In October 98, when we were entering the period for annual appraisals, the PPDP Training mentioned that a focus this year was on becoming sensitive to self-reliance in our careers.

I felt this was something everyone knew, but did not understand.  We did not know HOW to become self-reliant about our careers.  I could imagine setting a career objective as simply as, say, ?I will be doing what our MD is doing, in 10 years?.  However, I could not define ANY actionables that would take me there.  I could not define anything for me to do now, which would take me there.

I started talking to my team about all the things we could do, and I realized we could define actionables now that would make us self-reliant in our careers.  And I put these into a presentation, which I could run 1-on-1 with individuals.  The presentation took about ˝ an hour to make?I was simply dumping in all my reflections on my experience.

I ran this presentation across my team of 8 senior managers, and added learnings captured during the presentations.  The presentation typically took 45 minutes to run.

I subsequently ran the presentation 1-on-1 over more than 200 people, and what I put down here is the cumulative learning from all these sessions.

I thought it would be good if we began by understanding some fundamental concepts the same way.

Just try to answer these questions.  Say, the first one, ?What is a Career??.  How would you define a career?  ?  As you realize, the definition of a career that you came up with just now, is in your mind.  How do you know it is this definition that everyone has for a career?

Similarly, the other questions?  What is Growth?? etc.

What you should realize is if a group of people is not working with the same definition/understanding, then how can you expect different people?s expectations to be met?

But these questions led me to some very interesting answers.  In fact this presentation happened mainly because of these questions and the answers I found.

I found some answers in the Webster?s Dictionary.  Simple.

On the net at http://www.m-w.com/ (Merriam-Webster?s Dictionary)I found these definitions for the meanings and senses of the term Career?

Lets keep #3 and #4 in mind?

The keywords in #3 are ?a FIELD for CONTINUOUS, PROGRESSIVE ACHIEVEMENTS??.

Another meaning of Career is this?and some of us do follow this career as well J.

Well, essentially #3 and #4 of the previous slide seem to be what concern us, so lets take a closer look at what we can get from these.

If ??continuous, progressive achievement?? in ??a field?? is what is a career, then thinking about the development of this career, you need to first select the field, and then make sure your achievements are continuous and in a good (and improving) progression.

This implies we have to focus on choosing the field (also the ?career? as in #4), and then on continuous, accelerating, growing achievements.  To achieve more, we will also need to identify and develop skills and abilities in ourselves, to let us achieve more.

Lets look at first, how we choose our careers, which will sensitize us to how we can improve the choices we make.  We?ll then look at how we can achieve more in the career we have chosen.

These are some facts about our choices in careers.

Some of us do get structured, competent, and professional career counseling help, but lets face it, 99.9% of professional, working people don?t get even structured counseling help.

Mostly, at the time we are selecting the field, typically when we are in class 8 to 12, we look for and get advice from our parents, relatives, friends? elders, and the family?s social circle.  Typically also, its mainly the parents who are concerned about the field we choose?each of us is so confident at the time, that we don?t bother too much about it.  This is changing, for sure, and children now are more conscious of what they need to do?peer pressure is going up.

Bullet 1:  Working on the definition we arrived at for a career, the progression for each one of us is unique.  No two people in the world have exactly the same career.  They might have the same field, but the progression characteristics differ.  So, why do they differ?

Bullet 2:  They differ because we make choices that affect our career (progression).  Every time you decide to do something, or not do it, you change your progression thereafter.  And we exercise these choices whenever we get the opportunity.  So, a choice I might make is to take a break, or to go meet somebody, or to decide to finish something right now.

This also highlights the fact that every decision we make, affects our career.  We?re probably making career choices 4 times a day!

We use our personal vision/mission/ values to decide on the choice we make.  We make a choice that will (as we think) take us on the progression towards what we want to be in the world (my vision/mission/values).  So, how do we build and think about our vision/mission/values?

Bullet 3:  We build our vision/mission/values based on our value system. I have a personal statement that defines what I value about myself, and I have expectations from different organizations, that they will value various relevant strengths in me that will contribute to them (their careers).

We typically get our values from our parents and family, and then our friends and peers.

Lets look at a structured approach to choosing our careers?I have a feeling none of us follows this approach consciously, but many organizational systems do exist, that facilitate this approach unconsciously.  Maybe there is some benefit in using this approach consciously as well.

In the first part, I list down all the things I value about myself.

So, I might value my ability to be punctual, or to complete things on time, or my ability of playing a game like an expert, or ?

I then list what I don?t value about myself, but what other people and the organization seems to value.

This is actually a list that shows you opportunities.  You already have these strengths, but you don?t value them, while others do.

So, I might not value my ability to sing, but maybe somebody else does value it.  Or, I might not value the fact that I always look at things optimistically, while others do value it.

Now I think about what the organization values about itself (including its people, which include me).

Some of this might be what I don?t value, but the organization does.

Finally, I think about what the organization does not value, and maybe I do.

Thinking through all four of these ?value? questions gives me a very good idea of the fit, conflict, and opportunities I have.

After having been through the previous four lists, I decide.  This decision is what defines my career choice.

We must realize that we never go through structured questions and responses as here, but imagine the enormous improvement in our choices we can have.

I have not discussed ?Choosing your career? further in this presentation, because that?s a different story, and I assume we have already made a choice that we like.

After having talked about Choosing your career, lets take a closer look at the second part of Career Development, which is Achieving more.

Lets see how we can achieve more.

We can achieve more first, and most simply, by being good and better, at what we have to do.  This is the most obvious strategy, and often the only strategy that we identify for our growth.  And that is where I think we fall short.

Apart from achieving more by being better at what we do, how can we achieve more?  Well, by enabling others to contribute to our achievements.  This multiplies our achievements, and is the single other biggest method to achieve more.  Others that contribute to our achievements could be people, events, or processes.

We also need to become visible?as in known.  Visibility is important to the extent that whoever needs to know, and can benefit from knowing about you, should know so that more opportunities come your way.  This is something like ? I might know how to swim, but I?ve never shared the fact with anybody, and therefore when a need for the ability comes by, I am not thought of.

We should also broaden our (activity) base, to be able to widen our vision.

Finally, we should take more responsibility, and value ourselves.

Lets spend some more time on each of these points in the following slides.

To be better at what you do, you need skills, knowledge, experience, ? and passion.  Passion is what drives you to do better, and the more the passion, the quicker you do better.  It speeds up your progression of achievements.

Being better at what you do, increases your personal power.

You are also managing yourself by objectives (MBO), when you are better at what you do.

One big opportunity is to do the common things uncommonly well.  Most people are worried about doing Uncommon things well, to stand out.  A huge, simple-to-achieve opportunity lying around therefore, is to do the common things well.  And because everyone is anyway worrying about doing uncommon things, they miss out completing the common things.  Your doing well at the common things, becomes uncommon.

Why is it important for you to enable others to achieve more?  Because you are a factor in what the team achieves, and what you achieve gets affected by what the team achieves.  So, let?s say you performed outstandingly, but the team achieved only OK results.  Your achievements are going to be divided by the team?s.  On the other hand, if you achieved only satisfactorily, but the team achieved outstanding results, you are definitely going to bask in the glory.

This (enabling others?) is the essence of ?people management?.  It is also essential to manage yourself.  You also need to enable yourself to perform well.

This is also when you are managing a team, or others, by objectives.

Why is visibility important?  This is a frequently trivialized and misunderstood aspect.  It can be confused with arrogance or misrepresentation, though it is not.

Visibility is important for you so that you become a PREFERRED NODE of REFERENCE for other people to refer to, and for them to WANT to refer to you.  It is important for people to want to refer to you, because that keeps you ?alive?, while you contribute to them through the value you add by being good at something.  In all likelihood, you will be a node of reference for something that you do better than most people.

A simple way to gain visibility, is to get involved in a ?high-impact? project.  Because the world?s attention is on the project, people see more of you.  To become the node of REFERENCE, however, you need to do well also, in the project.

Of course, you will become a real node only when you do something well.  You might say you are good at something and people should refer to you, but if they feel they are not getting value from you, they will stop referring to you, and you will stop, being the node of reference for them.

You need to broaden your base, as in widen your experience of doing a variety of things, and doing them well.  This is important because as your career progresses, and you get into teams to lead them, you will be expected to have a ?vision? of the ground realities, all across.  You cannot have a broad vision without a broad base.

If you don?t have a broad base, and you are a ?specialist?, you run the risk of becoming a pillar instead of standing on a well supported platform.  And as we know, pillars have a delicate equilibrium, depending on their height and base.

Take it on.  Unless YOU take responsibility, and own it, there?s no point in running the risk of giving it to you and you not owning it.  Once you don?t own responsibility, you will not hold it when others expect you to, and it leads to disasters.

You need to manage yourself by responsibility, and believe in the 2 principles of MBR (Management By Responsibility).  The first principle states that ?You are a hundred percent responsible for what happens to you.?  And the second one says that ?You are a hundred percent responsible for your reaction to what happens to you.?  Look at it like this.  If you don?t believe in either of these principles, you are not taking responsibility.  And if you are not responsible, how can you be given the responsibility.  You HAVE to believe and act according to these principles for you to be given responsibility.

As you take more responsibility, you will be faced with risk.  And you will need to discover whether you are a ?trader?, or an ?investor?.  Traders react to market situations and requirements, and follow what the ?market? says.  Investors, on the other hand, invest in their ideas, principles, and output, and stay firm in spite of contrary market indications, risking failure while they work at succeeding.  Each of us, at various times is either a trader, or an investor, to varying degrees.

Trading is simple, but to invest, you should know the market trends, your own abilities, and your confidence in what you know.

Finally, to get more responsibility, take it!  The simplest way to take responsibility for a situation, is to respond to the situation.  And the reverse is also true?the surest way to lose responsibility is to stop responding to the situation.

Periodically, you need to value yourself, to evaluate your value to the organization.  You must evaluate your contribution to the organizational team, to ensure that you increase your contribution, and your value to the organization.  Do this by observing yourself and your achievements objectively, standing beside yourself as you look at yourself.

Once you have satisfied yourself of your contribution to the organization, you must depend on the fact that something that is valued, is also protected?just like your expensive watch or camera.

When I first made this presentation to people, at this point they said they had got actionable knowledge out of the presentation.  And that?s what prompted me to add this slide, because this is something we are very good at doing.  We revel in the knowledge that we have the ability?but we never act with it.

So, if you think these points are doable, then just start working at them.  Build your personal systems to keep track of where you are on each of them, ?and keep at it.

This is how I see it.

We begin with Self Esteem, which we get from our parents, starting from the early years of our lives.  This is also the single most important contribution parents make to their children ? of giving them self-esteem.  Without self-esteem, we don?t even Learn at school.  And learning is the next thing that we start on.

We go on learning, more and more, until our learning starts spilling over into the Do phase of our lives.  Here is where we follow instructions from somebody, to actually do something, to carry out an activity to complete a task.  We get better at meeting commitments that somebody has made, typically our teacher, or manager.

As we get better at meeting these commitments (made by somebody else), we start making our own commitments and meeting them.  As we get better at meeting our own commitments, we develop the Just Do It value in ourselves.

Once we have the ability to make and meet our commitments, we have the opportunity to help other people develop the same ability, and we multiply into more people to get into the Manage stage.  At the same time, we also start working at improving our People Management skills.

At the base once we have the three attributes of Self Esteem, Just Do It, and People Management, we can say we have Personal Power, and we start working at Visibility,  Broadening our Base, and Taking more Responsibility.

As we take more and more responsibility, we realize we are taking responsibility that nobody else, or very few others are taking.  That is when we are at the Lead stage.

As growing trainers at NIIT, we have built some paradoxes for ourselves.  I?m describing one below.

The first is that we, as trainers, know that all training is defined by the Terminal Objectives defined for an audience.  By knowing more about the audience and the terminal objectives, we arrive at actionable (achievable) Enabling Objectives for the training.

These enabling objectives are what are addressed by the training, and once these are met, we assume that the terminal objectives are also met.  We never address the Terminal Objectives directly.

Then why is it that in our careers, we set the terminal objectives - as in money, power, position, authority, etc. ? without a clue as to ourselves, or the enabling objectives?  We then don?t have any actionables to work at, and when we don?t achieve we feel we?ve lost out.  If you think about it, what was your plan to achieve what you wanted, and how predictable were the results of what you did?

Set Terminal Objectives no doubt, but also know the audience (yourself) and the enabling objectives you have to achieve. Train yourself!

Your responsibility is to develop your ability, and look for opportunities where you can contribute to the organization.

The organization?s responsibility is to recognize your abilities, and identify or create opportunities where you can contribute most to the organization.

You can see growth happening in different ways, and I articulated 3 ways in which we grow.

I named them Apathetic, Sympathetic, and Empathetic.

Apathetic       This is when the leader ?grows? leaving the team behind, usually by adding new people at the intermediate levels.

This is when the leader?s growth is apathetic to that of the team.

SympatheticThis is when the entire team grows together, with no relative difference perceived in relationships between the leader and the team, but the entire team doing better work, and taking more responsibility.

This is normally not perceived by people as growth, because no relative difference is perceptible.  But it is growth for all.

Empathetic   This form of growth happens when the leader empowers the team members to do better that him/her.  This is the model all trainers have to grow in.  Your teacher in class 10 empowered you to do better than her.  In the process she grew in her impact on people, although her ?position? remained what it was.

This is also the model all grandparents use to grow.  The grandfather is not concerned about his own achievements.  He is very concerned about how he can help his grandchild achieve.

How we Grow            You can now probably identify with people who follow each of these models of growth at various times in their careers/lives.

They might start growing apathetically in the beginning of their career, when they are on a faster achievement track than the team.

In the middles of their careers, they are likely to grow sympathetically, because their team is likely to be more mature and capable, and will grow at the same rate as they do, also as they slow down.

Towards the later years of their careers, they get focused more on how they can empower others to grow, even beyond them.  They themselves have, by then, achieved what they wanted to.

If you come to think of the ONE Growth that we all work towards, in view of all the above discussion, you realize that all the visible signs of growth are only enablers for this Ultimate growth to happen.  The ultimate growth that happens is ?positive impact on people?.  Positive impact on more people, and more positive, greater impact on more people.

We typically relate growth with our position in the organizational hierarchy, i.e. our position in the structure.  Lets see why this seems to be completely irrelevant.

If the two (growth and structures) were related, then every node in the structure would have a value assigned to it, with higher nodes having greater value and lower ones having a lower value assigned.  This would also imply that the organization is structured around (growth) values of nodes.

But nothing could be further from fact.  Organizations are not structured according to values of nodes.  So how are they structured, and why?  Lets see?

An organization is structured to deploy functions.

The organization needs to be effective at carrying out functions efficiently.

And therefore, we also ensure that organizational structuring avoids redundancy of skills and functions, retains effectiveness over a span of control, and facilitates communication and mentoring.

I thought of at least 2 approaches that could be used to structuring organization.

One could be a Role Based approach, when the organization is structured around the need for roles, with people?s abilities getting only a small consideration.  The IAS is one such organization, and you might find many Govt. organizations following this approach in the socialist countries.

The other is the Function Based approach, where the organization structures around functions that need to be carried out.  This is the approach most functional (and functioning?) organizations take.

Well, you can?t just define the structure and then rest.  Structures need to change because of

-changing market requirements, so changing functional requirements,

-growing capability, visibility, responsibility of the people, and

-growing maturity of the people and the business.

Essentially, structures need to change to account for, and to drive, people arriving at different points on the Learning Curve.

Lets see how the learning curve can be understood.

This is how we?ve seen learning curves, with the slope being very high in the beginning, declining over time to a less steep slope.

What do you think happens beyond the point X?

This is what I think happens beyond the point X in our learning curves.  At least for some people this is what happens.

Their learning starts actually accelerating beyond X, instead of staying there or slowing down.

It is only these ?learners? who go into the Leading and Envisioning stages, beyond the Learn-Do-Manage.

The obvious question is ? what is it that predicts this inflection of the slope to happen at X?  The answer seems to be in when we get the ability to lead ourselves, when we become sensitive to our productivity of learning, or when we start learning from ourselves - when we learn to lead ourselves.

This is a corollary to the learning-curves discussion.  I realized we might have some loopholes in how we develop our people.

The upper curve is for a ?senior?, in the accelerating-learning mode, while the lower curve is that of a ?junior? who?s joined the senior to be managed and mentored.

In the beginning, the slope of the junior?s curve is steep because the senior pumps in instructions, values, guidance, training, et al, so that the junior develops and performs.  All the time, the junior is following his learning curve, with the slope declining gradually.

The senior ?feels? the change in slope, but misinterprets it completely.  By the time the senior perceives that his and the junior?s slopes are about the same, the interpretation is that the junior has now achieved the same rate of learning as I have, and so he will be able to keep pace with me.  They don?t realize the junior is actually slowing down, not speeding up.

By ?leaving? the junior to learn on their own at this stage, we lose the opportunity we had of the junior following the seniors learning curve close behind.  Instead, the junior now follows his natural, further slowing down of acceleration of learning, to eventually going through the inflection (if at all).  So what does this tell us?  Until when should a senior mentor a junior?

The development of the junior must continue until the junior crosses the inflection ? until he is able to lead himself, is sensitive to his productivity of learning, and has learned to lead.

Lets now see how we can chart the careers that we impact.  Our own careers impact the organization?s career.

Actually, this presentation applies completely to the organizational career as well.

Lets Learn, to Lead!

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