On August 26, we had a highly engaging session on Active Career Management by Ms Uma Kasoji. The full webinar can be accessed at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPb3JA48js
These WiseViews seminars are held every Friday afternoon. The past recordings and details of upcoming webinars are available at:
https://online.ifheindia.org/webinar.html
About Uma
Uma Kasoji is the co-founder of ‘The Star in Me’ and a Board member of Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. She is a management consultant-turned-entrepreneur. After a corporate career spanning 17 years, she decided to co-found ‘The Star in Me’, with a vision to bridge the gender gap in the workforce.
Uma has rich and diverse experience: incubating consulting practices, spearheading transformation programs with C-suite leaders across 5 continents, and entrepreneurship.
Uma reads about 100 books per year. She shares her learnings from these books and from her own career in LinkedIn posts regularly.
In her consulting stint, Uma has leveraged her core skill: clarity of thought to engage effectively with clients, understand their problems and solve them. This has given her a lot of personal satisfaction.
The early years
When Uma joined GE Capital as a fresher after her MBA from IIM Kozhikode, she was asked to lead a 30-member team. Many of these people had 5-6 years of experience. Uma had to summon a lot of courage before she could start acting like a manager.
An early learning for Uma was that it is not enough to put our head down and sit in the cubicle, leverage our intelligence and work hard. Our work does not speak for itself. We must communicate the value we are adding.
Later in the session, Uma clarified that it is not about doing little and talking big. If we do that, we will get caught sooner than later. Moreover, we should not brag about ourselves. Rather, we should talk about the value we are creating. We should not proclaim our greatness without achieving anything. At the same time, we should talk about our achievements. Otherwise, we will remain the world’s best kept secret.
Over time, Uma has understood that we cannot leave our career to chance. We cannot afford to go with the flow. We must take charge of our career and move it in the direction we want to take it.
The story of Emma and Olivia
Uma then took us through a thought exercise. Consider two aspiring women professionals, whose profile is captured below. Uma asked us to reflect on whether we are more like Emma or Olivia.
Emma |
Olivia |
Ambitious, has a positive attitude, works diligently but takes life as it comes. |
Ambitious, has a positive attitude, works diligently, has short term and long-term goals and works smartly to achieve these goals. |
Tends to keep quiet in meetings. When she has an idea, she tells only her close friends and colleagues. |
Participates in meetings actively. She shares her ideas with the larger group without inhibitions. |
When she does a great job, she only shares it with her close friends. |
When she does a great job, she shares it with her team and updates senior leaders informally. |
Attends mandatory training programs but does not upskill herself proactively. Does not read books or keep track of advances in her domain. |
Looks for ways to upskill herself, reads books, does certifications, talks to experts from different fields. |
Does not talk to senior people in the organization, prefers to spend time with her friends. |
Proactively contacts senior leaders, introduces herself, takes their advice and updates them on her progress. |
Assumes her effort and performance will result in career growth. |
Finds mentors and sponsors to support her. |
Avoids going outside the comfort zone. Sticks to the tried and tested. |
Moves out of her comfort zone, takes risks and keeps learning new things. |
Focuses mostly on domain skills and ignores soft/interpersonal skills. |
Attaches equal importance to domain, soft and interpersonal skills. |
More concerned with the immediate scope of the work and prefers not to get involved in other projects. |
Volunteers for other projects to learn and also meet new people. |
Mostly interacts with her core group. |
Builds a network inside and outside the organization. |
Not part of any network outside work. Does not take part in industry forums. |
Part of networks outside the organization. She attends at least one industry event every month. |
Has a presence on professional platforms but is not active. |
Strong performance on social media, keeps posting, follows industry leaders and finds ways to engage with them. |
Willing to answer questions based on her expertise but does not create content. |
Writes white papers and blogs to share her views on her domain and industry. |
Active career management
It is obvious that while Emma is going with the flow, Olivia is practising active career management. Uma is a great advocate of active career management. Being intentional about our career and managing it systematically calls for the following:
Create a career plan: We must have medium term and long-term plans and milestones and not go with the flow.
Build a professional network: Without such a network, we will not even be aware of the opportunities that are available.
Find a mentor, coach, and sponsor:
A mentor is an expert in our field.
A coach can help us to improve and develop our strengths. As Uma mentions in her blog, “There are times when you need an external perspective to help uncover your strengths and see your blind spots. A coach can help you get rid of self-limiting beliefs and unleash your true potential. Just like in sports, a coach can be your accountability partner and help you scale the heights that you are meant to.”
A sponsor will speak up for us (when we are not present) in important forums, in the places that matter and help us in our career progression.
Build a personal brand: It is important to build our identity and project our credibility. Within seconds, people form impressions about us. People can also find about us from the social media. So, we must proactively build our personal brand. As Uma mentions in her blog, “We all have a personal brand, whether we know it or not. What is left is for us to determine whether we want to own and shape it or let it shape itself, thus losing control over it.”
Seek and gain exposure: Uma has worked across five continents, different industries, and several clients. This kind of exposure has been very valuable in building her career.
Keep learning: As Uma put it, one knowledge capsule a day keeps obsolescence at bay. We can choose our preferred mode of learning: books, podcasts, YouTube videos.
Keep tabs on the industry and market: We should be aware of the future trends and the skill sets needed.
Q&A
On getting the youth to take up protean (flexible and dynamic) careers
Uma recalled that when she finished her 12th, there were only two career options for bright students: engineering and medicine. Today, there are many more options. We can move on to new things much more easily. Uma talked about her own experience. After 16 years in the corporate sector, she has become an entrepreneur, in line with her aspirations to build new things. It is indeed a great time to be an entrepreneur.
On encouraging kids and young people
It is important to allow them to pursue what they are passionate about. We must instil in them the value of taking risk and encourage them to move outside their comfort zone.
Uma had a team member who had studied at an IIT. He was a brilliant engineer and the star of the team. One day he explained to Uma that he wanted to leave and launch his start up. Uma was initially reluctant to let him go. But then she realized that it was unfair to hold him. She encouraged him to go ahead.
In general, we must enable people to find their state of flow. Research reveals that the happiest people are those who have found flow in their work.
Advice to MBAs
While at B School, students have a flowery impression of the work environment. But when they join their employer, they get disillusioned. Many decide to leave their employer in the first year itself. But they must appreciate that one year is too short a period to make a decision.
Uma herself thought of quitting IIMK in the first month when she did not quite like the hostel. Fortunately, she did not do so! Thus, we must be patient and wait it out for a reasonable period. Then only we must think of leaving.
Before moving into a new organization or a new domain, we must talk to people and find what it is like out there. Otherwise, we may jump from the frying pan into the fire. The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.
We must try to get exposure to many roles. And that is quite possible. We can always volunteer for assignments to get such exposure. Then we will be able to make the right change if we are unhappy with the current job.
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, many youngsters try to do too many things at the same time. The fear of missing out is very high. This can create a lot of pressure. They should avoid comparing themselves with others.
On dealing with the VUCA environment
While graduating from IIMK, Uma was told that she was all set. Quickly, she realized it was only the start of her career. We cannot rest on our past laurels. We should continue to learn as there is always someone gunning for our job. To deal with the VUCA environment, we should also embrace the 5-hour rule, ie spend five hours a week learning something new.
We can face a VUCA environment with a pessimistic attitude: Everything is changing. What do I do? Or we can be optimistic and realize that it is creating a level playing field. We can adapt and learn faster than others and thrive. We can think of various ways to differentiate ourselves and embark on certifications and deepen our domain expertise. We can also expand our network and strengthen our connections with others.
It is never too late to change our career track and pursue our dream. The average age of the founders of some of the most successful start-ups is about 42 according to a recent Harvard study. The exposure they have, and their maturity makes these founders well placed to succeed, compared to say a college grad.
We should also remember that failure is not the end. It is just an unsuccessful attempt to do something. We always learn something new. As former US President, Theodore Roosevelt mentioned in his famous speech, “Man in the arena”, the ones fighting in the arena are those who know. To quote him, “It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
On what success means
We should have our own definition of success and accordingly set the priorities. For example, we could make an impact on the world, (For Uma, this is important.) leave behind a legacy, share learnings or reflections, (Uma enjoys doing this) be a role model for others (Uma is a role model for aspiring leaders), earn a lot of wealth ( not so important for Uma) or have enough time for oneself to lead a life of fulfilment (Uma makes sure she has the time to exercise every day and also to read good books every week. In fact, she has read at least 100 books a year, for the last 20 years.)
Work life balance
It is important to integrate work and life. On different days, the priorities may be different. We must let go of the perfection syndrome, i.e. trying to be perfect at everything. We can take life a little easy occasionally. If we are tired, we need not cook. We do not need to do everything. It is perfectly ok to say no to things.
We should also define our boundaries carefully. For example, late evenings were ok for Uma during her corporate stint, as many calls would happen then. But she would keep away from emails during weekends.
It is also important to have an understanding with the spouse and share the household responsibilities. We must also find support wherever we can.
On dealing with a tough work environment
Sometimes we may be surrounded by people who are not working in the true spirit of cooperation. Or we may have a tough manager. How do we deal with such issues?
Certain things can be addressed through discussion. For example, if the workload is heavy, we could talk to the manager with all the facts. A tough boss who asks the right questions and helps us to stretch ourselves and realize our full potential is a very good situation to be in. But if we are uncomfortable with the values of our manager, say someone who is cutting corners, we should try to move into some other role. If there is too much negativity in the team, it again makes sense to move into a new role.
Coming to team management, while we want our team members to perform at their best, they should not do so at the expense of others. If they do a great job without hurting others, it is fine. But if they are putting others down, our intervention is needed.
On entrepreneurship and risk taking
An entrepreneur is someone who leaps from a mountain and finds a parachute on the way down. We must take the risk and leap. Then only, we can find out the truth. Failure is a badge of honour.
Jeff Bezos has a regret minimization framework. When Bezos was thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, he envisioned himself at 80 years old looking back on his life. What could he do to minimize his chances of living with regrets? He decided that if he tried and failed, he wouldn’t regret it. However, if he didn’t even try, he would most definitely regret his decision. That is how he set up Amazon.
In general, we should try out new things without much hesitation unless they are life threatening.
On journaling
We all learn many lessons in life. It is important to share them with others. Uma likes to do this. She believes that even if a few people benefit, it is very fulfilling. All of us should spend time on reflection. We can choose the forum to spread our message: blog, YouTube, Reels, etc.
