Career 2.0

6.5 years - that's how long I was with Bain and Company. And starting tomorrow, I move on to a new career. I write this note today to capture my thought process and key considerations around this decision. This should hopefully help a few of you find more clarity as you undertake a similar journey in the future.

The journey so far (Bain): Bain was my first and only job post-college. And in hindsight, it has been a delightful journey, filled with immense learning and wonderful experiences. I started off as an associate and left as a manager and during this period worked on 10 different strategy projects, 8+ due diligence, and countless client development pieces across a wide randing of industries - covering IT Services, FMCG/ CPG, real estate, e-com, logistics, pharma, finance, etc. - the list is quite long. Apart from regular 'consulting' work, had the chance to do a lot of things on the internal side of the company as well - working with various global teams to help with 'consulting innovation' (yeah, that's a thing!), recruitment, training, and most importantly helping with the company's social initiatives. My experience at Bain cannot end without mentioning the international training, and the various offsites with teams, peers, and even clients - those will always remain some of my most cherished memories. However, as I reminisce about this, I can certainly say that the one most important thing I take away from here, is the relationships I have built over the years- friends, colleagues, and mentors. Over the years, I interacted with many folks at Bain, probably over 1000 (no kidding! mainly, due to my internal stints) for various things big and small and each of those conversations has been enriching in its own ways. This para is primarily to thank everyone who helped make this a memory of a lifetime. The last comic strip from Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes (the image above) best describes what I feel – a newbie starting afresh equipped with the learnings from Bain to sketch a new phase of life!

What do I want to solve for (the next job)? As I made up my mind about moving on, it was very clear that there were certain priorities I wanted to address. This was very critical. I was already leaving an organization that had set a high benchmark on a number of things and for me to find another place meant that I might have to balance the pros and cons. For anyone wanting to switch jobs, make sure it's not an emotional or rushed decision driven by what's happening in your current job, but rather driven by what you want to do in your next job (profound wisdom, na? I know!). For me, that meant, three things as a priority and a bunch of other things as hygiene. My priority list was 'work culture & people', 'work-life balance, and 'independence and impact'. This could be different for each of you, however, let me elaborate on my rationale:

• Work culture and people: One spends almost 30-50% of their waking hours with people at work during their work-life. To be able to deliver my best, and be happy on a day-to-day basis, it is important for me to develop a good relationship with the people I work with. At Bain, each project I did was in some way a new job - a new team, new clients, & a new industry. And success and impact in each, in my experience, were disproportionately driven by the people over anything else. Hence, this became P1.
• Work-life balance: P2 because 'sleep' is what I love the most in life (yeah, even over food!). On a more serious note, getting time to do things outside of work is important. I used to think differently about this at the start of my career, and still partially agree with the original thinking. In the first few years of your life, it's important to keep your career as a priority, even if at times, it comes at the cost of other things (kudos, to those who can manage everything all well together!). However, after a certain stage, it's important to balance things out and not make life and work synonymous. For me finding time outside of work is not just about 'chilling', it's about pursuing other interests (reading, investments, traveling, mentoring, etc.) and giving time to friends and family.
• Independence and impact: Thinking of the next stint as a career and not a job, was the other priority. My stint at Bain gave me enough exposure across a wide variety of things, but now I wanted to build expertise in an area of interest. And that happens, only when the role allows you to work independently and has the possibility for you to create an impact, both at the individual level and as part of a team.

Lots of other hygiene things to solve for as well - pay scale (at least till a threshold, but not a P1 for sure!), flexibility around location/ WFH at times (thanks to covid, this has become a new requirement- in my humble opinion, beneficial to both company and employee), stability of work and last, but very importantly, doing ‘good’ work. I can write an entirely separate note on what I consider 'good' work, but net-net anything which adds positive value to the society at large.

Finding the next job! Now, this is the part that needs real effort. Not because there are not enough things to do out there, but with the kind of list I made above, it's not as easy either. I will skip the detail here, but two key learnings for me: all good things take time (read 2-3 months in this case!), and don't settle for the first decent offer you get. (I got an offer, which I would term the 3rd best overall for me within 3-4 weeks, and thankfully I waited!). In summary, I managed to have 3 good offers on my hand at the end (thank you to the companies, who found me worthy!). One with a new age well-funded startup and two with India's top conglomerates - I eventually finalized the one that was paying the least amongst these three but had so much more going for it (next para talks about it!). Having laid out the priorities upfront allowed me to take this decision, right!

The journey ahead (Mahindra): No suspense here per se! I am now joining the Mahindra Group as a manager to focus exclusively on their environmental sustainability strategy. While this role definitely solves a lot of things I was looking for (mentioned above), I will still quote from my email to the founder of the startup I did not join to explain this: "I apologize and humbly decline the offer... I was looking to solve a few things as I was looking to move out of Bain - be able to develop expertise in a specific area, build a longer-term career in a field, and potentially also improve upon work-life balance while working with smart, capable people to achieve something meaningful - in short trying to discover my 'Ikigai' - the Japanese?concept of finding something that's the?intersection of what is valuable to the world, what is needed for the world, what you are passionate about and what you are good at." I feel the role at Mahindra now has the potential to let me find my 'Ikigai' in the workspace. Apart from this, I also have a few other 'cherry on the cake' to look forward to, as enlisted below:

• Working in an area of active interest: Working in the environment & sustainability space professionally is like merging an area of personal passion with work. Driven by being born and bought up in Assam, and numerous childhood (and adult!) experiences around planting trees, watching cartoons (yes! Watch 'Captain Planet' - a cartoon show so ahead of its time), reading comics (yes again! Dogmatrix from the 'Asterix and Obelix' was the world's first environmental dog and not to forget Calvin and Hobbes) and also the serious stuff around heading IIT Delhi's social body, and watching and reading countless videos, articles, etc. on the issue - this has indeed an area of passion!
• People I get to work with: Again have hit a lottery here- besides getting the opportunity to work again with a few former Bainies (including the group MD and chief group strategy in charge, and other wonderful folks as well!), I will have my boss who has been called out as one of the 12 C-suite sustainability global champions for 2022 (Link ) and the group promoter as Mr. Anand Mahindra himself - who in his current form can probably be best described as India's top corporate social media influencer - funny, witty and passionate about innumerable things!
• Scope for impact: Besides being part of the focused sustainability team at a group level for one of India's largest conglomerates, and a place where the MD himself took time to interview me just shows the amount of importance being given to this space. I will go back to a video from Ted Talks about IKEA(Link ), where Steve Howard, talks about how after a multi-decade career in environmental research, he got the opportunity to work to create real work scalable impact. A video I saw years back and now an inspiration for me to potentially create a meaningful impact here.

After all the good things, I can still say that I was a bit skeptical about moving to Mumbai for this- 'an expensive city with tiny living spaces' is what I thought. But even here the last 2 weeks' weather and relatively pollution-free environment (can't beat Assam though!) have made me reconsider my stance. So in an anti-climatic conclusion, if you have any millionaire relatives who own fancy apartments in Mumbai, help me rent one! (You can let them know that 20% of my personality type is common with Monica Gellar.)

P.S.: Personality type in the corporate world is best described by the Briggs-Myers test which states I am an ISTJ (Google!), however, my F.R.I.E.N.D.'s personality type is best described as 30% Chandler (awkward & sarcastic), 20% Ross (a little bit geeky!) and Monica (clean & organized) each, 15% Phoebe (unconventional and mildly crazy), 10% Joey (love food!) and 5% Rachel (for all other things evil & nice)!