And Vijay Says…

This is perhaps the most common question I get asked by people in their early years in the workforce. I have asked some version of this to my seniors too when I was starting out.

Someone asked me this today morning and I figured maybe it’s a good idea to put this into a post.

Fair warning – My answer might not be the most helpful 🙂

And that answer is : Nothing !

I of course learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way . But looking back – I highly doubt my younger self would have acknowledged or acted upon any of those things because it would have been so counter intuitive, and I would have fought it will my energy 🙂

That’s the honest truth in my case. I am not saying young people today can’t learn those things and put them to good use. But when I discuss these things with them – my default expectation is just that they listen to my words and think about it. I have no expectations that they will follow through. I actually think it’s better that each person collect information and then choose what to do themselves, and not just randomly accept what worked for someone else will work for them too.

With all that said – here are a half dozen things that might have helped me if I realized sooner

1. Make peace with the role of luck in life. There are many people I have worked with who had better skills than I did – but didn’t get the opportunities I got. There are also a few who got much better opportunities than I did who I didn’t think were smarter than me – and they advanced farther than I did. It took me some time to make peace with that – and I learned to not let it affect me.

2. Sucking up is not a sustainable career strategy. It does work from time to time – but eventually you get exposed for your lack of ability and will take the fall. Corollary – don’t assume that someone got their break by sucking up all the time. Most of the time we don’t have enough information to know why they succeeded and just use “they must have sucked up” as an excuse to not think of where we need to improve.

3. I don’t have the time for that is not a real excuse . We will always find time to do things we love. I loved to sleep 8 hours till I realized I enjoyed training my dog. I didn’t feel bad when I slept an hour or two late because I enjoyed spending that extra time with my dog. We also find ways to not do things we don’t find interesting – even if they are important like say working out , or up-skilling at work.

4. If no one heard it – that there didn’t fall in the forest. This was perhaps the hardest lesson for me to learn. I always believed that working hard and delivering results is all it took. People above you are busy and have a lot to think about. They won’t always know what you are good at or what you have accomplished if you don’t tell them. The nuance is that if you over do the “look – I am awesome” thing, it will backfire badly too. Finding that right balance – is key. Personally I still think understating works better than going overboard – but it all depends on the context.

5. There are many roads to success – but not a lot of roadmaps. It’s easier to think linearly and narrowly, and often get upset when we miss a near term milestone we had so carefully planned. I was quite convinced that definition of success for me was to progress in a technical career path. I did that quite well – and then my mentors nudged me to try sales and management and so on. I didn’t have to sacrifice being an engineer to become a good GM. First ten years out of college – I was convinced that all sellers were liars and crooks. I didn’t realize how wrong I was till I took on a sales target and figured out you don’t have to lie to sell something. The problem with multiple roads is that you won’t realize it in time unless you have good mentors who can help you think through your options. One more thing along these lines – your definition of success will change over time given most of us tend to under estimate what we can accomplish in the long term.

6. Qualify, Compromise and replan as needed . Younger me had the complete opposite idea – I just wanted to double down on everything I set my mind to. And I have a very rigid idea of what I wanted to accomplish with specific timelines. I also got hugely frustrated when it didn’t pan out like I wanted. Eventually I learned that it’s a lot easier if I critically qualify everything before I decide to double down. I also learned that decisions are always based on imperfect information available at a point in time – so use some principled compromises (which means decide upfront what will make you give up) and be ready to pivot (or stop) when needed. Picking the right battles to fight is something I still haven’t quite mastered – but I am a lot better at it today than when I started.

The founder of TCS – F.C Kohli – and I were once in an elevator at the Air INDIA building in Mumbai in 1999. It was just the two of us. I was a new trainee and he was the Deputy Chairman. He asked me some question along the lines of “How are you doing son?” and all I can remember is fumbling to answer him and my mind going empty. He smiled, wished me a good day and walked off the elevator and it took me another ten minutes to get my bearings right 🙂

It is not that I was low on confidence generally. Throughout my MBA – just before joining TCS – I used to challenge my professors and could hold my own in fierce debates. I had no difficulties engaging with other TCS leaders that I had met during my training. But when an imposing senior leader greeted me – I didn’t know what to do.

I had a similar fumble a decade later when I made my first ever presentation in front of a CEO – my role being an expert consultant. My boss at the time – John Leffler ( the guy standing with me in the photo above) realised the problem in a second and swiftly intervened and saved the day. Again – I had no issues dealing with the CIO of that company or the assorted VPs in the business till that time. I got a lot of coaching from my boss and other Partners after that incident and I got better.

I have seen this happen first hand when I meet with my junior colleagues – some of them totally freeze. Today morning one of them reached out to me and asked for some tips on how they can do better. I figured it might be helpful to jot down my thoughts here.

1. Know what’s different with senior executives compared to other managers in the hierarchy

They are only human like the rest of us – but they generally have limited time. They generally can zoom in and out of issues – but they might not know the specifics of any given issue like you do. Their job is to make a few highly impactful decisions – not hundreds of less impactful decisions. They are very good at prioritising what they work on – so that they have the time and energy to solve the big problems. When they look impatient – it is usually because they do not share the same context as you do. There is a high chance that they are smart enough to see the problem and the solutions quickly – but you will be doing them a favour if they don’t have to guess and you give them solutions to choose from and can answer their questions.

2. Answer questions directly to win their trust

What do you expect the sales to be this quarter? A great answer is X million dollars plus or minus 5% and waiting for them to ask what will drive the plus or minus. They know a lot of variables are at play and they expect you to abstract it away and give them a net-net answer. A useless – though totally accurate answer – would be “it depends on a lot of factors”. It is totally fine to highlight what could cause a big swing by saying something like “XYZ client might get a new CFO and that could slow down approvals and that could reduce our sales by 40%”.

3. Listen carefully, observe body language and clarify the questions before answering

You don’t need to do most of the talking in most meetings. Listen to understand and take cues from their tone, their facial expression and so on before you answer. Don’t feel compelled to answer quickly if you need thinking time – you can buy time by asking follow on questions, or you can tell them that you need time to find an answer and then give them a commitment on when you will respond and get their concurrence. Thoughtful and high quality answers are what helps the exec. Sometimes they need a good enough answer – if that’s the case, you have to give them an answer and put the minimum caveats in place. Don’t make up an answer – it’s always better to not mislead them.

4. Get to know them and find some common ground

Study their past communications – any speeches, interviews etc . Talk to people who know them more than you do. I have always found it a good practice to get to know their admins and chiefs of staff personally. Once you know a bit about their style and ways of working – you can tailor your conversation much more effectively. This is not always possible – but when it’s possible, not making use of it is inexcusable. Most human beings have something in common with you – those are great conversation starters and help build trust.

5. Appear confident

Remember that on any specific issue you are going to discuss – there is a good chance that you know the details way more than the exec does. In fact the executive expects you to be the expert! So go into the conversation with that confidence. Set the context very briefly and ask if they have different expectations than the one you think. The chance of blanking out your mind is the highest when you start the talk. So it might be a good idea to practice the opening part a few times . A solid start will generally create enough momentum to carry you through successfully

6. Build the relationship naturally

Communication with execs gets a lot easier and more effective once you know them. Don’t think of those meetings as transactions – use them to build a relationship. Such a great relationship with senior leaders is key to your own career success. The key is to let it evolve naturally without forcing it. It’s totally fair game to ask an exec for time to get introduced – most leaders love hearing from their team. You may not get a meeting right away, but there is a high chance you will get it if you stay patient and persistent.

An interesting side effect of me working as a consulting leader in financial services domain is that a lot of interesting fundamental questions get thrown my way from friends and family on how the amazing “never ending” bull market suddenly turned into reverse gear , and if there were things we could have done earlier to ease the pain.

Let me share a few – strictly personal – thoughts.

Role of government

When crisis happens – we only get to see the Fed Reserve in action as the face of the government. Fed only can help with monetary policy and regulation . It can lower interest rates to boost the economy – but it can’t force anyone to spend it in value adding ways. That needs fiscal ( and other) policies to work side by side, which the Fed cannot influence directly . For example – if we needed to invest in infra, we could have done a lot more when money was cheap compared to now. Political division doesn’t let fiscal/education/health etc policy to evolve fast enough to make it timely and provide cushion for future shocks.

Fed itself is caught in a weird dilemma now – their charter is to ensure full employment and stable prices. But the fight for taming inflation unfortunately will need at least temporary unemployment to happen before they can ease off on interest rate hikes . And just when tightening was peaking, they now have to put more money into the banking system to ease some pressure. It’s a very hard place that they are stuck in. They have to choose the lesser evil at every turn!

Role of corporations

When money was cheap – a lot of corporations just used it to buy back shares and pay dividends and so on. Plenty of existing assets changed hands too via M&A. All of those are not bad moves in themselves – but it meant they couldn’t find a way to invest in enough new products/assets/services with a better ROI. In a capitalist economy – economic incentives will drive exactly what these companies did. Are we actually as innovative as we think we are? I hope we are – and I hope the last decade was more an exception than the rule.

Role of financial services institutions and markets

A lot of innovation does happen in FS . Just look at the kind of financial instruments that were invented and sold in the last two decades – they are incredibly complex and sophisticated . But remember – financial services are enablers of the real economy but they are NOT the real economy themselves. The health of the capital markets should be a reflection of the underlying economy – but in reality, it’s flipped the other way around. We measure the health of real economy now by watching how the capital markets function instead! It’s set up backwards !

Cheap money for a decade or more has made risk taking look easy . Remember the “taper tantrums” that the markets threw when Fed tried to say that they want to rein in interest rates just a little over a period of time? Fed had to back off quickly when market got annoyed .

Markets and corporations both have to gain some balance about the fundamentals of real business and stop using stock price as the primary measure of success. Otherwise we will never get out of the high highs and low lows .

Our role as consumers

Our own pension and 401K are all connected to how well the markets perform. We collectively carry a lot of credit card debt, and net worth is largely our primary home for many of us . So we are all vested in having a perpetual bull market and low interest rates, irrespective of the side effects.

We are not all equally well educated on the financial system though – including basic skills in personal budgeting. While we are a sharply divided country ideologically on political lines – we don’t largely involve ourselves in actual politics like standing for elections ourselves or serving in civic bodies etc. If we don’t plan to actively involve ourselves in politics – the next best thing to do is to learn enough to elect the best possible representatives to watch out for us. The best advice I got as a young man was from Dr Kevin who taught me financial management in business school . He told me “All you need to do is to try and live under your means and invest for the long term”. A quarter century later – I can’t think of better advice to give my daughter .