Why can't professionals use career advice?

I met Ajit last week who has a 5 year experience with software firm. He was seeking a job in a new company and wanted to know 'what is the right job he should find'. When i inquired with him, i found that he was working only for last 6 months in his current job. When i asked him the reason for leaving job, he replied that he was having problem with his current boss. I told him that his problem is not 'finding the right job', but learning 'how to deal with difficult boss'. He responded ' I will learn that later' and further asked me if i will help him now in finding the right job now?

This is a typical way in which corporate professionals approach career-making. They wait for 'important' problem to convert into 'urgent' problem. They do not address the problem when it is 'important'.So when the problem becomes urgent, they neither have the time to address the problem symptom; nor the requisite freedom to use different options.
This is why professional players approach their game in a different manner. If Roger Federer or Nadal used this approach in their career, they will solve their problem only after they have lost the match. Instead professional players employ coaches. Coaches help them identify their 'important' problems in advance and prepare them before they become 'urgent'. This is what helps them consistently win games over a long period of time.

This is what a coach can do for corporate professionals. A coach can convince Ajit in using the available situation to solve the problem, instead of bypassing the problem. A coach can therefore help Ajit to develop his skill of managing difficult bosses, so that Ajit's career does not get blocked in the future due to difficult bosses. A coach can help Ajit to solve his 'important' problems before they become 'urgent'.

Without a coach, a corporate professional , like a professional player, will only react to situations and problems. A coach, by proactively identifying 'important' problems that one is likely to anticipate in a career, helps a corporate professional develop the necessary skills in advance. A corporate professional, with a helpful coach, can build his career on his chosen path , instead of changing the path to avoid the roadblocks.

Is marriage relationship an indicator of career success?

In a recent survey of about 3000 couples it was discovered that an average couple ( http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/man-woman/Average-couple-argues-2455-times-a-year/articleshow/8464221.cms) bickers 7 times a day. Of course, this is a survey of western couples. In India, i guess this number could be less in older generation couples, but in the young generation this could be a representative number. How is marriage relationship related to career-intelligence?

Researchers have found that biggest single reason for a tiff in a marriage is not listening to what the other half is saying. In other words, people tend to 'advocate' more than 'listen and inquire'. Surprisingly, this is also the most common bottleneck faced by a professional who is wanting to enter the ' top most core group' of an organisation.

As a professional grows in an organisation, he or she has to learn to 'advocate' less and 'listen' more to bring together the diverse viewpoints on a subject, problem or a decision. Without bringing these diverse points, the decisions are suboptimal and root causes of a problem remain unresolved. Where is a playground to learn this skill?

In an organisation, this skill is difficult to learn, because there is no playground to learn this skill. As one grows and acquires seniority in an organisation, because of power, juniors tend to listen to seniors. Even when juniors are 'told' to 'speak' their mind, juniors often make mistakes in stating 'irrelevant' points or highlighting 'narrow issues'. Senior executives soon lose their patience and revert to become 'advocates' of their viewpoints. A senior executive therefore does not get to practice the skill of listening and inquiring.

For an executive, marriage relationship is surprisingly one of the best playground to develop this skill of listening and inquiring. One other playground is in his/her relationship with same-age friends, where his viewpoints are questioned and deliberated.

Without learning this skill of 'listening and inquiring', one cannot cross the invisible glass barrier of entering the 'core group of team' in an organisation. Apart from other benefits of marriage relationship, this is how marriage directly helps an individual in building one's career.

Is 2011 World cup win a more challenging victory than 1983 World cup win?

Planning for mental conditioning

It was in Dambulla where, as Virender Sehwag mentioned, they started visualising the 2011 World Cup final. "We had planned a year ago what we needed to do in order to set ourselves up to win the World Cup," Upton said.

Paddy Upton, mental conditioning coach of Indian team, spoke of the year the team had been through: the anticipation, the preparation, the hard work. "We set on this a year ago. Gary and myself and Eric Simons asked the question, 'Are we ready to win the World Cup?' And we felt we had the team to win it, the skill and the talent, but mentally we possibly weren't ready."

This mental conditioning work done for carrying the burden of such monumental expectation makes this 2011 world cup win a more special win than even 1983 World cup win. I know two wins are difficult to compare. However winning a tournament with so high expectation ( 2011 World cup) requires a radically different degree of mental effort and skill than winning a tournament with no expectations! This is why in sports it is far more difficult to consistently win for 4-5 years than winning for a year. ( And that is why Roger Federer so highly respected in a tennis world which he dominated for so long!) Skill aspects are easier aspects to learn and prepare; what is more difficult is undergoing the mental conditioning work required for so long a time.

Bearing mental stress

We do not know the details of Upton's mental conditioning work that he did with Indian team, but some of the aspects are visible now in the post-match interviews. For instance, to find a way to adjust to the nervousness, Dhoni said the players tried dealing with nerves in different ways. "We said avoid it, do this, do that," but the strain was always felt. When Dhoni was asked how Yuvraj had been in the dressing room during the tournament, he replied with a smile: "He has been vomiting a lot".

Yuvraj told ESPNcricinfo, as he crossed the Wankhede to return to his dressing room, that he had been physically ill several times during the tournament. "Anxiety, anxiety," he explained. "This was the World Cup and that anxiety can really be heavy."

Some of the players had been struggling to sleep properly. Dhoni added, "If you ask the players, they were not eating well because of anxiety. Not pressure, but anxiety. There would be food in front of you but you wouldn't feel like eating it."

All that mental preparation helped. As Upton said, in his team meeting on Friday,'Guys we have been talking about exactly this for a year, and we have been preparing for it and we know we are ready.' Upton added that 'while there were nerves, we went in with the confidence that we are better prepared than the opposition'.

Release of pressure

The burden that Yuvraj and his team-mates had been carrying around over the last six weeks ( which was simmering slowly for a year) suddenly fell away after the final. Everything had turned into lightness. Harbhajan Singh wept into the India flag, Yuvraj singh and Sachin Tendulkar could not hold back their tears. Dhoni, who normally replies to questions only in English, even when asked in Hindi, switched languages several times on Saturday night in the post match conference.

Lessons for corporate executives from Indian team's goal achievement

Mental preparation is as important as skill preparation in achieving any goal. But in corporate life, how much attention is given to improving the mental conditioning? It is almost taken for granted. Or worse still, mental conditioning work is equated with gung-ho statements like 'Be positive' or ' Be decisive' or some such irrelevant homilies.

Another unpredictable path of thinking competency individual

Born in Kolkata to a family full of doctorates and postdoctorates. Graduate in Physiology from Utkal University. Learnt the art of cooking from in-laws, who hailed from Sylhet in East Bengal, a place well known for their uniqueness of cooking.

Did his Hotel management course from Taratala in Kolkata. Joined Taj group in Mumbai from Campus. Simultaneously did an evening course in Marketing. Joined Ananda Bazar Patrika's advertising department where he did space marketing.Set up his advertising agency in Mumbai. After 6 years, started up a restaurant in Mumbai. His wife designed the interiors of his restaurant.

Name of this person is Anjan Chatterjee, founder of speciality restaurants such as Mainland China, Oh ! Calcutta, Machaan, Sigree and Flame & Grill. It was 20 years when the first restaurant was launched. I read this story in TOI of 23 March 2011.

Is anything of Anjan Chatterjee's path predictable in the initial years of his? Family background of doctorates, degree in physiology, and then course in marketing. Only hint in the background was perhaps his learning cooking at in-laws place ! But this too cannot be predicted before the event, although it is 'obvious' after the event.

Observe some interesting career-tracks in this story. Cooking is a doing competency that he learnt at in-laws place. But was he a good cook much before that? Doing competency individuals typically dive deeper in their competency before they start a business from that. Business is too much of a diversion for masters !

Therefore, my guess is that Anjan Chatterjee , although passionate about cooking, may not be master cook. Instead, Anjan seemed to have combined his cooking passion with his intellect of marketing/business to find a unique calling for himself which combines head and heart. And this change seem to be driven by Gain, not Pain. ( See my blog on child's career for pain versus gain motivations!)

In this case, the uniqueness is about combining thinking competency with doing competency! In most of the cases, you will observe that thinking competency individuals change their paths in other thinking competency, related or unrelated.

Is mid life crisis (or quarter life crisis) rooted in real-life issues?

This is a resume of a person: Wrote for Hindi commercial soaps, marketed a music label, worked for a technology firm, started a band. His name is Keith Menon, who started a AWOL ( away without leave) program. One can join this program, move from one place to another at a modest budget, and then write their experiences on web.

I have met some individuals, between the age of 28-32 who face a different version of this confusion. Some of them want to work for NGO, some want to change jobs because they get bored, while some others want to find 'meaning' in life.

In my career research, i have found that this is a genuine need felt by all of us. Our great grandfathers ( who were born in 1940s/ 50's) never had to deal with it because they continued to fight for survival ( cloth, shelter and decent living for their children) till the age of early 50's. My father could built his house only after he retired. And because they continued to struggle late in life, finding some other 'objective' in life was too late for them.

Individuals born later in the decade of 1970's were not so lucky. They got their minimum sustenance till the age of mid 30's of their life. They therefore faced the question of 'what next?' in their life far earlier and were forced to answer them. We called it mid-life crisis. Today's generation faces this question even earlier, because they do not have to struggle to meet their sustenance. Their fathers are working in good companies, have a decent shelter in a big town, and also have experienced car and other small luxuries of life.

For them the question of 'what next' is real and is faced with full impact. As their full life is ahead of them, they are forced to resolve this problem. In my career, i have met individuals for whom this question has different connotations. For some it is question of finding their calling, a profession which will help them express themselves completely. For some, it is a question of finding meaningful existence in life ( I do not want to work 9 to 5 and die one day...). For some others, it is a question of identity ' who am i and what do i want in life'?. All of them have one feature in common: all are striving towards self actualisation.

As i have observed in my coaching experience, this drive of self actualisation is not always rooted in real-life issues. Sometimes it is rooted in ignorance of 'what is career'. Sometimes , it is a result of absence of dense engagement in life that causes lack of any values. Sometimes, it is routed in 'identity'. Sometimes it is due to inability of meeting self-expectations that are unrealistic. In other words, the mid-life crisis or quarter life crisis is not always rooted in real-life issues.

Finding calling for thinking competency individuals

As i have noted elswhere, finding a calling for professionals who have 'thinking' competency is a very tough ask. For 'Doing' competency individuals - such as musicians, dancers, cricketers, and chess players - it is easier. Here is another example of a tough ask that i watched on a Zee TV on 2nd Jan.

This individual, let us call him Rajiv, passed from a college in Delhi. Went on to start a business. Managed to do it for two years. Rajiv was selling clothes.

Rajiv then joined an advertising agency which a friend of his started. After a period he shifts to a bigger ad agency, ULKA. Ulka got work for Hero Honda. Prahlad Kakkar was directing the film; however he had a cardiac trouble, when he landed in Delhi. He was hospitalised. The ad work could not be stopped. So the cameraman became the director and Rajiv became assistant director. This was the first experience of doing something what he liked. Seed was sown.

While dropping Prahlad Kakkar to the Delhi Airport, Prahlad Kakkar tells Rajiv that his place is in Mumbai. After 6 months, Rajiv lands in Mumbai. Rajiv comes and works in a ad agency in Mumbai and then starts his own ad agency. During one of his work, he comes along to work with Amitabh Bachan, on his Madhushala album.Seed grew into a big plant.

That introduction leads him to make a movie with Amitabh Bachan. The movie flops. He concluded that the movie flopped because he did not know how to write a script. Seed had grown into a plant, but not yielding a fruit.

Second script is written after a long time. Rajiv was unable to find a financer for this. However, Aamir Khan saw the script and that enabled him to find a financer and producer. Plant with seed had now yielded a fruit.

Could you guess the name of this individual? By the way, it is not John Mathan, who also had advertising background. But in all such career stories, one can trace the path.

Do you see how much time/effort and fortuitous incidents have to happen to just find a calling? And then equally large amount of time/effort has to be put to own that calling? It is absolutely impossible to find when the seed will get sown and then equally fortuitous to guess which seed will be nurtured and flowered further to make it a calling. After the event, it looks obvious. Before the event, it looks risky guesswork.

Only when such many stories are put together, one can see a common patterns and convert hindsight into foresight. If you happen to meet such a mentor, this risky guesswork can be converted into practical plan. A mentor can also help you see things before they become an event. A mentor can give you the necessary support to own the seed. And perhaps, he or she can also help you save some time and large effort!

In corporate work, we can only produce task output without influencing 'task outcome'

In a recent ATP tennis tournament of Indian Wells, California, 2010, i was watching semifinal match between Andy Murray and Soldering. The match looked close. At the end, Soldering won the match in three sets, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3. Statistics however at the end of match was surprising. Both had won equal points: 79. Both players won equal points, but one player won the match at the end. Andy Murray and Soldering put in same efforts in the match, produced same output, but the outcome of the match was determined by 'who won the points at what time'!

I see this phenomenon regularly in a corporate world. Two individuals working in a company may work equally hard, but may end up producing different outcomes. That is, one may get less 'credit' for the task accomplishment than the other. It looks so unfair to the loser, like it looked so unfair for Andy Murray. But if you pause for a moment, you will not be surprised.

Unlike in a tennis match, the work in a corporate world is always done by a team. In a team situation, where the work is knowledge work, it is very difficult to decipher 'who did what'. How does one decide, for instance, that a 'smart' idea of one team member contributed more than the 'long hard work' of another team member? Therefore, logically speaking, in such a situation, 'perception' plays a critical role in determining the 'winner' than the real merit. With no method of determining 'truth', that is the only way out.

You may wonder that this rule may work in a demanding field like research, where research contributions are strictly monitored. But i was surprised. One of my friend who is a researcher in physics ( doing her PhD) also experienced the same phenomenon. When the research was over, she found herself 'fighting' for getting the credit of success. Phenomenon was no different than a corporate world!

But if Soldering's win was a surprise to me, the result of next match in the same tournament was shocker to me. It was a match of Nadal versus Ljubicic. Nadal won more points than Ljubicic at the end. It was 98 versus 92. But yet, Ljubicic won the match in the third set in a tie breaker. It is so difficult to believe.

Now what other proof do we need to appreciate that we can only influence 'output', not 'outcome', even in a one-to-one match. If it is so valid in a one to one situation, how can it be different in a team work of corporate life ( where it is more probable because of additional factor of 'perception')?

Understanding country's historical background is important to achieve a part of career objective

According to one Harvard study, one of the four objectives which man seeks to achieve during his life is legacy. One of the common way of leaving behind legacy is doing something for the society or the country. Most of the corporate executives however do not start working on this objective until they have retired and therefore often fail to prepare themselves for doing anything meaningful in their later part of life.

I was therefore surprised to read Nandan Nilekani's book "Imagining". After reading the book, one realises that his entry in Government UID project was not a chance event. In career, 'opportunity' becomes an opportunity only when you are prepared for it. This book shows his preparedness. Although the book took about 3 years in the writing, I am sure it was working on his mind for much more longer than that. The book depicts his method of understanding India's background and challenges to find what he could do in this scenario.

In the process, however he has created a book which can be used by all corporate professionals. (This is opportunity for you!)

It is a very good book that brings together the relevant part of Indian history to understand where India stands today. It fills in numerous gaps of information that may be irking you. For instance, it would help you understand how this 'double hump' demographical change in Northern versus Western/Southern states is fueling the 'Marathi' movement in Maharashtra. Or why accidental introduction of English language to 'control' the English empire by British India has unwittingly helped India today? Or how these small revolutions in Stock exchange automation or Telecom have contributed to India's growth in such a big way? Or what challenges is India facing on education and health front?

For a corporate professional, who does not have the time and patience to understand the country's challenges in a meaningful way, this book of Nandan Nilekani offers a 1000 feet perspective of India's historical background and the emanating challenges, so that one can delve into deeper details of a relevant portion ( of IT or eduction or health) depending on one's interest and concern.

Is career building a mystery or a puzzle?

( Mystery versus Puzzle idea was made popular by Gladwell in his Enron's article)

Let us understand this distinction better. One can view traffic congestion problem, for instance, in a city as a mystery or a puzzle. If it is a puzzle, then one shall identify traffic patterns, build appropriate signaling system, negotiate traffic through one-way and two-way roads, and build flyovers where the four-way traffic is equally dense. If one views it as a mystery, then one shall view it as phenomenon of natural urbanisation in a country and therefore find ways to 'manage' the increasing intake of rural population, determine 'threshold' level of a city that can assimilate a specific size of population at a particular rate, decide ways of reducing population intake into traffic intake ( say by forcing people to use public vehicles), and then arrive at an effective strategy of reducing urban congestion.

As you will observe, mystery solving involves making several judgments, taking many ' intuitive calls' on the unfolding of future, and making murkier decisions based on inadequate data. Puzzle solving on the other hand means getting more and more data, finding better way of getting data, and using algorithms to find the right decision. Puzzle typically has one conclusion, Mystery has many. If puzzle is solved wrongly, it is easy to find a culprit. In Mystery is solved wrongly, it is not possible to blame any one. So what do individuals do when forced with this choice. Does it take any Prophet to predict that they will naturally choose puzzle-solving paradigm?

The same has happened with Career-building. Solving a puzzle of career building is far more easier than solving the mystery of career building. We therefore find our career goals, determine the gaps to reach the goals, and fill those gaps. Naturally a puzzle can be solved in many ways. So some others solve it by building the right skills and traits that are universally right, such as thinking positively. They ignore the finding that all successful people do not have the right skills/traits. Based on the cricketing skills, who would have chosen Virendra Sehwag in a cricketing team? And that too in a national cricketing team?

Which paradigm do you chose to build your career? Unfortunately, the choice is not in our hand. Open-ended problems, like traffic congestion or career building, cannot be solved by using a puzzle paradigm. If you solve them like a puzzle, the solution is always inadequate, often a wrong one, and leads to many other unintended harmful consequences. In the problem of traffic congestion, we face the impact of wrong solution every day and conveniently ignore its consequences. In the problem of career building, we face the impact of wrong solution directly in our lives and pay for the unintended consequences every day.

The real question therefore is how to adopt mystery paradigm to build your career. If we agree on the question, then we are on the same table, and can proceed to find answers to the question.

What is your career script?

Last week, in one of the Television show, I was listening to an interview of Smita Talwalkar. She is a film producer, who is producing good meaningful Marathi cinema, a model, an actress. She must be around the age of 40.

When asked about her past, she mentioned that when she was working as a TV announcer at the age of 18, she was working with Smita Patil. After a year or so, Smita Talwalkar got married, while Smita Patil went on to make an acting career in a film. Smita Patil made a mark as an actress. They could rarely talk to each other, but she used to tell her children and husband about their association on the TV. ( Perhaps she also missed what she could have achieved?) When they met together in one of the film shootings, though, Smita Talwalkar was surprised to hear Smita Patil praising her decision of making a family and living her life. She said ' Whatever you have achieved in your family can never every be compared to what she would have got in work".

How many of us have courage to write our own career script and live it through? Most of us, as we grow, summon enough courage to do it at the later age. Some cannot do it even till the end of life, as they keep on chasing money and security throughout their lives. But at the age of 18, it is rare to write one's career script.

In my journey of exploring interesting careers, I have met very few individuals of this type. We love seeing these characters in movies and make those movies famous. 3 idiots was a movie of such an individual. It is so exciting to fantasise about these characters and wanting to become like them.

Although these characters in movies are motivating and encouraging, it is not very useful, because it is important not to chase a mirage in careers. 20 years back i started searching individuals who build careers by 'setting goals'. When i found them, i observed that they exist only in certain professions and conditions.

If you therefore find individuals, who have written their career script, at an early age, please inform me, either on this blog, or through email id. It is important to investigate and get to know the 'reality'! I know that 'reality' is not always good for some individuals. Some time, however, it is a matter of life and death for some individuals. Like it is when i tell corporate professionals that building careers for them is not through setting goals !

Finding leadership potential of your job - Part I ( continued)

First, instead of moving to part II of the blog, i wish to rectify two of my mistakes today which my friend pointed out in the last blog. ( Thanks Bill for pointing the errors)

One, I was using a wrong word, the word 'paradox'. The right word is 'dilemma'. Let me redefine Leadership with this new word.

Leadership is a 'practice' of resolving the dilemma of leading versus managing a system ( which is comprised of organisation plus business) almost always in favour of leading.

My second mistake was about making leadership synonymous to leader-development. Leadership is a practice; while 'leading' and 'managing' are processes. Developing leadership practice in individuals is about leader-development; the typical promise of trainers. Organisations, on the other hand, can also nurture leadership practice in an organisation by using organisational levers, besides developing leaders.

Trainers are both fortunate and unlucky in developing leaders. They are fortunate because their training is focused on individuals, and it is an individual who resolves this dilemma. They are however unlucky because they cannot help an individual resolve this dilemma without understanding the organisational factors that help and hinder this leadership practice in a specific position. When trainers ignore organisational factors while training, individuals are unable to practice leadership in organisational situation. The leadership concepts become empty and do not generate intended result.

Organisations are also fortunate and unlucky in developing leadership ( not leaders). They are fortunate because they can nurture leadership practice by developing 'organisational models' that nurture leadership. Toyota way of manufacturing is an excellent example of nurturing leadership practice even at the lowest rung of employees. One can also call this distributed leadership model. In this model, fairly large number of employees can practice leadership to a sufficient degree. In Toyota, for instance, 'anyone in the assembly line can stop the conveyor of car if something is wrong'.

However such organisational models are in rarity. Most of the organisational models require select few number of individual employees to practice leadership to sustain them. In other words, they need centralised leadership model, a model where select individual positions practicing leadership are critical for organisational sustenance. However, as organisation's primary alignment is not towards individual, organisations do not pursue individual-development as their agenda. They concoct a mixture of management development programs and hope that their senior managers use them appropriately and practice leadership. Unknowingly, organisations therefore fail in producing the intended results.

In the next blog, we shall return to our main proposition - how can individuals learn to engage in leadership practice with or without the active help from organisational levers. If they get assistance from organisational levers, their learning is faster. If they do not get the necessary help, they can still learn the leadership practice at a slower rate and be hopefully ready to deploy it when the right moment comes.

Find Leadership potential of your job -Part I

I believe that every job has a potential for practicing leadership. Leadership, as you would recall, is resolving the paradox in favour of leading vis-a-vis managing.( for more clarity read my blog on http://hrdiary.blogspot.com)

Because every job has a mix of managing and leading, every executive has to resolve this paradox, if not every day, at least every month. And you must resolve this paradox and develop the skills of leadership in your current job, because you need to be ready when the 'moment' comes. Any skill takes a long time to build and today is the time to practice it.

Let us remember five distinctions of managing versus leading that can be applied to your current job

- Managing is maintaining the present, while leading is protecting the future
- Managing is acting for immediate & medium-term benefits, while leading is acting for long term benefits
- Managing is doing 'what can be done', leading is done 'what should be done'(Peter Drucker deals with this very beautifully)
- Managing is doing the appropriate things, while leading is doing the right things
- Managing is behaving legally, while leading is behaving ethically

Even a junior programmer, working in a sofware company, has a potential to practice leading. When he writes a code for his customer, either he can 'hard-code' everything and get the work out in a jiffy. Or he can think ahead and 'soft-code' so that the person who is maintaining the code finds it easier to do his work.How does he resolve this paradox?

If he resolves it in favour of 'leading', he has to learn the skills of doing the new task. How does he convince his boss and colleagues of his way? How does he deal with their objections? If he does not managing to convince, how does he still go his way without making them feel guilty? How much of additional effort/time can he afford to spend if his team does not agree with him?

If he resolves it in favour of 'managing', he still needs to answer many questions for himself. Is he getting worried about ruffling the feathers of his folks ? Or is it due to lack of time at that particular moment which he does not have? Or is he avoiding this resolution because it never occurred to him that a paradox existed?

A simple act of resolving the paradox of leading versus managing actively raises lots of questions with which he has to engage. And this engagement with real situations helps him build the the skill of leadership. As you would notice, this skill involves both the skills: the skill of noticing and resolving the paradox as well as the skill of carrying out the decision, be it the decision of managing or leading. Both the decisions carry an emotional impact, which if dealt appropriately, causes lot of learning.

In this part, we have dealt with the first step of finding leadership potential in your job: the step of why to take the effort of resolving the paradox in your job. In the second part, we shall take an example of a job position and write down the different 'places/events/situations' where the person in that job position can practice leadership. See you next week.

Passion is important in career

When i was hearing Hrithik Roshan's interview in 'Tere Mere Beech Mein' conducted by Farah Khan, i was touched by the life-and-death decision he had to take in his career.

He was diagnosed for 'Scoliosis'. It is a curved spine; a deformity due to irregular shaped vertebrae. He was told that he won't be able to do the 'intense physical acts' such as dancing and fighting sequences natural for an actor. If he tries doing that,he was told that he may get forced to long bed rests. He had undergone a 3-month bed rest for recovering from one such painful event.

What would you do, if you wanted to become an actor, at such time? Would you pursue acting as a career despite the consequences? Would you pursue it when you know that your father is a reasonable rich person and your becoming an actor does not matter much in gaining financial independence? Would you do it differently when you have no other better choice than 'acting career'?

Hrithik Roshan thought over it and decided to pursue acting despite the consequences. In his word, he felt ' I would rather die pursuing what i want instead of living with something that i don't want'. In my journey of a careerologist ( where i explore careers) i have found very few people take such kind of decisions when other reasonable options are available. They do take such tough decisions where no other 'path' is worth pursuing.

This is what brings me to the main subject of this blog. How much do we value passion in our career? I have seen many examples in 'senses-based' careers ( such as acting, dancing, sports etc) where such decisions are taken. I have seen few instances in cognitive careers of corporate world where such criteria are used to take such decisions. The two notable exceptions to this rule that come to my mind are in the field of advertising and publishing.

Emotions are however important 'part' of our self. And it is surprising that individuals in corporate world do not use that element as much as others in their lives. Using emotions in careers is helpful in more than one ways: it keeps our work-life ( i.e. jobs) exciting and life worth living. Perhaps it is the skill of using emotions in work-life that is lacking.

Using emotions in work-life does not guarantee success. Hrithik Roshan succeeded with his call. But that may not happen in other cases. To utilise emotions in one's work life therefore demands a certain maturity and intelligence. Without that basic skill, emotions start 'using' you, instead of you 'using' the emotions.

Practicing leadership in corporate world

Leadership is a much misunderstood concept in corporate world. Every CEO and senior manager is supposed to practice leadership. He is shown a role model of Jack Welch or Nelson Mandela and told to emulate their behaviour. It is a foregone conclusion that a person at senior level must practice leadership whether he is ready or not.

Trainers further add to the confusion by 'labelling' many of their programs as 'leadership development programs'. They go a step further by claiming that leadership can be practiced at any level: junior, middle or senior. This is the Western view of human development: you can do anything if you have the willingness and drive to achieve it. This view creates heroic individuals who may perform heroic acts, but can also create deputees who cannot even think for themselves.

The confusion is fed by reluctance of researchers who refuse to define leadership. Researchers interview and study CEO's and political leaders, decipher common traits and behaviour, and claim to discover the common denominator of a leader without defining leadership. In their quest to define leadership traits, they may even forget that many of the CEO's and leaders they interviewed may have been 'adminstrators'.

Rudolph Giuliani's resurrecation of New York after 9/11 is one such example. Reviving a city/institution after such a tragedy requires extraordinary capabilities to bring together all stakeholders, chalk out an action plan and execute it. But is this leadership?

Is 'removing terrorism' same as 'removing terrorist'? Is countering the practice of anti dowry same as passing the 'anti-dowry' law in the parliament? Is instituting 'secured transport' in a city after 11 pm same as instituting police practices to catch criminals in the city?

If you observe closely the similarity in the second and first act, you will understand the concept of leadership. The first act requires understanding of ' interrelated systems', while the second requires understanding of 'linear systems'. The first act requires a far difficult juxtaposition of different initiatives and weaving amongst different stakeholders, while the second requires a 'one dimension action' against the dissidents. The first act requires dealing with dynamic complexity while the second act is dealing with static complexity.

In short, the first act requires the ability to deal with 'Systems'. ( please do not confuse system with department or process. It is a word which has precise definition, derived from a practice called Systems thinking.)More so it requires an ability to understand and deal with open systems and that too multiple systems at one time.

This is where we have a definition of leadership. Leadership practice is an ability to influence open system(s) in a sustained manner. Sustained manner means not just one time action; but an action which can be sustained after the initial trigger is off.

This definition will tell you where where leadership cannot be practiced. If, for instance, not a single system is 'kept' open at a junior level, you may not be able to practice leadership at a junior position. You will also realise that you are not expected to 'practice' leadership even at senior positions in certain times. For instance, if an organisation has to be revived, it needs huge 'administrative ability'.

With a precise definition of leadership, you will know and how and when to practice leadership. You will know that despite whatever your effort, you cannot achieve anything more in an organisation where platform creation is going to take huge time. You will set realistic expectations.

It is so unfair to judge someone by our expectations

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly currently are the victim of our unrealistic ( not closer to reality) expectations. Because India won 20-20 tournament, we expect India to win again even when the format has changed to 50-50. If India cannot win with Big 3 in 50 over format, we want selectors to give the 20-20 stars ( like Robbin Utthapa and Gautam Gambir) a second chance instead of giving second chance to Big 3 who have performed well in the last series. We want to ignore the past record of 20-20 stars in the fifty over format and still believe that they will perform better in the 50 over format when everyone ( including Dhoni) believes that 20-20 over format never tests capability of a cricketer. Even when we know Australians are better in the 50 over format than us, we want to forget that because it clashes with our expectations. Everything is unfairly stacked against the Big 3 because they have not 'fulfilled' our unrealistic expectations. Isn't that surprising?

But if you think for a while, it is not really so surprising. I met a couple last week, where the male partner has still not forgiven the female partner because she has not 'fulfilled' his expectations of a 'mate' after 5 years of married life. I have met managers who evaluate their juniors, not based on their capabilities, but on their expectations. I have met parents who constantly judge their child against their expectations and cause unintended damage to the child's life.

Even at a personal level, this matters. I know of an entrepreneur who has innovated and brought a radically different concept in homeopathic software who feels he has failed because he has not earned 'enough' as compared to his expectation. When I told him that his expectations were unrealistic ( given the nature of his radical product), he replied that this knowledge will not bring any solace to his wife and family who expect him to succeed in lesser time. And I also know of an entrepreneur who lives on an expectation that his idea will succeed one day, even though it may be a black swan event that occurs rarely in the real world.

Expectation surprisingly is a much more powerful driver in career managment than we credit it for. Expectations are triggered by comparisons ( that my colleague is getting more than what I am getting), unrealistic wishes and desires ( I loved painting once upon a time so painting can be my vision) and also to justify our inability to adjust our beliefs ( like I continue to expect something impossible because 'making it possible' is more painful and excruciating).

Why did India lose against NewZealand?

The above match is a classic case of how diagnosis should not be done. In a system, cause and effect are intermingled, and it requires a non-linear thinker to seperate the elements and come to a conclusion.

For instance, one of the newspaper column said that the 'fault was in giving too many runs at the end'. If you have observed other matches, you will always find that many runs are scored in the last few overs. For instance, South Africa scored some 40 odd runs in last two overs. It is the interplay of different different factors in 20-20 game that causes this. If an experienced team like England has not learnt this trick, can we expect Indians to do so?

Another diagnosis was Yuvraj Singh should not have been bowled in the 16th over. One newspaper column also wrote that 'India did not seem to have learnt anything from the past. Yuvraj was hit for five sixes in a over'. This newspaper column does not know that being hit in the last overs depends on how bowler 'readjusts' with the batsman. For instance, England bowler Schofield gave 14 runs in 3 overs, but gave away 3 sixes in the last over, because he could not readjust with the Morkel's hitting zone. So why was Yuvraj given the 16th over? One can surmise that Dhoni must have thought that ' Having seen how he was hit by Mascerhans ( of England), Yuvraj must have learnt this readjustment'.

Another wrong element in the diagnosis is our intrinsic bias. Because Robin Uthappa played well in the match before that, the commentators do not want to blame him. But one can argue that it was precisely the 'mental unpreparedness' of Uthappa that swung the match. Contrast this with SriLanka chasing Newzealand. After a initial flourish, their next batsman took their time to settle before they went for the kill. The failure of Uthappa to adjust and settle probably lost the game, one can argue. But no commentator even mentions it because bias of 'past' performance clouds the 'present'. If one is diagnosing what went wrong in the current game, why should one get biased with the past?

A match between two players is a system. In a system, everything is an interplay. Cause and effects cannot be delineated easily. A smaller match between a batsman and bowler is also a system. One who does the 'readjustment' faster wins. Because everything is over if you do not readjust in time, the 'time to swap back to normal' matters a lot in a game. Schoefield readjusted beautifully with other batsman in the first three overs, and lost the battle with Morkel in the last over. In the larger scheme of things, that mattered to England a lot. So the diagnosis should be to to 'enable Schoefield to understand what could he have done differently'. And in the India match, it could be to 'help Uthappa to settle before he plays his natural game'. Of course, there are many such elements in a matter that matter in a match. For the sake of simplicity, we are just picking one example.

In a game, the mental traits of being in present, of not getting overwhelmed by the target, of not going too far ahead of the game, of playing the game within one's zone are the qualities that matter, because time is dominant factor. Like the famous football Italian coach Valleri said " I never lost a match. I was always short of time".

Think two times before changing your job

Today, executives have numerous job options, due to which they often change jobs for the simplest of the reasons. They should rethink their decision due to two reasons.

One, they reset their stock of credibility they have gained with their employer to zero. Their entire experience of few years is brought to zero because they have to fight again to prove their credibility in a new set up. Credibility does not depend on the skill they have gained in the earlier job. It depends on the track record they have created on the jobs done, on the promises they have managed to keep despite the difficulties, on the support they have provided to the teams while delivering the tight schedules, on the kinds of problems they have solved and above all the 'trust' they have gained of their immediate superiors. All this stock is reset to zero. In short, they reformat their disk storage of credibility and start afresh. For a career, that is a definite loss.

Two, they often claim to have changed jobs because they did not get what they wanted in terms of experience. It is important for a youngster to learn to keep his expectations in check, because the world does not run according to his timetable. Instead, these youngsters get impatient too soon and want to jump to another company just because other company is 'offering' something they want at that point of time. Little do they realise, that they will face the same situation again in a new company. These situations are therefore learning experiences where the youngster has to learn to cap his aspiration and wait 'patiently' for the right time.

Worse still, they often change jobs due to 'ego' reasons, due to conflict with boss, or even because someone got more raise than them. Managing a difficult boss is another learning experience that one should undergo at a young age. If the youngster fails to utilise his experience, he is less equipped to negotiate the difficult boss at senior level (if he is unlucky to get one), when the stakes have considerably risen. At that time, he will have noone else other than Fate to curse.

Does Sanjay Dutt deserve the punishment?

Sanjay Dutt's fans say that he does not deserve this punishment because he is a nice human being, that he helps poor, that he is son of a honest politician and so on. They claim that he does not deserve to be punished so harshly.

Sanjay Dutt's critics however argue that mistake must be punished and he infact has gotten away with far less punishment than he deserved. They also warn that one must not confuse between his public image ( engendered by his roles) and his real actions and behaviour.

What is the truth? For you and me, who are far away from the real terrain, we cannot even expect to understand the 'truth'.

We are all governed by 'perceptions'. Perception is a hot-pot of objective information , individual beliefs & biases and the image one carries in the public. Even though such public incidents bring the role of perceptions to the foreground, we are governed by perceptions far more strongly than we would like to believe.

Consider these examples. How do you evaluate your doctor ( or his/her actions) without knowing medicine? Or how do you evaluate your TV mechanic or car mechanic without knowing an iota of electronics or car mechanics? Or how do you evaluate, say a businessman, without understanding anything about business? Or even judging the teacher of your kid without knowing anything about education and its impact on child development? Or deciding which soap to buy without knowing which chemicals are harmful to you?

Perception drives our conclusions and actions far more than truth in real life. But somehow, we ignore this 'truth', hoping that we are the champions of objective truth. I have surprisingly found that perceptions govern even our career outcomes more than our real skills, but we chose to ignore it. During my research on career building, spanning over 10 years, i have met many individuals who have driven their career by 'perceptions' than by their skills. ( Please see my book "The five myths of career building", published by Macmillan)

What does Virendra Sehwag need?

This is a classic conundrum of all successful people. When they are succeeding, they do not want to take a pause, reflect and understand ‘why are they succeeding’. At that time, if someone stops them to reflect, they claim that they are too busy and occupied with success. They argue that ‘explanations do not help’. However, when they encounter failure, they are unable to chalk a course of action in a limited time-window. With limited time at their command, and even more free advisors to suggest, they cannot figure out ‘what went wrong’. They are stuck.

You will find that all sportsman face this problem one time or another in their life. When they ‘rebound’ in time, we never understand what happened. But when they cannot rebound in time, we mourn their failure; such as we are doing for Virendra Sehwag, Irfan Pathan and now perhaps Munaf Patel. In the past we have heard about cricketers like Akash chopra, Vinod Kambli and others who never rebounced.

During my 18 years of research on careers, I have found that all successful individuals are afflicted with this ‘virus’ some time or another. In professions like sports, failure gets noticed because it is visible to everyone. In corporate life this failure is not visible. It is therefore unknown to most people. But I have seen many careers ‘derailed’ due to this virus: some never recover, few recover and chose different paths, few become superstitious because they are confused, while few others blame bosses for their affliction.

But the root cause is somewhere else. It is the lack of framework to succeed. Without a ‘framework’ of how one succeeds, one can never figure out the role of 'output system' in excelling. Only a framework can help us understand our real 'skills' and take preventive actions, if required, to gain the requisite skill. Only with a framework (which I call as model) can one diagnose and not react to low performance, because it could be due to improper designed output system. On the other hand, one may respond quickly to 'low performance’,  because skill-gaps are within us. Please see this blog to understand this better.

This is why you will find Enlight, the first career building model, useful to take charge of your life. You will find an introduction to this model, both on this website, as well as in the book ‘The five great myths of career building’, published by Macmillan

First book on career-building model is released

Here is the chance for you to 'do' what you always wanted to do - start taking charge of your career.

Macmillan has published the book 'The five great career-building myths' on 11 May 2007. The book should be available at the retail shelf, through out India, after 26th May.

Currently the book details can be seen on the following link http://www.macmillanindia.com/book-details.asp?bookid=3067&from=gr&broadid=47&detailedid=95

Please also visit the site at www.mycareermylife.com and post your comments.