Managing Fast Growth

This is the story of two friends, Amit and Vaidehi. Both are friends, work in a technology company, and are at crossroads in their career. Amit is in his mid 40s while Vaidehi is in her early 30s. Both are bright, brilliant and achievers in their respective careers.

8 years ago, Vaidehi was graduating from B-School and was eagerly waiting for the campus placement process to begin. A reputed technology company was scheduled to visit on Day Zero, and Amit was part of the recruitment team. That is the first time when both faced each other. After a grueling interview, Vaidehi got selected and joined the company.

Vaidehi was bright and brilliant and in due course of work was also a super achiever. At the end of the first year of her career, Vaidehi stood apart from the rest of her batch and was a hot candidate for promotion. Amit was part of the committee which voted on promotions. Vaidehi’s candidature was solid and there were no grounds to deny her the same.

Amit was very fond of Vaidehi. He had personally selected her from campus and through the rest of the year, continued to groom her. He had a habit of keeping a tab on candidates having a bright potential. The information that he had gathered on Vaidehi in the last one year impressed him. He silently patted himself on the back for having unearthed a raw diamond.

However sitting on the committee for promotions, Amit was worried and not convinced about Vaidehi’s candidature. He had absolutely no doubt about her promotion, or whether she deserved it. 

His only concern was whether success was coming too fast for her. He wanted to test how she would deal with the dejection of not getting a promotion. Amit argued vehemently opposing Vaidehi’s promotion, but was outvoted. The management said, that if they did not promote Vaidehi, she would leave and the organization would lose a top talent. Fear was an integral part of the promotion decision.

Amit came out of the meeting with mixed feelings. While on one hand he was happy about his protégé’s success, he was concerned whether she had the maturity to handle success.

Over the years Vaidehi's career grew from strength to strength. However the profile of her work changed. While she had started her career as an individual contributor, with a couple of promotions, she had moved to managing a team. As she got promoted from an analyst to an associate and later to a Vice President in a short span of 8 years, she had moved from actually doing work to managing teams and stakeholders. A typical day would begin with a few meetings, followed by few more meetings, followed by conference calls with international stakeholders, followed by a few more review meetings with her team.

On the other hand, Amit being fairly senior, had become an expert at playing the meeting game. One day he wondered, whether he was doing any work himself or just conducting meetings. Meetings for leading cross functional projects, meetings for review with clients, internal strategy meetings, review meetings with teams. He convinced himself that he was a leader and his leadership skills were his USP.

But today, 8 years later, both found themselves at crossroads. Being highly successful, they were very well paid. This also ensured that they were ‘high cost’ resources. While they were proud of their success and where they had reached in their life, they did not realize that fast growth was a curse in 

itself.

Just yesterday, the company had announced that due to shrinking business and rising costs, the firm was offering a Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) to AVPs, VP and Directors. Suddenly the rug of comfort was being pulled from under their feet.

This announcement had thrown the cat among the pigeons. Everyone who was in these ranks were wondering whether they would be on the ‘hit’ list. Amit was more or less convinced that he was. Vaidehi was not sure, and felt that she would ride out the storm.

Amit was now wondering, whether at the age of 45, having the brand of being a VRS beneficiary, in short a sophisticated name of being sacked, he would get a job. He wondered, how he would pay his EMIs. The total EMIs came to more than 1 lakh rupees a month, which consisted instalments for housing loan, a brand new IPhone he had purchased for his wife, and the new BMW which he had bought 24 months ago. He was also wondering, how he would break the news to his family and whether they would adjust to the reduced standard of living.

Vaidehi, had a different concern. Being single, she had splurged most of her income on partying, shopping and vacations, and hadn’t saved much. She wondered about the longevity of her working life. She felt that she had a high probability of surviving this round, but wondered whether there would be another round of VRS five years later and whether she would survive the same.

What was Amit and Vaidehi’s mistake? Over the years, both had developed strong leadership skills. There would be so many people with experience having leadership skills competing for senior management jobs which are anyway in short supply. Organisations are like pyramids. There is very little room at the top and the danger of falling off is very real.

I am sure there are many Amits and Vaidehis around at the workplace. How do they avert this danger? One of the ways is to develop strong functional skills. As we grow in an organization, we lose touch with ground level functional skills and develop leadership skills. While leadership skills are good, they are really not differentiators. Leadership skills coupled with strong functional knowledge is going to stand you in good stead and will elongate your career.

Measure your success, not only by your promotions and money, but also by what domain skills you are sharpening. If you are not sharpening any domain skills, you are living in a bubble which will eventually burst.

Remember, Sachin Tendulkar was not a great leader – as a matter of fact he realized very early that captaincy was not for him. His longevity was a function of his domain skills. To survive in the team, your leadership skills need to be backed by strong functional skills.

(The above is a fictional piece written in response to an IT Majors announcement of VRS for its AVPs, VPs and Directors. Any relation to any person is purely conincidental)