You haven’t achieved much!

He is 45. He is yet a Senior Manager. He hasn’t really achieved much!

Even I have found myself involved in such conversations at times. Now when I look back, I was immature. Success and achievement are subjective terms and are heavily dependent on points of view. When you walk on the road, you see so many luxury cars. Would you term the owners of those cars as successful people? Most probably you would and in all probability you would be right. But that doesn’t mean that the person occupying the small cubicle in your office, way above age for his designation and role, is unsuccessful.

As individuals we have career goals and life goals. It is a fine mix of the two that determines how you would like to shape your life. It is like the temperature control knob in your car; just replace the extremes with the two goals. The ideal balance would be to have the knob in the centre – ideal work life balance. Those who have worked even for a short while in the corporate world would know that such a phenomenon is utopic. In reality, the knob would be biased towards one side.

There have been tonnes written about work life balance. There are theories that suggest that not every day can be balanced. There are times when you have to focus on work more than your personal life and the other times it’s vice versa. One has to make most of the crests and the troughs. When work demands more time, give work more time. When personal life demands more time, give personal life more time.

Today’s stress on professional success and growth has resulted in limiting the definition of achievement only to professional life. Also, that is the most visible and tangible measure of success. Companies and organisations stress on competition and the result of competition is a winner – often times termed as an achiever or a successful person. This is the reason why that old guy in the small cubicle seems as an underachiever or, in harsher words, a failure in life.

Step back a little. Why did men start working in the first place? To earn a livelihood. Why did they want to earn a livelihood? To feed their family and fulfil their necessities. Was there a work life balance principle then? Perhaps, but not stated as such. Though the cases in which there was an imbalance in work and personal life would have been more for survival than for “success”. The first instance of usage of the term “work-life balance” was in 1970s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it was not until 1986 before this term was used. So, the term is not too old. What brought about the rapid proliferation of the term in board room discussions was the woman workforce. They were the ones that really needed that balance between work and home. As we travel into the deeper realms of the 21^st century, the term has taken a more universal relevance and every individual debates whether he/she has work life balance or not.

So, coming back to where we started – the dichotomy between work and personal life. Increasingly, we find people wanting to climb up the ladder of success in the corporate world faster than their peers. Good for them. Being ambitious is the first step towards success in the dog-eat-dog corporate culture. Others also get inspired or infected by the success of such people and also want to achieve success as they have. There is but one flaw. If everyone becomes successful, there would be parity and “success” would lose its competitive meaning. That brings us to what I call the osmotic pyramid of success. There are the success idols – people who have achieved much in life and much earlier than others. There is the mass of successful people and this is the largest group among the three. If this wasn’t the largest group, then the world would not have moved on; success drives growth and forward motion and this mass drives overall success in the world. Then the third group is that of success chasers. They are not consistently successful but are chasing success, wanting to catch up with the successful masses, inspired by the success idols. All three are permeable groups. These are not hard coded silos; each group has a membrane separating it from the other and under certain conditions, transfer to and fro is allowed (osmosis). People move among the 3 groups; more to and fro movement being in the bottom of the pyramid. This model is also in line with the bell curve definition of performance appraisal.

Why do people move up or down the groups? One reason is because their calibration of work and personal life changes. When there are important landmarks in their personal lives for which they have to sacrifice a bit of success at work, they move down. When they are gunning in their work life and are dedicatedly working towards driving success, they move up. There are also factors like burn-out, skill-out (not upgrading skills to meet the ever-changing world), etc. that contribute to the downward movement.

Among all this, there is a group that resides in its segment forever. They would mostly be seen in the bottom 2 groups. Everyone in the organisation feels they have no ambition, they care two hoots about success and at times, the manager even thinks of asking them to leave. However, managers are helpless as their performance may not be exemplary but is always found “meets expectations”. Let me introduce you to the successful lot of personal life.

This is an animal that is growing in number in the world. This species does not care about quick success that comes by sacrificing family time. This species will continue to do what it is expected to do. Mind you these people are not those who will not demand what is due; they are smart people. They will extract all that the company owes them, commensurate to their effort and results they drive.

Many may consider them primitive as their work principle is aligned somewhat to that of the ancient man – work to support the family and fulfil their needs and dreams. For them success is determined more by what they do for the family than what they do at work. They are not failures. They always exhibit the spark. They are late bloomers. When the early achievers burn the midnight oil for their professional success, these people work as much as is needed to make them grow professionally at a steady pace. They know that the needs and dreams of the family will grow and that they need to themselves grow to keep pace with that. They plan their professional lives according to their personal lives. Many end up exactly at the same place as the early success stud – the difference being, the early success stud has by then earned a lot more and has enjoyed the pole position for a longer time. Neither achievement is significant in the eyes of this species.

The personal success chaser is always there for the family – every important landmark of the child, every parent teacher meeting, every emergency situation, every doctor’s appointment, etc. For him, family comes first. He believes at the end of it, family matters most and if he is unable to devote time for the family, it beats the purpose of working. Many a time, this species looks down upon the early success achiever who, in most cases, sacrifices a lot of family time for the ambitious plan for success he has. There is one problem though. When the personal success chaser is made to compromise on family and personal time, he starts showing a slump in performance. The reason is that he comes under stress – stress that makes him falter and this results in poor performance. To get the best out of the personal success chaser, let him have his personal time and he will deliver the best at work.

There are examples in which the early success studs realised later on in their lives that family is important. They pause, look back and recalibrate their lives. In many cases, the recalibration leads to more family time. In some extreme cases, recalibration results in bidding adieu to professional life to maximise personal life before resuming professional responsibilities. Of course, quitting is an extreme step and not everyone can take such a drastic step but they would not have needed the extreme step had they calibrated their lives suitably, right from the beginning. Take the example of two CEOs - Mohamed El-Erian, the former CEO of the global investment firm Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) and Max Schireson, ex- CEO of 10gen (the MongoDB company). Both these gentlemen achieved professional success very early in their lives. They focussed extensively on their professional lives before incidents that changed their calibration. These are names that we know because they are renowned people who took the extreme step. There must be many more people taking these decisions about recalibrating their lives due to realisations about what life and family demands from them.

There is a third kind of people. These are people for who, making a difference in the world is most important. They chase their dream so aggressively that they sacrifice their professional success. Take for instance the youth that has taken up education of the underprivileged children as their challenge. They strive hard to achieve success in their chosen cause. There are so many instances where youngsters have quit their high paying jobs to seek what gives them the most joy. The list on this page mentions just a fraction of the many who have taken the road less travelled. I know of people who work to bring cheer to old age homes. There are others who work to bring joy in orphanages. They may not climb the ladder of success at work but they are way more than successful in what they aim to achieve.

Every individual has a different goal in life. He strives hard to make it successful. More often than not, he is able to succeed. Judging others from our point of view is being very immature. The only thing that we should judge is if we have been successful in what we set out to achieve.  Achievement is not defined only in terms of size of wallet or designation or the height in the corporate ladder. Success is very personal. I set my targets – if I achieve them, I am successful. Many are also pulled back by limitations; limitations that we may have no clue about. That guy in the small cubicle may be one such case. He, in his evaluation, may be a super successful person given his limitation.

My guru, Aniruddha Bapu tells us a similar principle. One must not compare one’s devotion with others. Often, we hear people compare the time they spend for Pooja versus what the other person does. And still, the other person seems to be getting all favours from god. Bapu says, there cannot be any comparison. The only comparison can be versus where one was the day before. Moving forward in devotion and ensuring you are better off than the day before is the only comparison one must indulge in. The queue to god does not have many people in it. We all have our own queue. And we must move ahead in our queue, closer to god. Exactly as everyone’s aim in life is different and we must never comment on their success or failure basis our definition of success and failure.

The next time you say, “He is not that successful”, pause and think. He might be looking at you and saying exactly the same thing. From his point of view, you may not be a success story to tell!