Often there are interesting discussions in various professional forums on how to be successful in our professional career. One specific question that springs up in everyone's mind is —‘How should one’s career graph be?’
This is not an easy question to answer as there are so many variables involved that influence the growth of an individual. However, in a broader spectrum, I will depict the career growth curve spanning the entire career span of a professional as below.
1. Ideal career graph
2. A good performer
3. A poor performer
4. A star performer
1) Ideal Career Graph: This is considering an ideal situation where everything is perfect. The individual is a perfect professional possessing all good qualities. He works in a perfect environment under perfect management in a perfect organisation. His performance is recognized and rewarded on a timely basis. In such a utopian organisation, the growth of his career is an ascending straight line at the right inclination. Unfortunately, the existence of such organisations is scarce and they are generally termed as ‘Dream Company to Work for’.
2) A Good Performer: This is a real-world scenario where everything can’t be perfect and various influencing factors come into play. The individual is a strong performer who possesses all the virtues required to be successful. His career growth is excellent and he consistently rises to new heights throughout his career span. He is quite successful, however, his career curve remains below the perfect scenario. You will also notice that there are rough patches in the graph. This gap and the roughs are due to various influencing factors that we will discuss subsequently.
3) A Poor Performer: A poor performer isn’t expected to do well, it is obvious. An individual who does not have the motivation, knowledge and competency will struggle throughout his career for survival, leave alone any possibility of growth in his career. He may move in and out of jobs and he would be happy to be a backbencher always trying to hide from the watchful eyes of the higher-ups. The curve in the above plot is only representative and there can be several versions of it, all tending to kiss the x-axis.
4) A Star Performer: The sky is the limit and no career graph can be defined for him. Under favourable conditions, he can go much beyond the ideal career growth scenario. A star performer has all the attributes and much more. He has the capability to take himself, his team and his organisation to great heights. He may not have been born with all these qualities but has inculcated many of them through sheer dedication, focus and hard work. But even for a star performer, his career graph will not be smooth but will have many rough spots. These are the moments of struggle, temporary failures and stagnations. But he takes them in his stride, learns valuable lessons and marches ahead with supreme confidence.
Influencing Factors:
There is a horde of factors that wield influence in one’s career. They can be categorised under two broad categories—internal and external factors. Internal factors are the ones which are under the direct control of an individual and he is responsible for managing them. The external factors are the ones which are beyond the influence, control or even reach of the individual. Their existence and influences are driven by larger forces of the professional world.
(A) Internal Factors:
The key internal factors can be identified and listed as below:
1. Career choice
2. Choice of employer
3. Switching employer or career
4. Performance
Career Choice: In chapter 2 we have discussed in detail why the right career choice is very important. This sets the tone for the professional journey spanning three to four decades. A wrong choice will not help an individual realise his full potential. He may not get the motivation to perform and excel. By the time he realises his folly, it may be too late for rectifying the same.
There are numerous examples and I am sure you are privy to a number of them. We have read about individuals who reluctantly pursued an engineering degree due to parental pressure and after picking up a very good job dumps everything soon. Then he sets himself up to work in an NGO to engage in rural education or starts up a lunch-box delivery business.
Not everyone gets success though. What happens to those who fail? Think about how their lives will be after such a debacle as their dreams will get shattered. That is why it is of utmost importance to choose one’s career carefully rather than getting influenced by some faulty notions and ideas of self or of others.
Choosing the Employer: We are quite used to hearing that an employer chooses its employees but not vice versa. That is how the trend is, in the job market. But it is equally important that an individual makes his choice of an employer to ensure that he is joining the right organisation, be it at the beginning or midway in his career.
One has to do a proper fact-finding and research about the company where he is pursuing a job. Financial stability, brand name and corporate image, work environment and career progression opportunities are few things one has to properly analyse. In today’s world of information overflow through the internet, such information is easily available.
Compensation is always a high priority for an applicant but that should not be the only yardstick in choosing or accepting a job. There are some smart people around who would take up a new job sacrificing a bit of the salary because the career growth option is much higher than his old job. And such a bet pays off well more often than not.
Higher compensation does not always equate to a good work culture and ample career growth possibility. Many times one realises that some of the organisations squeeze their employees so hard that their work-life balance gets totally shattered.
Switching Employer or Career: Switching employer is commonplace these days in search of fast track career growth, better compensation, to bypass stagnation or due to a troublesome boss, etc. This may be an essential thing for the betterment of an individual’s professional life and many times such moves should be encouraged.
However such decisions need to be taken after a proper analysis and should not be a knee jerk reaction. Secondly, the timing of such change of an employer is also very important. Please recall about the gentleman mentioned in chapter 10 who was in a predicament about switching his employer and then after some solid introspection how he could put his stagnant career on a fast track by taking the right decision at the right time!
Switching one’s career is a different ballgame. It is much tougher and risky a decision compared to switching one’s employer while remaining in the same profession. Changing career amounts to venturing into unchartered territory without knowing much about the landscape and the dangers lurking there. The one who does it definitely is a brave heart.
The need for switching one’s career may arise out of various reasons –
· A clash between professional career versus long-cherished dream.
· Better career prospects or monetary benefits or both.
· Restless mindset, wanting to achieve too much too soon.
It is difficult to make a generalised statement about whether a career switch can be rewarding or not. But the key is, whoever wants to do it has to have total conviction in addition to doing a thorough homework and a fall-back plan in addition to having a perfect timing of execution (please refer to the risk management flow chart in chapter 10).
Performance: This is the single biggest factor that hugely influences one’s career growth. The other internal factors take a backseat when one isn’t performing. Without high-quality performance, there is no growth. And performance is simply a reflection of the application of the 12 virtues, nothing else. One has to either perform or perish in the professional world, there is no in-between.
From the above discussion, we can come to the conclusion that these internal factors are purely controlled by the individual. If he handles, delivers or executes them to a high degree of perfection there is no stopping of his career progression (from the aspect of influences from these internal factors). If not, then success will be elusive.
(B) External Factors:
They are peripheral to an individual yet they are very strong and impactful as they reside within the sphere of influence. The external factors are beyond the control or even reach of the individual. Bigger forces of the professional world lead to their creation. The key ones are:
1. Management’s perception (of an individual’s performance)
2. Industry swings
3. Organisation performance
Management’s Perception: An individual’s performance is ultimately measured and evaluated by the management, i.e., his immediate manager and at times the higher-ups. Reward, recognition, promotion, etc., on the positive side and warning, demotion or termination on the negative side are the outcome of such management review and decision. The future as well as the career growth of the individual hinges on such actions.
When the management’s perception is positive and in sync with the individual, his career would move smoothly ahead in the right direction. There is nothing to worry about in such a situation.
But it is quite common that for some unfortunate individuals, their performance reviews aren’t done fairly. Reasons can be individual dislike, personality clash, office politics, insecurity, etc. These reasons fall under the ‘biased’ or ‘malicious’ category.
Then there can also be a serious difference of opinion, i.e., the individual might think he has performed very well whereas the management may rate it as ‘average’ as their yardsticks of assessment may be different.
But in the professional world perception is the reality and this is what strongly impacts the career growth of an individual.
Industry swings: The economy of a state, country or at the global level goes through different phases of ups and downs. Sometimes, a downturn can last for several years or an upswing or a spike can be of short duration. An industry’s fortune is closely linked to the economy and therefore its fate also moves in tandem with the economy at the micro or macro level.
When there is an upswing, the revenue increases along with profitability. This in turn, allows the management to spend money more liberally to hire and expand its business. The high performers are promoted and given more responsibilities. Rewards are doled out to the employees in an effort to appreciate their contributions. This is an ideal condition for career growth.
However, the opposite happens when there is a downturn. Revenue and profitability drop drastically resulting in severe cost control measures. Surplus employees are laid off, perks and benefits are curtailed and promotions are put on hold. In such a challenging situation, one’s career progression slows down and this becomes quite detrimental if such a downturn lasts long.
These industry swings are completely beyond our control. During the downturns, we can only watch with worries, pain, and go through the sufferings when we get trapped and sucked into such a vortex.
Organisation Performance: We can ensure that we perform to the best of our ability at the individual level and at the team level when we manage a team. However, we won’t be able to influence performance beyond that in an organisation which employs thousands of people out of which you are one amongst many at the working level, supervisory level or managerial level.
We give our best and hope that others have also done the same way so that the overall performance of our organisation is outstanding. If it does then well and good but if it doesn’t and that too consistently year after year, it damages the company earnings and profitability, erodes its worth in the capital market and finally its brand image.
So, when an organisation is poorly managed resulting in the above kind of catastrophic situation, in spite of putting your best effort it may not translate to a proper reward in terms of career growth. It is something beyond one’s control but he has to bear the brunt of it.
Thus you can see that these external factors can decisively influence your career at one point or other either in a positive or a negative way and you have simply zero control or influence over such factors.
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