writings and my presence in professional fora, made an offer to join the group. Also, a faculty of mine, who later moved to head the corporate HRD of a premier business group, the Aditya Birla Group, invited me to consider joining them. Both the groups were in the highly rated categories. Apart from that, through executive search firms, I got a few more openings. I had to evaluate the options with a proactive view of which offer would give me better learning and growth opportunities.
I was now ready to move. The day after I got my appointment offer in hand from Aditya Birla Group to join a fertilizer pant of theirs that was coming up in UP, I went to meet our HR Head in SAIL’s Kolkata HQ of Marketing organisation, my parent division. After an exchange of courtesies, the customary tea and small talk, I broached the subject of my resignation.
I was one of the supposed STARs in the corporate talent pool, relatively young and with the potential to go up the ladder in the nearly two decades of service left. While my boss tried to persuade me to stay back, many of my peers and other colleagues were surprised that I was throwing away a secure job, with good prospects and opting to enter the as-yet-uncertain world of the private corporate sector.
Within a month, the formalities were completed, and I had my last supper with a few of my batchmates and colleagues.
Life and Career are like books. There ought to be chapters and closures. If the whole book is a continuum with no pauses, reviews and changes in style and substance, one would be bored to near death!
After seventeen years, I said goodbye to the organization that handheld me and led me from the rawness of academic life to the world of sophistication, focus, growth and no doubt intrigues, politics, temporary setbacks and bouts of happiness along the way.
I left SAIL in July 1992. A couple of months back, on 21 May 1991, during an election rally Rajiv Gandhi, the young and much chastised former PM was blown to pieces by an assassin acting as a human bomb. It was one of the worst terrorist strikes on Indian soil since Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her security guards in 1984.
Rajiv was on a comeback trail. The nation was feeling let down by VP Singh's rule; the country and the economy were caught in the vertex of uncertainty and despair. I remembered Rajiv as a young man who tried to do things in a hurry and of course fumbled due to inexperience. But he was well-intentioned and fresh, willing to think outside the box. I was a great fan of how he pursued computerisation and a graded global integration of the economy.
Rajiv Gandhi's Final Journey - A Dream Cut Short Prematurely
The day he was assassinated, I was on an official trip to Kolkata. I had checked into the hotel past the midnight. As I got up early morning and leapt for the newspaper tucked beneath the door by the hotel staff, I saw the gory picture of Rajiv’s mutilated body. For the first time, I cried profusely in silence for a politician. I had great faith in his possible contribution to the remaking of the shattered Indian economy.
Like many of Rajiv’s deeds, my tears were also, in retrospect, the outcome of naivety!
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