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.

Do not try to take 'right' decision

I often receive calls from individuals who are planning to take another job. When I ask them why they have called me, they often reply that they ‘want to take right decision’. When I ask them ‘how will you know if we have taken right decision’, they understand the fallacy of taking ‘right decision’.

One of my management classmate went on to take the best paying job in a multinational bank, got stuck for 5 years, changed the job later to another bank and so on. On the other hand, I took a job in a private company changed three jobs in 5 years. When we met after five years we wondered loudly whether we took the right decision. He felt I had taken the right decision because I had grown in the three jobs and found what I liked. I however felt that he had taken the right decision because he had earned enough money to buy a flat and had therefore become more independent than me. Who is right?

What is a right decision? Do the ‘subsequent outcomes’ determine what is the right decision? For instance, if my friend was stuck further in a job for another five years, would I have said that he had taken a ‘wrong’ decision? And if outcomes determine the ‘rightness’ of the decision, how can one predict outcomes while taking a decision?

Or do the objectives determine whether the decision is right or not? For instance, if my objective was ‘growth’ and my friend’s objective was ‘money’, shall we conclude that we have taken right decision? But objective-achievement cannot be ‘digital’ (1 or 0), it is always intermediate. For instance, my friend could not have grown at all in five years. How does one determine whether that growth is enough or not? How does one determine whether that ‘degree of achievement’ is enough to constitute ‘success’?

If outcomes cannot be predicted and objective-achievement is subjective, how does one take the ‘right’ decision?

We have found that there are five characteristics of an ‘appropriate decision’. One is the self-information one has about oneself while taking a decision, second is a process of sequential logic to take a decision; third is the quality of ‘data’ available/used while taking a decision, fourth is the ‘what-if’ scenario used to maximize returns from a chosen path, and fifth is the awareness of ‘emotional bias’ involved in the decision.

We shall discuss each of the characteristics as we go along. In this page, we shall discuss the first one.

If one has enough self-information available about oneself, then many decisions get taken instantaneously. With self-information, our objectives are determined and that helps us take better decisions. On the other hand, self information can also be misguiding if it is based on wishful thinking and past conditioning. For instance, because my father is a doctor, I have more information about medicine because of which I tend to chose medicine course ‘unknowingly’.

This kind of self information can be misguiding. Like the example of Jessica given in the Po Bronson’s book What should I do with my life. After becoming MD, due to her father’s background of medicine, she found that medicine is not for her because she could not keep ‘distant’ from the patients. She could not have gained this self-information until she 'engaged' with medicine. The paradox of self-information is that we gain self-information only after we 'engage' with the outside world. And if we have to take decision before we engage with the world, how does one get enough self information? This is chicken-egg phenonomenon.

Therefore many a times, when we are taking decision, we are not aware of what we want, what we are, what are our strengths. Many a times, as I engage with the person in taking a decision, we discover many such ‘self-information’ tidbits while we are thinking hard. It is futile to demand that ‘one should know what one wants’. It is not practical.

Do you have any incidents or events to share on how you gained self-information in your life?

Beware of the career advice 'Do what you love'

Kamal Hasan, in his interview with Mumbai mirror, says that ‘I was a reluctant actor who was cajoled into acting. Now I enjoy it too much to give it up’.

Sonu Nigam, who is now recognised as an accomplished singer in Indian Bollywood industry, says that after having accomplished everything, my dream is to ‘get into agriculture farming’. He says he will spend rest of his life in it.

Jessica, one of the interviewees in the Po Bronson’s book of What should I do with my life, found that ‘Medicine’ is not her love after spending 30 years of her life in undertaking the course of medicine.

Abhijit Kunte, the Pune-based ecologist researcher, found that he loves ‘forests’ when he was forced to accompany a researcher into a forest after he failed in his first year science. It took him 5 years to find that he ‘loved’ forest.

Love is not an emotion which sprungs from within. It is not something that resides ‘deep’ in the recesses of unconscious which suddenly emerges from the inside one fine day and, lo behold, one has discovered one’s love. This image of ‘love’ is not only inaccurate, but also invalid.

Love is a stock which accumulates with our engagement with that object or action.

First, we take action based on our liking. Let us call this stock, the stock of liking. When we like something, say dancing, we do it. We watch dancers on the TV. Suddenly we meet someone who is a dancer. The stock grows. Then we meet a person who is learning dancing. Stock of ‘liking’ has grown now. It now becomes stock of ‘interest’.

When the stock has grown into ‘interest’ we dance gracefully and easily. People tell us we have talent. Stock further grows. As we learn dancing more and more, we realise that it helps us express other part of our Self - such as our love of music, or our fetish for exercise. Stock further grows. We appear in a dance contest. We win, or we get special recognition from some known dancer. The stock grows. As we engage with ‘dancing’ more and more, we start liking the people around it, the work around it, the work-related beliefs about it.

Once this stock of interest has grown beyond a ‘threshold level’, we call that stock ‘love for dancing’. Once the stock has grown beyond threshold level, the stock takes hold of us. Now instead of waiting for opportunities to come, we start finding opportunities. That is why we call this stock ‘love’. At this point, the stock of love drives our actions, decisions and priorities.

As the stock of love takes us into more and more actions and opportunities of dancing, we start learning it more and more. We become known as a dancer. Our self-belief changes. We love the way we think about ourselves, the people we meet, the Selfs it helps us to express. The stock, if it grows further, becomes stock of ‘passion’. Now the love of dancing envelopes us.

As we engage with the world outside, the stock of ‘liking’ got converted into ‘interest’, ‘love’ and later to ‘passion’. This has perhaps happened with Kamal Hasan and Abhijit Kunte.

However, at any point of time, the stock may also stop growing; either because we do not find the right people to engage or because we do not get the right opportunities. This is what happens when many of our childhood likings vanish away.

Or because, after engaging for a long time, we do not find that it is helping us to express our Self fully. Or the beliefs that it entails us to ‘imbibe’ are not compatible with the beliefs we advocate. Or we do not like to be called as ‘dancer’ ( which is issue of self-belief). This perhaps happened with Jessica and Sonu Nigam.

I have met many people who, after years of working in a profession, leave it for something else. Mats Wilander, left tennis, after he won three consecutive Grand slam titles in a year ( which is rarity), to pursue music. Or they keep on changing their professions because they do not find a ‘calling’ which expresses their multiple talents into one calling. Like for instance, Robert Fritz, the author of Creating.

In other words, we cannot tell our future and guess what will happen to us. We cannot guess which ‘stock’ of liking will become ‘love’ and which will vanish away after engaging with real life. And we cannot understand what we love and what we do not until we engage with life.

Therefore ‘do what you love’ is a catch 22 advice. We cannot love until we do it. It is therefore a trap. One cannot determine what one loves at the age of 15. Based on the ‘liking’ and ‘interest’ at the age of 15, one has to choose a path and hope that the engagement with the path will convert the initial liking into ‘love’. But there is no guarantee that it will. We are human beings who know what we know. We are not gods who can peer into our future and determine what we will continue to love.

Paradox of Doers in corporate world

I met Avinash. He works in an ERP support company. He is an excellent functional consultant in materials function, and regarded highly by his colleagues. He has worked in four companies in last three years. In one of the interviews in a big three of Indian software he was asked by an interviewer about ‘transaction code’ of a particular process in materials. He retorted by saying that ‘any novice knows a transaction code’.

I have worked in a software company myself. I have met many software engineers like Avinash. I call them doers.

Doers are believers in doing excellent job. For them, every task has do be done in an excellent manner. For them idea of ‘acceptable output’ is not acceptable, only ‘excellent’ output is acceptable. They owe allegiance to the craft. Because they care so much about the work quality and knowledge, they master the ‘work’. They have very little patience for those who are not ‘excellent’ in their job knowledge and skills, because they themselves go to extreme extent to become the ‘best’ in their professions. Because of this, they often seem to break the ‘team spirit’, which infact is not their intention.

Successful doers, to produce excellent results, realise that they have to be ‘part’ of a system. While being part of a system, one has to sacrifice ‘best output’ sometimes to ensure that customer gets what it wants. While being part of a system one has to ‘complement’ another junior team member who seems to have ‘latched’ on the specific problem being solved. While being part of a system, one has to rein one’s best ideas because they are untimely. One has to be ‘in tune’ with the system.

Difficult doers are like Avinash. They behave in the same ‘way’ in different systems and contexts. Because they are not tuned to changing requirement of a system, they seem to ‘advocate’ the best principles all the times. Radical doers start perceiving ‘genuine adjustment’ of a system as representing ‘compromise of values’ or even as ‘vagaries of bosses’. Once they attribute the causes to ‘bad management’, they view many ‘systemic’ patterns as a reflection of management’s high handedness. They exit the jobs. They find the same ‘issues’ in another job. They leave the job again. They become job hoppers.

Instead of using the systems feedback to discover what they are missing, they keep on blaming the ‘system’. The system, or the organization, tolerates them until it suits them. But they are dropped as soon as the system finds an excuse. They keep on changing jobs. As they become senior, they learn speak the right things. Overt resistance becomes covert resistance, which makes them even more sullen, pessimistic and distrustful. They are caught in a vicious loop.

Until these excellent doers learn to understand the system and why it is necessary to become ‘part of a system’, they cannot convert their excellent skills into worthwhile results.

Pitfalls of sequential career

Makrand, one of my coachee, works in UAE in a bank. Being a MBA he earns a good salary, and due to tax savings, the savings are substantial. His family has returned back because of his son’s education. We met when he was last in India. When I asked him what he is planning next, he said, he is planning to live alone without his family for another 4-5 years in UAE, return with substantial savings, and start a second career in teaching. Can one plan such sequential careers?

One of my doctor friend, who is a busy surgeon, is an exceptional musician. He plans to ‘retire’ early from his work life and launch his second career in music.

What are the pitfalls of living careers sequentially?

All of us live career with different objectives. Objectives also evolve or emerge as we move ahead. What was significant first becomes insignificant later. Money, which is very significant in the early part of our careers, becomes less important. Job satisfaction becomes more significant. We all see mix of objectives such as money, job satisfaction, happiness, and living life for significance at different times of life. This is a natural part of our growth. Sometimes, we cannot fulfill our new objective because we are locked-in a situation. For instance, one of my MBA friends started his first job with a huge salary. However, when his immediate money objectives were satisfied, he wanted to move out. He could not, because he was locked in due to his commitments of housing loan. Many of these lock-ins can be avoided with planning, some of them cannot.

In all these situations career objectives emerge forcing us to take a different decision. Let us call them evolving careers.

But planning a sequential career is difficult, because we are holistic beings. We cannot ‘start’ and ‘stop’ the evolution of our ‘Self’ by the press of a button as though we are a machine. Our self evolves as it engages with the external environment- situations, relationships and events. Every ‘engagement’ helps us discover of what we are, and what we are not. The denser the engagement, the better it is for discovering our Self.

Makrand is making three assumptions which, instead of producing the desired result, can lead to unexpected consequences. One, he plans to restrict his engagement of life ‘only with job’ so that he can earn the necessary money. He is underestimating the resulting frustration with which he will live his life and the ‘compensating’ practices he will develop to thwart the frustration. In such situation, people are known to develop many practices such as drinking, smoking and others which can completely derail his later plans. People also develop other lock-ins that can completely restrict their options later.

Second, he believes that his restricted engagement will still help him ‘grow’ his other parts of self and help him ‘really’ make a shift to teaching career later when he returns to India. As we grow, we find difficulties in learning new skills, new attitudes and mind sets. The initial hump of moving into new areas becomes difficult to traverse. If we are out of practice, we find difficult to learn anything new. Our age and stature does not further allow us to do certain things which we find very easy to do at an early age. For instance, a colleague of mine cannot do any consulting at low rate because ‘market’ cannot accept him at that rate. There are many more ‘stock’ factors that thwart a person’s ability to move into another field in later life. Unless those ‘stock’ factors are addressed, one cannot negotiate them at later date. For instance, if Makrand can start some teaching assignments in UAE, it will help him cross that hump easily.

Thirdly, Makrand is wanting to ‘stop’ life. He is hoping that his current option of ‘teaching’, which has emerged out of his past engagement with life, will still hold good. It is important to remember that his option of ‘teaching’ has not emerged out of his ‘teaching experience’, but more out of ‘necessity’. By limiting his engagement, he is not allowing life to emerge with other options. Many individuals get stuck with their earlier options, not because they are more appropriate, but just because they emerge out of the ‘wish list’ of early years. This may decrease his chances of succeeding with teaching career, as and when he moves into it.

The chances of succeeding with sequential careers are very limited because of the systemic structures in our lives. Although it looks like a nice option on the ‘paper’, the certainty of that option is illusionary.

I have seen many individuals who retire early from their corporate careers to do some ‘different work’, but they are unable to do anything significant due to this dynamics. The second career remains a dream. Money is not an issue with them. Doing something with their life however seems impossible for them, despite their money resources, their network of contacts, and their wisdom. Unless lot more planning is involved in launching the second career, it is almost impossible to overcome this dynamics.

Output Preparation is most ignored aspect of career building

I met Dan, a hardware engineer. He learnt to work with PC's and became master in repairing them. A hardware engineer also has to learn the 'operating system' of a computer to become a good hardware engineer. He therefore got to learn about Microsoft Windows. He had an innate talent to learn these things.

However, when i met him after three years, he was still working as a PC hardware engineer. I was surprised. A good hardware engineer quickly migrates from maintaining PC, to maintaining a network, and then to maintain a mail server, or to maintain a server which has large application software like SAP or Oracle on it. The climb requires a hardware engineer to get 'certified' in these different courses so that he can get the platform to display his skills. However, all this training and certification, requires lot of spare time.

Spare time is at premium for a good hardware engineer, who typically works for 10/12 hours a day. And because hardware engineers can work as freelancers in their spare time, they continue to work even on weekends, to earn some money. As their salaries are low, this income is good for them. But if they work on weekends, they do not have any time to learn new things. If they think of 'today', they get caught in the vicious cycle, and unknowingly jeopardise their 'tomorrow'.

Dan, after three years, was still working as a PC hardware engineer because he could never extricate himself out of the vicious cycle of 'today'. Output preparation was never taken seriously.

Like Dan, i have observed many individuals who hardly spend time on output preparation.

When they get married they do not spend time on learning how to adjust in a new relationship. When they change jobs they do not spend time on learning how to be 'part' of a new company. When they relocate, they do not know the difficulties of adjusting with new place. When they change jobs, they do not spend adequate time in knowing the metasystems and therefore waste lot of time in comparing 'new company' with 'old company'.

They grossly underestimate the benefits of output preparation. They fail to understand that, if they spend time on output preparation, they can save huge time, cost and pain of transition. Instead, because of inadequate output preparation, they get themselves in wrong and tough situations and therefore spend lot of time in resolving the 'painful' situation. Or they just waste time like Dan and hope that situations will improve by themselves.

Perception is inherent part of working in organisation system

Harish, a marketing support, was complaining. “Everyone blames me when the order is lost. However, when the order is won, sales and marketing take the credit. I work in a thankless job".

Jeevan, a programmer, was telling a new colleague of his, “If you have to succeed in this organisation, you have to butter your boss. Or else you get consigned to assignments which no one wants to do, or get the worst jobs in the group".

Both Jeevan and Harish are complaining about the system's inability to evaluate their work objectively and the consequent reliance on 'perceptions' in evaluating them and other people. Why does this happen in any system? Is it an inherent characteristic of a system or a flaw in a system that can be corrected? Let us use systems thinking to understand.

When you are working in a company, you are working in a group: group consisting of bosses, colleagues and subordinates. Barring few colleagues working in the same function, all of them are specialist in one area or another: sales, delivery, quality, finance and so on. Because each one is part of a function, one works to fulfill the function's purpose. If it is sales, the primary purpose of the system is to bring in new customers. If it is delivery, the primary purpose of the system is to deliver the 'promised' proposition to the customer. Further, each person may have got specialised in different fields: engineering, accountancy, and others.

Working in a function and fields makes it difficult for us to evaluate each other. For me, working in sales, evaluating my colleague Daniel in other function like hardware support, needs information about Daniel’s system, purpose, characteristic and so on. Morever, I need ‘time’ to do this evaluation. Neither I have information, nor time, to evaluate Daniel. In such cases, how do I evaluate Daniel?

You are right. I rely on perception markers. I rely on how Daniel talks, walks and presents himself. If he is untidy fellow, my perception is likely to be ‘Daniel is a shoddy performer’. I evaluate on how Daniel communicates. I evaluate Daniel by how other colleagues evaluate him. Or his colleagues evaluate him. In short, I seek ‘perception markers’ to evaluate him. If you do not believe me , take a pause, and think of how do you evaluate your doctor, TV mechanic, or your auto mechanic. You will realise the power of perceptions.

Imagine bosses who want to evaluate me, Daniel and others. Besides barriers of specialization and fields, they face another barrier: too little time. But they are the ones who decide ‘who should go for this important assignment’, ‘who amongst others should be promoted’. When something fails, they are ones who decide ‘who could have gone wrong’.

In an organization system, where cause and effects are related with each other loosely, how does one decide ‘what and who performed well’ or ‘what and who performed poorly’. Both credit and blame cannot be ascribed easily in an organization system where ‘cause’ of performance is loosely coupled with ‘result’. In such a situation, the only way to ascribe ‘causes’ to a good or bad performance is through ‘perception markers’.

That is what bosses do. And that is why it is necessary for every one of us to understand and become ‘part’ of a perception system of an organization. We do not have any choice. Perception is an inherent need of a system. If we ignore it, we get evaluated by others. If we consciously become aware of the perception system, we can at least ‘influence’ our evaluation.

If we are good performers, it is all the more necessary to be part of perception system to ensure that we get the rewards what our works deserve. If we choose to ignore it, we can only complain that less deserving are getting the rewards.

Output in work-life is created by being part of a system

Output is created never by an individual alone. Image of a hero working in a dungeon alone over a invention and shouting 'Eureka' after his discovery is a myth. That era of creating output alone is over.

Even a sportsplayer who is supposed to play his or her game to succeed has to be part of different systems before his/her contribution can produce rewards. For instance, a tennis player has to part of four systems to ensure that he plays consistently in a tennis circuit: adminstrative system to ensure that tickets, staying and support activity is managed without any hassle, coaching system to ensure that prospective competitors flaws are tracked and specific localised situations are understood, physiotherapists who helps him/her keep fit, and his emotional support system to ensure that he/she feels does not get homesick and 'alone'. Without these four systems, no tennis player can 'perform' consistently. A failure in any of these four systems can derail him/her and therefore affect his/her output in a negative manner.

The same is true of a corporate professional working in a company. He has to work in three generic systems: work-output systems to generate different outputs, perception systems to generate the 'right' perception in the organisation and the reward system to get the requisite reward from the output.

Working alone as a lone ranger does not help. Even when a corporate professional is working in a highly individualistic function like 'sales', he or she has to be part these three systems to ensure that his/her effort is converted into useful output.

Welcome to the systemic world of organisations. Although becoming part of a system is highly unsettling, that is the only way to generate outputs in a system.

Career is more than work life

Although the term 'career' is associated with work-life, career building cannot be restricted to work-life.

Because work-life is impacted by relationships ( let's call it people-life), personal-life ( the domain of taking decisions, planning and correcting oneself) and inside-life ( how one processes one's emotions, beliefs and expectations), one is compelled to work on these three other lifes.

Surprisingly, in my career research of 17 years, i found that individuals do not even know how to create outputs in work-life. They believe that their effort, skills, intentions and goals are enough to produce the work-outputs and the consequent rewards. Nothing is farther from truth.

We shall, on this blog, discuss and share how to create outputs in work-life and people life; how to use personal life to ensure that those outputs are created in a sustained manner and how to 'consciously' take control of one's inside life so that intentions can be converted into outputs.

Welcome to the journey of career building.