The Light of Other Days

I have a sense of urgency in writing and finishing this article that I have not experienced in earlier ones. I want to complete this one before I start my new assignment in a couple of days. And the reason is simple - I do not want to have my thoughts and emotions at this juncture tainted by my experiences in the new job. I want to diarize my thoughts as of today, so that a few years down the road, I will understand and maybe refresh the motivations and drivers which led me to disrupt my life so immensely. To add to that is also the fact, that I do not know when next I will get the time to pen a few lines and post the same. What follows is a dump of many personal conversations, and contents of my farewell speeches, which to a large extent addressed the questions revolving around my decision to leave my previous employer.

I did mention in my farewell speech in the office on Sep 11th that this was probably the single most difficult decision I have taken in my life. After almost 14 years in an organisation, and especially one so benign, it takes quite a bit of courage and maybe a bit of madness to voluntarily take the leap. Over the last 3 months of my notice period I have vacillated from excitement about the future on one end, to abject fear and disbelief at the other. And as my thoughts have fluctuated, so have my responses to queries raised, about any regrets vis a vis my decision. Some days I would have absolute clarity and conviction about my decision, and on others grave doubts.

As this continued, I gave a lot of thought to these swings, to better understand the underlying factors, and realized that working in any organisation, impacts two very distinct spheres in your life - the personal and the professional. And the consequences of my decision on these two spheres being very different, resulted in my confusion. On the personal front, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would have regrets. To sever the ties and relationships built up over so many years, to walk away from the credibility built up, the knowledge base and the comfort zone within which I functioned would be difficult. To add to that were factors very important to me, like my lunch time exercise routine, the bi-weekly exercise classes, the flexible working hours, the ability to telecommute at will, and very little if no overtime, which would be hard to replace. Also difficult to replicate anywhere else would be the twice a day official tea breaks with the eclectic discussions ranging from cricket to politics, with colleagues who were more like friends, and the feeling of entering the office every morning as if I am stepping into my home away from home. The aforementioned factors, combined with the absence of work related pressure made it into a working utopia. All of these perks and many more would be difficult to wean myself away from.

I was always of the belief that friends were like wine - the good ones were of older vintage. My wife and I have disagreed on this point often over the years. She was always of the view that good friends come into your life at all times, and there is no minimum time commitment that forges a relationship. There is no de-minimus period required to grow the bonds of friendship. Reflecting now on the friends that I have acquired in the last few years, I know that I was completely wrong. In the last few years I have been privileged enough to have developed relationships that I would hope to nurture well into the future. And it is not only the depth of these friendships, but also the quantum that surprises me. To have touched so many people and to be touched by so many back is no small feat. The affection and support extended to me has been overwhelming, and having basked in them in the last few days, reminds me of the old Julie Andrews song - somewhere in my youth or childhood; I must have done something good - to deserve the same.

So from a personal point of view, taking the above into consideration, it was pretty obvious that I would have grave doubts about my decision to move on.

Then of course there is the professional sphere, the more I think of which, makes me realize that I should have walked away a long time ago. I had been treading my way towards a professional dead-end for a long time, and continued to do so despite knowing this. There is no one to blame but myself. My subconscious decision earlier on, and a very conscious one now, to stay on in Dubai, which is home to me and my family, has cost me dear in terms of career. Mobility and a varied geographic experience are highly valued (rightfully so) commodities in a multinational organisation, and having neither, does put a brake on ones progression. There was always the option to coast along, to carry on doing non-jobs till I decided what else I would like to do. But the problem with that is that though one can reconcile one’s self to career suicide, what becomes difficult to accept, as time goes along, is the feeling of becoming irrelevant. As newer and younger talent comes along, you start to be perceived as a has-been, a unique entity, more to be tolerated and endured rather than respected. You become the veteran, the old timer, the keeper of corporate trivia. You are seen as a repository of information, to be accessed at will. As the fount of historical information, it becomes convenient to direct every question at you, and your own questions, more often than not, are also left to you.

As I tried to plot my (corporate) life ahead, I foresaw only a graveyard of my career in the future. I saw a long sequence of uninteresting, tedious and unchallenging roles taking me all the way to oblivion. Retirement would also be a pipedream as the company’s patience with my ilk would get thinner by the day. Retirement is not a feasible option anymore, it is an anachronism in this day and age, and the number of people who will be able to enjoy that luxury is dwindling by the day.

Organizational changes over the last few years have made it almost impossible to envision interesting jobs in the future. Outsourcing of IT, Finance and HR jobs, frequent business restructures, cutbacks, disposal of assets and facilities, increases in specialist roles and silos within functions, all now converge towards tedium. Upcoming jobs are attractive to a certain type of personality, but not to professionals who cut their teeth in jobs that demanded a wide variety of experience and skill sets. Senior management quite vehemently deny staff’s pushback that in the new world their jobs will be narrower in scope and content and hence uninteresting. In point of fact their continuous propaganda about a future with very challenging and interesting roles only heightens the uneasiness in the proletariat. Personally, I have found it increasingly difficult to identify any roles that would whet my appetite, and keep me motivated.

It is quite ironical that an organisation that on one hand empowers its people so much on the personal front, can on the other hand makes it so difficult for them to get on with their work. Employees are allowed to keep their own timings, their expenses claims are self approved, granting of leave is unfettered, and no expense is spared to tackle any work related stress. But to get work done, the employee has to jump through all sorts of hoops and hurdles. Consensus building and convening meetings to take even minor decisions are the order of the day, and to implement a pragmatic solution involves getting buy-in from a huge multiplicity of stakeholders. Systemic incompetence and ineptitude are masked by a proliferation of specialists whose assent is required to make fundamental and basic decisions. Business urgencies are shrugged off, by citing other priorities, and if one is more insistent in asking for a decision, then one gets mired in a host of queries and clarifications to get the approval, thereby delaying the process anyway. Job authorities over the years have been whittled down, and with the break-up of the organisation into global business divisions and within those divisions into separate units, responsibilities are diminished in tandem. Just as an example within my business, to take a simple decision would require the assent of 4 separate Finance Managers, not counting my own line.

The focus on processes rather than on objectives, the lack of accountability, the creation of complexities to hide inefficiencies, make a great organisation particularly vulnerable. It was time for me to stop the petty griping, to stem the involuntary sarcasm at every new initiative, and more worryingly to cut off the negative impact of any corrosive influence on newer staff members. It was time for me to vote with my feet. It was time to leave with dignity rather than wait to get pushed out without grace.