24

Some Final Words

24.1 Introduction

In this final chapter, we would like to touch upon a few topics that we feel are absolutely important and represent the essence of this book. These topics are not so much about sharpening skills and developing competencies but rather concern things like self-actualization, ethics, values and moral principles, which make your career very fulfilling from a personal point of view. Although a fresh recruit like you may feel that these topics are not directly applicable to you—at least not right now—we strongly urge you to spend a few minutes and read up this chapter to get a perspective on this thing called your career and its relationship to some of the other big things in your life.

24.2 Aim for Personal Excellence in the Workplace

Personal excellence in the workplace is basically professionalism (which we have discussed in Chapter 9) at its very best. It is an ultimate career goal that every professional wants to achieve, where you have firmly established yourself not only in the eyes of your colleagues and your organization but also in the industry and beyond. You have carved a special place for yourself as an ultimate expert, a distinction that very few of your colleagues can even match. And when you reach this point, your ultimate personal need—often referred to by psychologists as the ‘need for self-actualization’ starts getting fulfilled. You have reached a peak that is far above the ordinary and you have come to be regarded as a well-respected brand name. You are consulted by the upper management on a lot of things, and in due course, you become a part of that upper management.

Such personal excellence does not happen automatically, not even if you have been working for 20 years. It is a result of years and years of focused efforts and excruciating hard work. It is the coming together of a lot of concepts that we have already put forth in this book. As we go through our discussion on personal excellence, try to identify and recognize these various concepts from our previous chapters.

• Personal excellence is a matter of attitude—cultivate a burning desire to excel in what you do: Personal excellence starts with a good attitude. Pride in your work, your organization and yourself, a passion that translates into a burning desire to be excellent at work and a willingness to put in the required hard work, day after day. It calls for a good vision and an elaborate strategy in place to achieve personal excellence. These are the things we have discussed in Chapters 8 and 9 on hard work and professionalism.
• Build on your strengths: Recognize your strengths and build your expertise in those areas and competencies. Your excellence need not be limited to technical areas—it can extend to soft skills and other non-technical skills. Use lifelong learning principles to sharpen and enhance your strengths throughout your career, even if you are already an expert. Techniques like SWOT and Johari Window discussed in Chapters 1 and 14 can give you pointers for these.
• Know the benchmark and what excellence means: Be up to speed on what is going on around you—in particular, be aware of the technological innovations, technical standards and what excellence means as technology evolves. Find out the state of the art and what the different bench marks of excellence are. Be on the top of new developments, new ideas, industry trends and the latest tools and gadgets. Wherever possible, participate in such developments yourself and be a mover and a shaker.
• Keep learning and practicing: The quest for personal excellence is a lifelong affair and you need to upgrade your skills and knowledge periodically throughout your career. This may mean attending classes and workshops and making time for practicing what you have learnt. This calls for extraordinary discipline and a total adherence to your strategy. Understand and practice the steps in lifelong learning discussed in Chapter 14.
• Keep in touch with your peers: Network with others in your organization as well as in the broader industry. Not only does it help you stay abreast with the developments in your domain it also gives you visibility among your peers and can lead to all kinds of collaborative efforts and mentoring. More importantly, such networking will act as a motivator to achieve even more.
• Find new applications and new ways to display your expertise: The more you are able to stretch your knowledge and find newer applications of your expertise, the greater your value becomes. Versatility, adaptability and creative problem solving are all components of personal excellence. Learn how to deploy your personal excellence in the service of others.
• Keep raising the bar all the time. Set new standards and tougher goals: Personal excellence in the workplace is always a work-in-progress. As you keep achieving the goals you set for yourself earlier, you will see that there are newer—and more ambitious—goals appearing in front of you.

As important as personal excellence is, it is important to strike a balance between your professional life and your personal life, which is going to be the topic of our next section.

24.3 Achieve Work–Life Balance

Work–life balance is about achieving equilibrium between your professional life and your personal life and it has become a much talked about subject these days. As a fresh recruit, you can afford to put in more time at work and let others take care of things at your home front. But, with the passage of time—with your getting married and having a family, giving care to elderly relatives—you will have extra demands on your time from your family, just when you are assigned to important projects and leadership roles at work, which too demand your time.

You will have to balance between your work-related needs such as your need for professional achievements and honours, standing among your peers, becoming a part of your organization’s establishment, etc., and your personal needs such as need to be with family and friends, spending quality time with them, enjoyment of life’s pleasures, peace and fulfilment. You swing to one extreme; you will end up as a chronic workaholic with no personal life. Or, you can swing to the other extreme and be only a marginal player in your organization, getting only minor assignments and roles. And even if you are somewhere in the middle, you can end up burning both ends and stress yourself with excessive activities both at home and at work.

So how do you achieve this elusive work–life balance? Here are some points to consider when you try to juggle between your personal and professional lives:

• It is not necessarily ‘equal’ time between work and personal life. It is more like appropriate amount of time.
• Have a vision of where you want to be professionally as well as in personal life. With proper vision, you do not have to ‘juggle’ your family life against your professional life. You can find time for both.
• When you have a conflict between equally important events in your personal and professional lives, make a judgment based on the specifics of the situation. Sometimes, this can be very challenging.
• If you have to miss work for a few days, alert the concerned people well in advance so that they can find a substitute or a ‘work-around’ for the time you will be absent.
• Some of life’s crucial moments, such as your grandfather’s eightieth birthday come only once. Make time for life’s important events like this.
• Prioritize, organize and learn how to say no. (See Chapters 7 and 19.) Only when you learn to say ‘no’ to certain things, will you really be able to achieve your bigger goals towards excellence.
• Have a healthy personal life. Develop hobbies, recreational activities, contacts and friendships outside work. Have a spiritual component such as religion, social work and so on to complement your professional life.
• Even though things like health issues, burnout, retirement, etc., are far from your thoughts now, at least be aware of some aspects of such issues. Do not wait till your doctor advises you to get a perspective. It takes time to settle into hobbies, interests and so on. So start soon!
• Be on top of things and judge often whether you are overdoing work or personal life. Be a fair judge.
• Build in some flexibility. Allow time for spontaneous activities—not just in personal time—but also at work. Do not plan for every minute of your day.
• Review often whether you are indulging in time-wasting or energy-sapping activities at work as well as off work. Can you eliminate such things in future?
• Do not compromise your basic values—this is the topic for the next section.

24.4 Do Not Compromise Your Personal Integrity

Personal integrity is a term that describes your moral character. It is about how consistently and uncompromisingly you stick to a set of moral and ethical principles, how you stand up for those values and code of conduct, even when you are going to face heavy pressure and strong temptations. It includes qualities such as being honest with yourself and others, living a life that is based on values, keeping one’s words, being trustworthy, being able to make good moral judgments, not trying to cheat or abuse others or the system and not misuse the power and the freedom vested in you and so on.

Personal integrity comes into play not only in your personal life, but also in your behaviour at work. Given that your workplace is where so many people spend so much of their time, use so many resources of your organization and are entrusted with so much power and authority, a certain amount of breakdown in personal integrity in some people is to be expected. Some of the common violations of personal integrity in the workplace include:

• Wasting or stealing your organization’s material resources.
• Stealing your organization’s time; showing up late for work and sneaking out of work early; taking too many breaks; abusing ‘work from home’ policy, etc.
• Bad mouthing your organization, bosses and colleagues to outsiders.
• Not adhering to privacy policies. Leaking privileged information.
• Conflict of interest.
• Lying, especially to superiors, lying on reports, reimbursable expenses, etc.
• Showing partiality in treatment of other employees.

Of course, these days when everyone works long hours, new definitions of what is meant by ‘stealing time’ are to be applied. Organizations are keenly aware of such changes that are taking place in the modern workplace. Organizations also vary greatly in how they implement their policies and rules and in their tolerance and response to ethics violations. The more flagrant, the more repeated and the more serious the violations are, the greater the chances of overseeing administrative departments stepping in and taking action. But, for most parts, no one will shadow you and track your every move. You are expected to act as your own policeman and follow the path of personal integrity.

Ethics violations do not pertain just to the average worker in an organization. They apply at all levels. These include crimes such as leaking of privileged information, insider trading of company stocks, cooking accounts, price fixing, business fraud and bribery, etc. Ethics violation can blow into mega disasters and can not only destroy careers but can sometimes even bring down entire organizations. Several governmental watchdog agencies have been set up just to track and prosecute such large scale misdeeds. Business world out there can be very stressful. But you should have the moral conviction to not take any short cuts or indulge in any ill-advised unethical practices.

And what should you do if you see unethical and illegal behaviour around you in the workplace? Different people have different reactions and responses to such events, ranging from ‘not doing anything’ (and hoping that one day the violators will be caught) to ‘whistleblowing’ (alerting the relevant authorities and departments about the illegal activities) to choosing to quit their jobs and change organizations. Whatever may be your choice, we want you to have a strong moral backbone and a high degree of personal integrity and not be a party to any nefarious activities. Remember that your workplace is so full of ethical and legitimate opportunities that you do not need to compromise on your values to get ahead.

24.5 Give Back to the Society

The final topic we want to present is about social responsibility and giving back to the society. India, for all its rapid economic strides in the last few decades, still is home to a lot of people who lack the opportunities that many of us have had. It calls for private efforts to supplement the steps taken by the government to address the problems of such people.

A few years down the road—after you have achieved all kinds of success in your career and taken care of your family financially—do think about the underprivileged and extend a helping hand so that they can hope to avail the same opportunities that you were able to use. There are many governmental and non-governmental agencies that do a great job on various fronts to alleviate poverty—such as making education, infrastructure, food, health care available to the poor. You have so many choices on how exactly you can give back to the society that you should be able to find one that is closest to your heart.

Consider it your duty and responsibility to help uplift those who need extra help. We do not have to tell you about the joy that comes out of sharing your good fortunes with the less fortunate. Catalyse the social change and lead them out of poverty.

24.6 In Summary

Your career is one of the most important aspects of your life. It not only gives you identity but also gives you opportunities to realize your dreams and goals. It provides you with ample rewards, both tangible rewards as well as the mental satisfaction of having achieved things. But mainly, it has made you a very important and useful member of the larger society. Your attitude, skills and achievements will stand as examples for others to emulate.

But a successful career does not come overnight. Nor does it come organically, without putting in efforts. We have outlined many, many components of a successful professional and described the various steps you need to take to get there. It may seem like a lot of work—and indeed it is a lot of work. A good career does not just happen. However, as you start taking those steps, you will notice your progress and you will not turn back.

Remember the quote from General Colin L. Powell with which we started this book:

‘Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.’

We wish you all the best in your career!