My Third Break (continued...)

Q – Don’t you think taking such breaks is a career limiting move?

A – I can answer for myself. If anything, all my breaks have only enhanced my career and in ways more than one. My first job-break was in 2007. It was a six-month break. At that time, I was Head, Customer Marketing, Colgate Palmolive and my aspirations were to become a Sales Director someday. I have always been fortunate with mentors and great managers. And one thing I heard from almost all of them, “to lay your claim for a Sales Director role, apart from other competencies, one critical experience you need to pick Shadab is handling South Region firsthand”. South is one of the largest regions for most FMCG companies and requires or imparts very different learnings in terms of consumers, consumption habits, pack-mix, purchase-decision-hierarchy, culture thereby managing trade partners and teams.

Guess what, post my break, I landed my job with Frito Lays – Pepsi Foods as Region Head for entire South India. This was a cost center head role and apart from three sales managers, regional commercial head, logistics head, HR head and market development managers were reporting to me. Equally I got an opportunity to handle impulse purchase category products that required me to both un-learn and learn afresh new nuances and aspect of business.?

Between my first and 2nd?break, I had done roles of a Region Head (Frito, South India), Strategy Director, all India (PepsiCo Beverage) and Sales Director, (part of management team of MARS Chocolates then). In these 10 years, I enjoyed my job, my work and most importantly, experienced the shift from being a ‘RESPONSIBLE’ professional to an ‘ACCOUNTABLE’ leader. Accountability to me is different from Responsibility. It is “A personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired result”.?

My second job-break happened in 2016. This was almost a full year break. And on 6th?Sept 2017, I joined as CEO for GNC India franchise business (Guardian Healthcare, owned by Taparia family). This was an amazing jump for me in so many ways. After 20 years of MNC working, I got to work for Indian family business. I got experience of creating a true start-up business. For the first time, I was owning full P&L with vertical heads reporting to me. As stated earlier, I got to learn about local manufacturing, e-commerce, marketing and creating organization from scratch.

My third break started on 1st?Feb 2022, and I will be joining new company on 1st?Feb 2023. This break again means a lot to me. It’s a company backed by True North and TA Associates and for the first time I get to work in a completely different industry. I will join as COO and for the first time, I will get to handle a total team size of 1000 + people and on company rolls. I look forward to building new professional muscles, considering new industry and growing at CAGRs of 15 - 20%.

Finally, money is important to me but not the most important thing. And after each of these breaks, corporate world has been generous and kind enough to welcome me with amazing jumps in my CTC, along with opportunities to create wealth. Now, I am sure you too will agree, at least for me, these job breaks have only been career enhancing than career limiting.

Q – OK. But what about the interviews? Don’t you come across skepticism during interviews? Have you not felt judged for taking these breaks??

A – Let me answer this in two parts. First, and more importantly, ‘Do I judge myself for taking these job-breaks?’, ‘Do I feel guilty and have that written all over my face as I face interviews?’. The answer to both these Qs is an honest ‘No’.

And all of you who know me personally, would vouch for this. I glow when I talk about these breaks. I am proud and thankful to Universe for having programmed my life such that these job-breaks are a part of my journey. I get nourished by these job-breaks. I get re-charged by these job-breaks… with this internal mind-state, half the battle is won.

Coming to your Q, honest answer is, ‘Yes my breaks get noticed’. They do create, during some of the processes, certain curiosity and but naturally. People want to understand and know about these breaks in more detail. But I never got a feeling of skepticism or being judged during any of the processes. If anything, conversations around my breaks only gave strength to my overall narratives. Nine out of 10 times, I noticed, acceptance, appreciation and understanding. Equally these breaks stood for my measured risk-taking appetite, ability to bounce back, also re-affirming some of the values I stand for.?

But truth be told, during all these breaks, it wasn’t that I appeared for only one job process and cleared it, and it was a walk in the park. I must have gone through interactions with 5-10 companies and not all of those converted. Reasons why few of those did not convert are open to interpretations…as per me they were more to do with fitment or a better candidate available. But then, Kabir is born in our house not without a reason. I remember, how after one of such processes in 2017, I felt dejected with the outcome and his words… “Papa, but you need only one job. And you will get that.”

Q – How do you explain these job breaks, when asked during interviews? What do you think makes your responses convincing to people across the table?

A – Simple answer…Honesty and 100% honesty. Now as I respond to your Q, please do not judge me for blowing my trumpet or wanting to gain brownie points???.

Some of us, who have worked for 15, 20 or 25 years, do accept that you can’t out-smart people on the other side of the table. Con artists can do that, but I am not one (OTT has quite a few true stories of some of them). Self-awareness is very essential. And I know that if I am fabricating something, I make a royal mess of that, and it is written all over my body and face (tried this few times during college projects and early job years??). So here I share exactly the reasons that were instrumental for my job-breaks.?

My 1st?break, I had left Col-Pal, because Kabir was born. My wife, Shilpi was clear at that time of not letting anything come in the way of her career. She was doing very well at IBM (one of the vitality hires). But we both were convinced, one of the parents needed to be around Kabir. I had spent ~ 7 years at ColPal by then and during one of our conversations got the idea of taking a break from my job, while she kept her’s …best 6 months of my life… Got to bond with my son, and sharing with Shilpi changing Kabir’s nappies, making him burp, put him to sleep… taking out time for some self-indulgences … learn swimming, guitar (only graduated to twinkle-2 little star), camp at Crosswords and get introduced to what became an important part of my later years…read about visualization. Maternal instincts overpowered Shilpi and she wanted to be around him 24 x 7…she put in her papers on Kabir’s first birthday…and that is when I got back to job searching…

My second break…MARS chocolate (India) was going through a tough patch due to overall business model and P&L spine not behaving… some amazing work done by my team, also my individual contributions, I had been rated EE (Exceeds Expectations) nominated and selected for GMDP (General Manager Development Program)… however when new MD came, there were several occasions where he and I had too many ‘comfortable confrontations’ (term used in MARS) on Sales & Distribution strategy…equally around same time MARS decided to merge WRIGLEY and CHOCOLATE businesses globally thereby creating quite a few redundancies… and there was no job for me at MARS… however, I loved my time at MARS and if there was one place where I started feeling like a ‘leader’ it was MARS. Equally this break was God send for me…Shilpi started going through her clinical depression around this time and guess what Universe planned it all out for both of us to be there for each other… Many a times we don’t fully understand, but Universe always has a plan and our / my back???

My third break…I quit as CEO of Guardian-GNC and last working day was 31st?Jan 2022 … Amazing…amazing…amazing four and a half years of learning. As a team we created and scaled the business beautifully… by Mar 21, we were a 200Cr business (from ~35-40 Cr 4 years back) and turned profitable also. I got a rating of EE (exceeds expectations) in Apr 21 for the work my team had done. Something I attach a lot more value, getting a EE from Indian family business owner is not easy???. Everything was going great, but then Covid happened… GNC USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy… new Chinese owners bought GNC … revisited all the contracts and made them onerous and limiting both financially and from business flexibility POV. To be fair to Indian family (Taparia’s) who owned GNC franchise, with the new terms they found themselves ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’. With further investment from family completely constrained and not in a situation to go out also to raise funds, there was very little for me to do. No new learning and no plans to invest on talent, tech and marketing. I stopped enjoying the work and there was no fun.?

Considering what I had learnt and with diminishing returns setting in for further learning at GNC, I was clear I didn’t want to continue just for the sake of 9am to 5pm job and getting salary at the end of every month. I was equally confident that I will find something exciting with the competencies that I had picked up, both in this role and overall, 25 years.

I hope I answered your Q on how I explain my job-breaks. These experiences are the reasons (backed by my values and beliefs) for making me who I am today, along with the competencies I have picked during my corporate journey of 25 years.?

And equally important are my senior managers, mentors, peers, and teammates who stand by facts when spoken during ref-check calls from companies and consultants.

Q – Thank you. This helps. I have few more Qs… You have talked about visualization, quantum creation, manifestation? All this sounds woo…woo. Can you explain this? Also, you explained what you did during first break…how did you spend year long time during your 2nd?and 3rd?break? Also, how did you manage work-life balance while you worked? Also how important are mistakes and did you make mistakes in your career? Also…

A – That’s a lot of Qs. Let’s keep these for the next posts???