Chapter Five ('As You Life It')
In the last chapter, I wrote about the 40-20 , i.e. my personal twenty-pointer that I might have passed on to my own twenty year old self, had we met over a drink some evening in early January, with the intention of getting him kick-started on a new year. If only life had that one-time reverse gear option ! If only we all had that once-in-a lifetime opportunity to pass on our experience to our youth & have a second swing at life ! I am sure you too have?your own to-do list that you wish you could pass on to your younger self . Most of us do.
This weekend, as I?mentally gear myself up to start on a new job from the 15th of January 2019 , I can’t help but look back at my career, right from the first day when I stepped outside my university walls as an eager, wide-eyed youngster, till this point in time where I can now pass on as a (?still eager & wide eyed) middle aged man, who has, in the past two decades, taken his shots, and who is not embarrassed to admit that he has had more misses than hits. Partly by design and decisions. Partly by default and destiny. No regrets.
However, what can indeed turn into an interesting compilation, is a ‘not-to-do’ list, or in simple terms, a list of bloopers that I could append to my 40-20 conversation. These are those errors we all make and learn from as we grow older and each of which, if avoided, has the potential of taking our careers into a different and more favorable trajectory, something like the parallel lifeline scenarios in Bach’s ‘One’. It goes without saying that these errors are beyond the on-your-face, obvious cardinal sins that most sensible people would avoid (compliance / integrity violations, lapses in moral code of conduct, etc).
So here goes, my pick for the top 10 mistakes that people make in their careers . I am guilty of having committed quite a few of them myself. The rest , I observed in others, and thankfully avoided !
- Going from, and not going to?– Unless you are a lifer in some company, you know the score of hopping jobs. While many people have valid incentives for changing jobs, majority of us change jobs because we have an issue with our present job. Maybe it’s a bad boss. Or the work-life balance. Perhaps it is the environment that breeds insecurity. Or it could be a M&A that unsettles your comfort zone. Whatever the underlying cause be, most of us get sucked into a victim mode when in a wrong job. And then we jump in glee at the first interview call we receive, often exaggerating the virtues of another employer whom we don’t even know yet, get sweet-talked to walk into a job that might turn to be worse than our previous one. And the problem is, this pattern repeats itself again. Then again. And suddenly some people realize that they have hit forty, their resumes filled with a number of identical stints which cannot be strung together and called a career.
- Getting sucked into titles?– Youth is often swayed by external validation. And nothing massages a young ego more than a fancy job title. Often, when in our twenties, we grow quickly through the first few rungs of the career ladder. Or at least it seems so, because till a certain level of the pyramid, the number of opportunities are more. Most of us have been in situations where we grow from front-liners to supervisors to team leads within a span of mere 4-5 years. This is also the age when we read ( & believe) a lot of glossy business journals and discover our first set of corporate heroes. At that impressionable age, a pattern of early elevations throws us off balance and creates an illusion that we are now ready to launch ourselves into hero-mode too . Then comes along an opportunity dressed in a flashy title – a Vice President or a Director or something that sounds formidable. And without deliberating on the content of the job itself ( which might actually be?pretty shallow), we eject ourselves out of a good organization that could have had the potential to groom us into solid professionals, one step at a time, the old world way. And then, one year into the new job, we find ourselves stuck. On one hand, we know we are impostors. On the other hand, our now-inflated self image ( thanks to our glossy business card), doesn’t allow us to accept a lesser sounding role.
- The Year-1?illusion?– Except for the most level headed of professionals, most people are guilty of taking their first year results too seriously. While some folks experience a healthy ( sometimes dizzy) bout of success in their first year, others struggle with an uphill trek . When we are successful in our first year, we let the success go into our heads. And when we have a bad first year, we take it to heart, beat ourselves down and start exploring options to quit. This is not smart at all. The first year results are often a combination of contributions, more a carry-forward of our predecessors’ work and less attributable to us directly, unless we are in a white space / start up environment. The real output of our first year starts getting visible only from the second year onwards.
- The ‘email-ninja’?trapping – I am sure we all remember our share of email battles, a few of which might have lingering unpleasant memories for years. There is something very seductive about provocative emails that makes us want to lash back, preferably in a harsher manner, especially when we are young and want to win every argument, even when we might be wrong. This is a stupid and dangerous habit that can have long term detrimental effects on our career. Often, the moment of rage soon passes. But the email we sent, lives on in the inbox ( & heart) of the recipient, and often permanently wrecks the landscape of goodwill that could have been, had we not acted in haste. It makes sense to batch your emails and reply them at a neutral hour instead of responding instantaneously. A time lag mostly calms the blood rush, allowing us a wide angle, objective view before we send a reply, thus averting an unwanted conflict -?and more often than not, nudging the other party to soften their approach towards us because of this show of maturity. As you grow older you realize that no conflict is worthy of permanence. (Yeah, if you are really cross and need to give the other person a piece of your mind – pick up the phone and shout. You can always make that up over a drink later).
- The ‘See-what-I got !’?syndrome?– In Michael Watkins’ bestselling book,?‘The First 90 days’, the author lays out a number of common sense strategies to plan your first quarter in a new job. One of the points that I love (because its something I learnt the hard way) , is putting a restraining order on yourself in your initial days, and refraining from displaying all your wares at one go. A career is a marathon, not a sprint. When we are younger, we often cannot resist putting it all out there in a bid to impress our new colleagues. And in the process, expose all our cards. The first six months in a new workplace is time to soak in more and to show off less. This is the time to fit in into your new workplace, instead of trying to fit the existing organization into you. Only after you know your way inside the labyrinth,?it should be showtime for you.
- Quitting when you are at the top?– I know it is a sexy catchphrase to say that one should quit when at the top. However, unless you are in competitive sports & need to pace out your averages for your million copy biography, this is a silly thing to do. It takes years of toil and a whole bunch of random coincidences beyond your immediate personal capabilities,?to favor you and take you to the corner office in your organization. And we often see people who are going through a dream ride for a few years, suddenly decide to try changing gears when it is uncalled for. They abruptly set out to explore industries they have no clue of, or venture out to capture geographies they have never been to, and in the process, make jackasses out of themselves. Fast trackers, especially in large organizations, are seldom prime movers of their own careers. Often it is a combination of organizational forces that pushes them up. These superstars, when they take their personal contribution in their stardom too seriously, sometimes get bitten by the adventure bug & find themselves in the woods . In summary, when you are at the top - respect it. Hold yourself together. No need to don your Superman costume in a hurry.
- The Sexist, the Racist & the Ageist?-?I am sure you must have come across these characters at some point of time or other. While most progressive organizations and contemporary social structures have means to snub sexism and racism at the workplace, the last one is a more personal habit we all need to work on. Time and again I have kicked myself for having underestimated someone’s capability based on his / her age. In the past twenty years, I have come across many 25 year olds who are more matured than 50 year olds,?and I have also encountered 50 year olds with more energy and can-do spirit than most 20 year olds. Age is a perception. And perceptions can be faulty. Never write off?a person in your mind because of an age bracket. For all you know, he / she might surprise you.
- ?Falling asleep on your career?– In my last post, I had slotted the 70 % of regular workforce like myself into one bracket, calling ourselves folks who end up spending more time at the gallery, cheering for the top 10% who race ahead of us, while sympathetically eyeing the bottom 20% of the ecosystem who fall behind us . While that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but what holds true is that mediocrity has a habit of creeping stealthily into our lives . None of us plan to be mediocre at the starting line. But somewhere along the way, we stop sharpening the saw because we identify our strengths by then, and thereafter we keep playing the niche game, doing the same job?( with some tweaks) for twenty years, and claim to have gained twenty years of experience, when in reality we have one year of experience, repeated twenty times. And then, at age forty, we take our positions at the gallery (wearing our scowls) , softly muttering our protests against the 10% who overtook us, blaming it on their?good luck.
- Fooled by Purple patches?– This is somewhat a converse behavior of No. 6. Unlike the adventurer in there who cannot wait to jump off a hard earned pedestal and commit suicide , we also see another variant of people who start getting too cozy in the midst of their purple patches, assuming them to be permanent. Most top professionals witness 3-4 good spikes in a forty year career. What sets them apart from the crowd is that they have their heads firmly on their shoulders when they are in the middle of these joyrides. They use these easy patches to gather rations , tools & goodwill for the flat season that would invariably follow. Mediocre people do the opposite. They develop a sense of entitlement during these tailwinds, and put on a lot of baggage in such times. Arrogant, friendless and overweight – they wake up with a rude shock at the end of their honeymoons, and never quite recover thereafter. By the time you reach forty, you would have many friends at the bar who will keep telling you the same stories of their once-glorious days, day after day . Make sure you don’t end up as one of them as well.
- Burning bridges?– People often mistake networking to be a forward activity, that is – seeking out new connections and developing symbiotic relationships thereafter. However, networking is as much about preserving as it is about creating. As we breeze through our first 10-15 years of work life, we get to know a whole lot of people. While we continue to have an active relationship with some of them as we go along, we also gradually let others drop off our radar as we do not associate any immediate transactional gains from them. Worse still, when some of us leave companies, especially in a state of emotional distress, we put up stupid fights – calling out names and engaging in immature vending machine rant, before marching out in a huff. One thing you learn to appreciate as you grow older, is the power of long term relationships. Our career paths are seldom linear. We never know who we might run into a few years down the line. It is extremely foolish to let go of good relationships out of shortsightedness. Even more foolish is to destroy relationships while going forward. By the time you hit 40, you will see new faces overtake you at the finish line of your race if you are still competing as a lone wolf. What however, will always stay by you, is your reputation & your network. The trust you built through the decades . And people?who believed in?you & stuck by you?through your thick and thin ( &?vice versa) . There’s a queer permanence in the?bonding you create?in a network you have grown old with . That’s your tribe. Never neglect to build that tribe.
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This is a chapter from my 2020 book, 'As You Life It'. A big thanks also to my reader friends for such a generous response to my new book, 'Life-ing?it'. You may grab a copy at Amazon ( links below) or Flipkart ( India). If you are in other countries, Google Play, Smashwords etc also have it instantly available).
To your last comment: I remember someone once telling me not to burn bridges since life is too long that you might have to cross the same bridge more than once. In every profession, we find that the world is small and as we switch jobs/careers we run into the same people.
Branch Head (East India & Bangladesh)
3 年Really insightful!