When Good is Not Good Enough-Biswaroop Mukherjee, Tata Motors
In our professional lives we often come across various professionals who are in various phases of their career and who have a deep feeling of not living up to their own career aspiration due to the circumstances or the organisational support or their own personal priorities being different at some point. Being an HR professional, I have often heard from these set of professionals on how once they were the stars and eventually, they faded away and the organisation doesn’t value their contributions today as much as it used to be earlier. There is a common theme that I have observed in this set of professionals and that each of them feels stuck in their careers due to the fact there is no growth inside the organisation and outside the organisation and often each of them feels that they have always done their best and its now the organisation is calibrating them differently for the same level of performance.
On studying career journeys of such professionals closely and reflecting on how they could have done differently. The following themes come to my mind which as a professional I am cognisant about for my own career as a professional and would like to share with all who are in such a phase or who want to ensure that they don’t get into such a phase ever in their career.
Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss: Keep changing your role every 2-3 years be it horizontally, vertically within the function or outside the function basis the career aspiration. Moving jobs and doing different roles within the same organisation preferably add to the muscles of a professional in terms of rounded understanding and ability to evaluate a challenge or task from all dimensions which eventually lead to better decision making and better ability to perform in each role.
Embrace Growth Mindset: Always ready to take new challenges, learning from failure, taking bigger assignments with considerable responsibility can do attitude all are traits of Growth Mindset. It’s important that we build a growth mind-set at all times of our Career Journey.
Your Career Your Responsibility: Often Employees in organisations feel that the organisation should take care of their career. Organisations do provide frameworks and growth paths for the talent in the organisation; however, the reality is that Corporate Structures are pyramids, and all can’t be accommodated as they move up. Hence, it’s important that we realise that our career is our responsibility, and we work towards making the most of the organisational career development framework to ensure we either grow in the pyramid within the organisation or outside in another organisation.
Develop Competencies for the Market: Career is a long journey, the functional and behavioural competencies that enable success in an organisation at a given point of time is different from the one a few decades later. It’s not because the organisation wanted to change but because the organisation was forced to change to cater to the changing dynamics of the market and varied taste of the customer. Hence, it’s important that we professionals consistently develop our competencies by learning and doing both to always stay ahead of the curve. Amounts incurred on self-development are not costs they are investments for a long successful career.
