Mid-career Crisis: Why Some Sail through while Others Don't

By Partha Sarathi Basu

Remember your placement season? There might have been friends you graduated with. You got more or less the same marks, and joined the same organization as trainees. Now, mid-career, you wonder why some of them have powered ahead while the rest are stuck with old responsibilities and designations. You cannot understand what it is that those who continue to grow are doing differently, what it is that helps them reach the top while others fall behind. Superior knowledge, sharper skills, or just sheer luck? Our mid-career is characterized by several questions that start bothering us: Should we stay put and grow, or quit and move to a better-paying, bigger profile? Are we leaders or followers? Should we continue drawing salaries or build our dream start-ups? Shaken by confusion, the self-confidence of our early years changes into misery--and, eventually, a crisis. In Mid-career Crisis, Partha Basu draws upon years of leadership experience in the corporate world, and offers life stories and professional insights. If you are just starting your career, this book will help you avoid common mistakes and prepare you for your mid-career crisis--because face one you will. And if you are already in one, it will show you the way out before it's too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Collins
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351364931

Partha Sarathi Basu

Partha Sarathi Basu is a management professional based in the Netherlands, working as the Global Director for Finance Operations at AkzoNobel NV. Over the past twenty-four years, he has worked in leadership positions in a number of companies, including Coca-Cola, Whirlpool, IFB Group, Tata Group and Spicejet.He is the author of three previous books, including the highly acclaimed Make It or Break It, writt en for young professionals on the transition from the campus to a corporate set-up. He is a guest lecturer in management institutes and contributes articles in leading magazines. He is a keen observer of human behaviour, and his books are based on his experience in the corporate world.

Book preview

Preface

Paperboat.jpg

Why do only a few people reach the top while others fall behind after a good progression in the first few years of their careers? Why do people progress at a different pace in their mid-career when, during the first few years, most of them moved at the same speed? Are professionals who continue to grow in their careers different from the rest? Do they possess superior knowledge, sharper leadership skills or better educational qualifications? If that’s the case, why isn’t the top of the organizational pyramid always occupied by people who excelled in their studies? Or is it sheer luck that helps some sail through at work while others start experiencing a plateau as they reach their mid-career?

Many such questions bothered me once I began my career. I looked to my seniors and peers for help, but I was not able to find the right answer or understand the core issue until I reached my mid-career and started losing out to my colleagues.

It was a stage in my career and my life when I felt I was going through a sense of Misery (M); I was Confused (C); and that caused many Changes (C) in me. Thus I learnt the meaning of Mid-career Crisis (MCC) the hard way.

I am talking about a time when I was promoted as the planner for the India market of a global fast-moving consumer goods company (FMCG) company. I had been in the corporate world for about thirteen years and had spent time in three companies, performing multiple functions in different industries. Thus, I was a professional with a multi-industry, multi-functional experience. In my mind, I was all set to leap ahead in my career.

When I compared myself to my friends and colleagues, I could safely state that while I might not be ahead of all my contemporaries, no one could tell me I was a laggard and had not progressed well in my career. In my own eyes, I was doing well.

In terms of my personal life, I had nothing much to complain about. I had an understanding, friendly wife and two lovely little children. Touch wood, I had a happy family.

Then why was I so unhappy? Why did I feel miserable all the time?

It seemed as if nothing was going right for me. I was confused and irritated. My life was nothing but chaotic and I was convinced that I was in a big mess. I spent many hours introspecting and spoke to my friends, seniors, peers and also my juniors. Against my firm beliefs, I visited an astrologer, hoping that he could tell me about my future.

Everyone heard me out; they had no option but to listen to me since I was adamant to tell them my story. I wanted to convey how unhappy I was with my life and career. In the end, almost everyone sang the same tune and reassured me that ‘all will be well’. They said life was not always a bed of roses and I needed to be ready for the thorns as well.

Though their words provided me temporary solace, in reality, nothing changed. I continued to feel what I had felt before speaking to them. If anything, I was more miserable. It got worse with every passing day. But where was the problem? What else was I looking for? Frankly, I did not have an answer and nor did the wise men, women or the astrologer whom I had met in those few weeks.

However, I was determined not to leave my suffering unattended. During our conversations, my seniors, peers and juniors told me interesting events and stories. I realized that I was not alone and almost everyone went through this phase. But while some people came out and kept growing, others failed to sail through. These stories gave me many insights into how winners conducted themselves at this stage of their careers. These stories shattered many myths that I used to believe in. Identifying those myths and understanding their effects helped me overcome my MCC.

As I started penning down my thoughts about mid-career crisis (MCC), I wondered whose story this was. Was it mine, yours or theirs? Over time, I realized that it was not the story of an individual, and it was actually our story.

I must start this book by explaining why I think it is our story.

This book is about each of us who has passed through this phase, is currently going through it or will go through it some day. It is about the past, the present and the future. In one life or one career, it is impossible to experience everything that I will narrate in the following pages. I sincerely hope no single person has to experience all that I will be talking about. If all that happens to one individual, I am sure he or she will go mad, lose their job or lose the zeal to overcome the MCC.

We all grow up hearing stories from our parents and grandparents. To date, I remember many of those stories fondly. I believe that people don’t remember the wisdom that management or self-help books shower on us. If they remember something, it is the stories they can learn from. Thus, each topic that I have covered in this book has a related story.

All these stories are near approximations of real-life stories—some experienced by me, some by my colleagues and friends, and some told to me. But in my mind, I tried to experience all of them and will present them to you at times as a protagonist, at times as a consultant, at times as the supervisor, at times as a peer, at times as a subordinate and at times as just a listener. You will find many characters who are familiar to you. If you can relate to them, put a face to them and learn from their experiences, I will be happy to think that my efforts were worth the while.

Don’t think that if you read this book, all your MCC problems will be resolved. This book is not a readymade recipe to overcome MCC. The idea is to let you know the concerns, illustrate them through a story and make you aware so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes that others have made during their MCC.

You must be wondering who I am to write a book on MCC and why you should read it when I am not a professor, a thought leader, a professional coach, an HR practitioner, or someone who holds life-changing public talks. Your apprehension is justified. In fact, you should be clear before moving forward as you will invest some part of your life in reading this book.

My answer is that I am just another professional who was a victim of MCC and, hence, I probably know what it means.

Before writing the book, I looked around. I could not find a single book on the subject that shares life experiences, and so I decided to put one together. I wonder if I was able to address all the topics that bother us during our MCC. Irrespective of the answer, I am sure that my effort has been honest. During your MCC, you may encounter some other issues. I will be glad if you shared with me how you dealt with them so that I can learn and improve.

During this amazing journey to understand the different phases of MCC, I approached a few senior corporate leaders and asked them to share their personal experiences. While some of them refused, most of them obliged. You will read their stories in the second section of this book. Interestingly, they shared their learnings, the moves they made during their mid-career and their experiences on how they dealt with MCC—without any guidelines or suggestions from me. But when I read their stories, I was amazed to note how neatly they fitted into the patterns I had observed, and how well they illustrated the theme of this book: why some sail through while others don’t.

I hope you find the book useful, and I wish you all the best in dealing with your MCC.

January 2015

Amsterdam

Section One

Paperboat.jpg

Facing up to your MCC

Using the stories of a number of corporate professionals, in this section I will discuss the different stages of mid-career crisis, how to recognize you are in one, and what to watch out for.

CHAPTER ONE

The Five Stages

Paperboat.jpg

When we think of our corporate career life cycle, we can divide it into five stages:

The first stage is when we prepare ourselves for our corporate journey. This is when we define our goal, choose our field of interest and start our journey towards achieving that goal. It is the time to dream and chart our new life. At this stage, everything ahead of us looks rosy and achievable. The sky is our limit.

The second stage is the first few years of our career. We learn new things and achieve new heights. The sense of newness occupies our mind and we enjoy every bit of it.

The third stage is when we pass through our mid-career. To my mind, there cannot be just one definition of mid-career; it can differ from person to person. I would define mid-career as a stage when a person has spent between eight and eighteen years in the corporate world. Your definition can be different to an extent.

By then, we have spent a considerable number of years at work and learnt a lot about this world. Understandably, by this time, different individuals achieve different degrees of success. Some of us would have had a reasonable career progression and been given considerable responsibility, some would be struggling to make a mark in the corporate world, and some would be in between.

This is the stage when people start leading large teams and having frequent interactions with the top management. These are the people who are always considered the backbone of any organization. Their opinions are valued, juniors seek their guidance and seniors would look to them to execute strategy.

This is the stage when we have an idea about what’s next, but are seldom clear on when and how we can reach there. We are reasonably clear about where we want our career to head, but we are not quite sure of whether we will reach our desired destination. We look within ourselves and to others for an assurance that we are on the right path. Many a times, thanks to this state of mind, even the best of professionals pass through a stage of chaos, confusion and change.

It is a point of inflection and a stage of transition. And, like any stage of transition, there is confusion in the mind about how to navigate to the next stage.

Most of the time, the first symptom of a mid-career crisis (MCC) is a confused state of mind. Many simple issues get complicated and we start looking for answers to questions that never bothered us earlier. From this confused mind, we get to a state where we slowly experience a change in attitude, knowingly and unknowingly. We start to change as a person. Many a times, we end up doing things or behaving in a way that we would have otherwise avoided. We adopt certain attitudes which, in our wisdom, we know are not encouraged by the corporate world. Over time, this either derails our career plan or slows down our growth.

That’s when the real crisis starts. We would like to correct the situation and return to our previous state, but it is not easy since we might have failed to identify the starting point of MCC and have taken decisions that cannot be undone. That leads to more frustration and some times forces us to behave in a way that worsens the MCC. Then, if we fail to reaccelerate our progress despite our best efforts, we end up having a real crisis that leads to misery, both at work and at home.

Thus, the idea at this stage is to recognize the problem and kill the issue before it becomes a monster and affects our career progression.

When I approached senior corporate leaders for their MCC stories, some of them asked me what I meant by a ‘crisis’. Is it about losing your job, being demoted, not getting a promotion, being asked to relocate to a city that you do not want to move to, not being able to cope with enhanced responsibilities, not being able to enjoy the tasks you are performing, not getting recognized, not being able to follow your true calling, or is it a mix of some of these?

My answer was that a ‘crisis’ can be defined in many ways, but that is not the objective of this book. Here I would touch upon those myths and effects that cause in us a sense of misery and, thus, a crisis.

The fourth stage is when we pass through the last years of our career. By then, we almost know whether we are heading towards the goal we had set for ourselves many years ago. For some, it would be the last step towards the peak. For others, who failed to overcome their MCC, it may just be a journey that drags along. Again, we face many challenges as this is the time to head to the peak from the summit, or just walk through the valley. We will speak about this stage some other time, a few years later.

The last stage is when we decide to hang up our boots, sit back and look back on our journey. By this time, we would know our score cards, and would be happy, sad or oblivious to our journey.

CHAPTER TWO

Start of a Confusing Era

Paperboat.jpg

At the start of our corporate journey, most of us define a goal for ourselves. Some define it as the type of person we want to become, some have materialistic objectives, some want name and fame, while for some, it depends on the position they would like to reach at the end of a particular period. There can be other goals as well. There is no right or wrong goal; it’s an individual’s prerogative, and we have every right to define it the way we want.

Then, our journey starts, and we all try to navigate our way through the corporate world to reach our goal.

After walking on the path we pick, we enter our mid-career. Most of us take a step back and look at the situation to assess our progress vis-à-vis the goals we had set for ourselves. Some of us feel good about our progress, others do not. Some wonder if this was the path they had chosen at the beginning, and whether they would like to continue on it in the future as the course of their journey might have altered over time.

Whatever stage we may be at vis-à-vis our defined goal, we may have many questions in our mind. Some achievers may sense a void and the future may look opaque. For some of us, if we are away from our defined goal, we might feel a bit shaky and the destination might look unachievable. For some, it could lead to a sense of uneasiness as they might be on a journey on a path they never desired.

With considerable years of experience, many of us would consider ourselves leaders ready for the next leap. However, the world around us may not reciprocate, which may raise a question in our mind: Am I a follower or a leader? With no clear answer from the world around us, the state of confusion aggravates. To many of us, the entrepreneurial bug hits at this time in our career. The confidence of ‘been there, done that’ due to the experience we have pushes us to think, ‘Why not work for myself?’ We also ask: ‘If I had worked for myself, would I not have been more satisfied? Why should I put in so much effort to earn a fixed salary while the profit goes to someone else? Why can’t I run a similar business on my own?’

However, at the