When steel is heated in a forge
and beaten into shape, it becomes stronger. When faced with setbacks, if you draw
the right lessons and move forward, you are bound to achieve success. Radhika Gupta,
the current MD & CEO of Edelweiss AMC,
had more than her share of drawbacks in life, but bounce back she did and she happily shares her experiences, mostly professional and a few personal,
through her newly released book Limitless.
Born in Pakistan when her father,
a career diplomat, was posted there, Gupta grew up in a variety of countries,
ranging from Nigeria to Italy, until she went to college at hyper-competitive Upenn.
In 2005, when she was just twenty, Gupta took to heart seven consecutive
rejections from consulting firms during campus placements at UPenn and tried to
commit suicide by jumping off from the 19th floor of a building. Luckily for us readers, she did not succeed
though the reasons aren’t fully spelt out. She also drew the right lessons from
her desperate action and went on to become a business leader and an inspiration
for many across the world.
Accept difficult feedback
gracefully, Gupta tells us, citing a number of examples of feedback that she
did not initially accept or was happy with, but which added value to her
professional life once she was able to gracefully accept them.
Take risks, but do so sensibly.
Gupta refers to Dr Arokiaswamy Velumani’s example to buttress this point. Dr
Velumani, the founder and MD of Thyrocare, one of India’s largest diagnostics
companies, went from having just ₹500 in his pocket to seeing his idea develop
into a public listed company with crore market cap in excess of a RS. 5,000. Dr
Velumani was able to throw everything he had into his venture, comforted by the
fact that his wife could get a reasonably well paying job easily, if his
venture flopped.
It is important to get started. Take small steps if needed,
but do get started. This one resonated with me.
What’s the best thing someone who
is just graduating from college or is in the early years of their career,
especially women, can do? They ought to ask for opportunities, a task which is
not very easy to undertake when one suffers from lack of confidence However, if
you don’t ask, you usually don’t get. What’s the worst that can happen if you
ask for an opportunity? When Gupta started her corporate career, a family
friend told her that those who speak up always get more than those who stay
silent. There are no points for being shy. Those who ask end up getting the
bigger promotions, the raises, the better projects, because they keep
vocalizing their needs. Gupta tells us that this advice made sense only many
years later, but she swears by it now.
Change is always constant. One
has to accept it and take it in one’s stride. Gupta quotes lyricist Javed
Akhtar who used the ‘my mother’s cooking is better than my wife’s’ dialogue at
the Jashn-e-Rekhta Urdu festival in 2017, to explain this. ‘Why does every man,
when he gets married, tell his wife, you make good dal, but not quite as good
as what my mother made? Has the quality of dal in India just deteriorated over
1,000 years?’ It hasn’t! We need to accept today’s dal – one slightly different
from the one we grew up with – as our reality and move forward.
Let go of the past. Gupta tells
us that she always tells new employees at Edelweiss Mutual Fund that if they
want to have a chance at succeeding in their new organisation, they have to
embrace it and let go of where they came from. One is certain to face problems after
a job change and it is so tempting to look back to one’s past organisation with
nostalgia, but if the rose tinted glasses are taken off, chances are there was
no shortage of problems at the previous organisation either. If one were to
take an honest count, one will find that there is no shortage of problems
anywhere. A guaranteed way to fail at a new organisation is to focus on the
problems in the new environment and compare them to the positives of the past.
Be adaptable. Charles Darwin
theorised that the most important factor for survival is neither size, nor
intelligence, nor strength. It is adaptability. Gupta fully agrees with Darwin.
Gupta uses the example of the Kakapo to buttress her point. Honestly, I hadn’t
even heard of the Kakapo until I read Limitless. Gupta mentions Kunal Bahl, the
co-founder of e-commerce giant Snapdeal, as an example of a person who built a
successful business by adapting and pivoting, based on feedback.
Gupta firmly believes that the
job market is fair and very little arbitrage exists in it in the long term.
In today’s information-rich world, one gets paid what one deserves. If you feel you are getting a lot less than
someone else doing the same job, the most likely conclusion is that that
someone else has a lot more experience doing that job in a larger organisation
with a much larger profit and loss statement. I was reminded of the stock
market, though Gupta doesn’t use this comparison and I am not sure if this
would be a good comparison, since the job market doesn’t have to content with
insider trading, for starters.
Everyone has his or her
imperfections and these imperfections that set you apart from your peers and
make you what you are. Gupta repeats the story of the ugly duckling, based on
the fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen, who, after being teased and
taunted by fellow ducklings, decides to throw himself at a flock of swans,
assuming he will be killed. He forgets that he has grown up and matured into a
beautiful swan and is finally welcomed by his fellow swans. Gupta wishes for a
new version of this story, one where the duckling owns his imperfections, where
he understands that it’s his imperfections that set him apart from his peers
and make him who he is, where his happiness does not depend on becoming a swan.
Who defines what ‘ugly’ is anyway? Gupta wonders aloud and I found myself
nodding my head. ‘Self-confidence comes from accepting yourself, rejections
and imperfections included’ Gupta advises.
The ability to reach out for help
and to confide one’s problems in others is an important life-saving skill,
something Gupta did not always have, but had to develop over a period of time. Gupta
divulges a very personal story, one very traumatic, that took place just after
she started working at Edelweiss. Either on account of her insecurities or the
fear of judgement, she felt trapped. Though she had an incredibly kind team and
an incredibly kind boss, she was unable to be honest and reach out to them
during one of the toughest moments of her life. I’d rather not divulge the
actual event in this review. Do please read this excellent book to find out for
yourself. Five years later, an internal restructuring impacted the financials
of Gupta’s division and Gupta just couldn’t wrap her head around the situation.
Finally, she forced herself to ask for help from three very senior members of
her team in sales, strategy and marketing. The end result? Gupta found herself
out of the morass pretty quickly.
I’m going to wrap up this review,
lest this become a summary of the book. Gupta has a lot of advice on investing
in education, relationships, finding a mentor(s), work-life balance etc., all
of which made a lot of sense to me. Do please read and find out for yourself.
They say that corporate organisations are glass pyramids, designed to make people slip off the smooth sides, as they gain experience and grow older. Despite all the risks and challenges that lurk ahead, hundreds of thousands of men and women pursue an education, usually an MBA, that sets them on course for a corporate career and then jump into the corporate well quite happily. If anyone falls of the pyramid, it is usually on account of an inadvertent slip-up in tactics or a defect in long term strategy. Limitless is a treasure trove of advice for all career-minded and ambitious folks and will definitely help all readers who imbibe its wisdom to avoid many of the pitfalls that befall many as they progress in their careers. Gupta writes in simple English, that is classy, easy to read and doesn’t force the reader to ponder over the language at the cost of her narrative. I highly recommend this book.
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