Decoding Careers

About a decade ago, I was once invited by a management school to talk to their students about the process of building careers. I was expected to draw on my experience of working with career development, succession planning and such other processes. Students were expecting guidance on how to choose a right career, how to progress with it, how to set goals, what are the challenges of building careers and how to overcome them etc. I found this very interesting and challenging at the same time. During research phase of this assignment, I came across such interesting details and processes that it clarified a lot of things for me. One of the best ways to learn is to teach as they say.

I started my interaction with students by trying to build clarity on what career means. It wasn’t an easy process. Most responses to the question `what does career mean to you’ were anybody’s guess. Student’s understanding of this word was coloured by some popular beliefs. Some believed it to be acquiring qualification and finding related job, some equated it to climbing the corporate ladder, some thought it to be moving forward or upward in a chosen direction. All these definitions sound right because they are based on our experience of what we see around. Some even believed that career happens to us, some said that career chooses us and cited be examples of sports, film stars and business people. We graduated to the next question `what do we work for’. This met even more interesting answers. Some work for money, some work for status, some work for occupation and some work for expertise. But the next question was a game changer; `what do you enjoy doing, during which you seize to exist, you become one with what you doing.’ Shocking as this question was, it was also revealing. It opened new vistas, new opportunities for students to peep within themselves and inquire. Now the danger with such inquiry is that one may be faced with real answers and real answers may not be easy to take. But we all decided to face it that day.

That day we redefined what career meant to us. Contrary to popular beliefs, we realized that career is not just a job or going abroad or seizing the opportunities. We realized that it is not about enduring those long years or climbing the corporate ladder. Strangely enough we felt that, career is a medium not the end. However, we felt that it was not a medium of earning money as is popularly believed. Money is also another medium. What do we want to earn money for? Quality of life. What do we want that for? And probing further and deeper we came to realise that career is a medium of expressing and experiencing ourselves, a medium or a channel to accomplish our full potential. After a decade, I still think about this definition and it does make a lot of sense to me. Some of us may have a strong need to reject this definition because we don’t understand it or it doesn’t sound right or our current reality is far from this definition. But if we understand this definition in intent, we could do wonders even now.

As I write this, a lot of faces pop in front of me, of people who are dragging their feet in their current occupation trying to find some meaning in what they do and those who tried to do something but failed and went back to what they were originally doing.

Recently, I met a very senior executive who heads one of the subsidiaries of India’s leading private sector financial institution. Let’s call him Jayesh. While profiling Jayesh, using a psychometric tool, we found something startling. We figured that he is under tremendous pressure. But his job was not the stimulus for that stress. He was well placed there. Upon further investigation we realised an astonishing fact. This gentleman was an artist and quite adept at that but owing to family pressures he had to get into Finance related profession. Now he spent a large part of his life doing something he never wanted to do, concealing his natural instincts and desires. He had done very well for himself and was an achiever. There is tremendous conflict between an artist’s mind and a banker’s mind which was the source of all the stress which he was coping very well. So can we say he built a successful career? There may not be an easy answer to this. For an outsider, he is obviously very successful, is a CEO and has all the means. But in his own mind, he may be thinking of starting his `real career’ sometime afterall. Or looking at all the success, he may be disillusioned and wondering what does success really mean, is it the material accomplishment or it is the joy of doing something internally meaningful? Would he have accomplished so much had he invested all these years in pursuing art as his mainstream career? Why was the career in art compromised for the career in Finance? And the list of questions may go on. But the list is worth exploring.

We have a very long active life spanning over 40 years. In this time there are a few lucky ones who make two careers. But there are also those who don’t manage to find a way and then there are those who are meaningfully occupied, doing very well but that’s not their calling. Now, not finding a way for forty years or doing something that doesn’t interest us for that long is a tough ordeal.  But making career choices is not easy either. Over the last twenty years I have been observing very keenly how successful people have built their careers in different walks of life. This inquiry into the subject has given me many interesting insights. Let me unfold some of them here. As I see it, there are three major challenges with making career choices.

Many people are systematically, yet unknowingly incapacitated. If, in order to make our children’s life and future secure, parents start deciding everything for them, then they grow up with a deficient decision making process. They become dependent on others. Following others and obeying parents orders are legitimate ways to make career choices for such people. I am sure our country has millions of doctors, engineers, servicemen and many others who have fulfilled their parent’s dreams by doing what they are. This virus at times can be so widespread that many may not even ever know what they really wanted from their careers.

This is another classic folly in making career choices. A lot of young folks I meet these days are very clear about what they want to do. But that wasn’t always the case. During my college days, all my friends wanted to be chartered accountants. They knew nothing beyond that. No one thought anything different. Today, I am blessed with over twenty friends that are CAs. All of them working in Accounts & Finance departments doing accounting, finance and audit jobs. None of them is doing any business, no one running a CA firm, no one functional expert of any ERP and no one doing treasury. The only difference in their careers is the name of their company and their position on the ladder. Of course, more intelligent ones also managed ICWA and CFA.

One of the great ways of de-risking is following set norms. Not rising exponentially is a small price to pay for not falling (failing). Do as others do. This behaviour pattern creates herds and it reduces opportunities to succeed or to lead. Ultimately one herd has only one leader. But since the game is about security and not about exposure, risk or leadership that is not an issue. Besides those who want exposure and risk may eventually get to lead the herd, at least locally, if not globally.

More often than we think, we end up making career choices not based on our understanding of ourselves. Career choices in our country are more of economic choices than anything else. When we face the threshold, we scan the market for professions that earn steady income; steady opportunities and we train ourselves for that profession. What else would explain herds and herds of people from all walks of life joining IT industry until very recently? Not all of them are cut out for that profession but all aspire to go overseas, settle there, make big bucks, and enjoy a certain image in their close circles. Their career choice was driven by security and esteem needs, if you care. I am not suggesting that this process is wrong but I am saying that the decision is purely based on economics. We look for security, mostly economic. We look at career as a means to earn money. In the process, we end up getting jobs and not build careers. Capability, temperament, interest, joy are less important than economics of job. When I complained about job satisfaction to one of the elder folks in my family while I was employed, he quipped saying `so long as you are getting your salary on time what other satisfaction are you talking about?’  Making money it is!

Only politicians, film stars and cricketers get life in India. Everyone else is pretty much an also ran. We don’t have role models yet who we can look up to. There aren’t too many examples of off-beat careers either. There aren’t those who have broken set norms and have done something extra-ordinary which is also within the reach of a common man. When we don’t have these examples we have nothing different to aspire for besides doctor, engineer, IAS, business, politician (who really aspires for that!), films, cricketer or a government job. Sky divers, mountaineers, deep sea divers, food specialists, environmentalist, conservators, artists are all looked down upon. They are always advised to also do something `real’. What do you think, a Sachin Tendulkar or a Dhoni completes his graduation for? When the bat stops talking …

There may be many more such challenges. I am not highlighting systemic challenges here but there are those too. Incidentally, in many cases people hope to ignite the passion once the choice is made and the choice making currently may not be an informed process. Owing to all these challenges, career is a tricky subject. It is difficult to make career choices. But more we understand ourselves earlier on, easier this process will be. In order to understand ourselves better from this perspective, it would pay if we keep trying our hand at different things, not just restrict ourselves to customary study, one sport and/or one musical instrument. This way we will experience ourselves in different areas, widen our horizons, create options and our true individuality will emerge. We will also have to practice the art of listening to ourselves, our inner voice and not our parents, friend’s voice all the time. Lastly, we need to be clear about what we want from life and how we want it. If money is what we want then it can be earned by being a maverick and taking a big risk or it can be earned by education- job route also. However it may not guarantee us joy and satisfaction. But the converse may be true. Going for our calling may have the risk of not fetching enough but it will have tremendous joy of doing something we love, of feeling right doing it. When we love what we do and do what we love, nothing else matters.

All choices come with consequences. Our career choices are no exception. When we make one choice we sign up for all consequences attached to that choice. But let me assure you that if you make that choice with your heart, you will never regret it.  So invest in yourself and know what we really want.