You gotta live like you're dying

One of the things I like about mentoring people is that you get interesting insights about yourself that you never realised before. In honesty, it really blows my mind away whenever people, sometimes older than me, come to me and say that they just want my opinion on their careers or progression. I am after all, a young and sometimes stupid guy who is progressing through the many stages of my career. In many instances, I’m just humbled. But a recent question that was asked of me really got me thinking.

Would you take a promotion, with significantly more responsibilities, even if you didn’t get a pay rise immediately.

The answer to the question was simple – YES. I have recently made a series of career moves that were promotional (or perceived promotions) in nature with no salary increments. But what was even more interesting was the fact that I needed to understand why I was accepting these roles. These roles were fraught with risks. More often than not, it was to take charge of a troubled organization, or, to deal with customer demands that weren’t always the easiest to meet. The reality is that I could sit back, take a chill pill, and do really well in my comfort zone. There still are times when I wonder whether it’s all really worth it and sometimes, I feel like banging my head against the wall for the stupidity of taking these additional responsibilities. Key to all of these questions about the state of my mind when taking on these roles is whether or not I was pissed off because I was being pissed on. Surely, a big giant corporation could afford to pay an upcoming talent delivering awesome value the appropriate renumeration.

If you could turn back the clock would you do it all over again?

It was surprising even to myself, but the answer was a straight, without a shadow of a doubt – YES. There are a few reasons for this.

The state of the world economy

Firstly, nobody can deny that 2008, 2009, 2010 and potentially even 2011 are years that are anomalies in the grand scheme of things. The reality is that we are living in messed up times and people need to recognize that shit has hit the fan all around the world. But everytime I tell my guys that this is the reality, I can see it in their eyes that they all believe it’s corporate yada yada yada. To some extent it is true, and sometimes, it pisses me off too. It’s difficult to comprehend that the system is recovering when there is so much growth within the region. However, the data never lies and the reality is that we are still hot in the tail of a global down turn.

The figures from the IMF report indicating where we are heading in 2010 is telling. We are only now beginning to start to see some semblance of normalcy return and it’s still early days yet. In fact from a manufacturing perspective, the dip has been so huge, that some companies honestly really are just purely skeptical about the current recovery trends we are seeing.

IMF also reported that the global output shrunk by 0.9% last year.  The exhilaration in growth seen last year in the Malaysian IT services industry was done in the shadows of the global growth numbers going into negative territory.

It’s the opportunities damn it

Secondly, I have it in my head to never ever say no to opportunities. I might have talked about this before, but there’s a story of stupidity I often relate to every time something like this pops up. I think I was 14 when it happened. It was the elections for job of the school Head Prefect. I remember being nominated and then I stood up, said I didn’t want the job and then sat down. Till today I wonder what would my life have been had I just gone ahead and accepted the role which I know comes with many of its own perks.

The incident  impacted the way I view leadership opportunities. Ever since that day I’ve never said no to opportunities that come my way. I remember being given a leadership opportunity to lead a team of over 90 people when I had zero people management experience by a great boss that took a chance with me. Today, I lead over 400. I remember being given the opportunity to take on board new projects which were huge and had my other colleagues saying that I was a mad person for accepting it. I had virtually no project management experience then. I remember attending meetings where I had no clue what the hell was happening, but cherished the fact that I was being given the opportunity to see how senior leaders dueled. I was literally just a huge (no pun intended) sponge soaking up the overall experience.

More importantly,  I’ve come to realise is that I have skills that not many 29 year olds have in Malaysia. I have worked with a multitude of Malaysian, British and American bosses. I have had both local and international people reporting in to me. I’ve worked in virtual teams and seen how global and local interests clash and need to be managed. I have been given opportunities to set the minds of people who work for me free and let them explore their full potential. Even more significant is the fact that I’ve been allowed to explore my ideas and try new dimensions in the workplace that would never have been possible had I not accept these leadership positions. I’ve also been able to groom a whole host of new leaders who are now doing other things in other parts of the organization. Which is all cool… except that I haven’t also got a pay rise in 2 years.

Meja says it’s all about the money

The reality is that I’m not doing all this because I’m the most altruistic person out there. I’m doing this because I know that the economy crisis will end some day. I’m doing this because I know this country has a huge talent void and that every little bit that I can do to give myself an advantage will propel me farther. I honestly believe that the delayed gratification will create a scenario where I become highly in demand. And the reality is, I see it slowly becoming true. The experience points that I have been able to clock over the last six years has resulted in a number of head hunters contacting me every time they have an interesting opportunity. I get huge kicks out of the fact that some of them get shocked when they see my age on my CV.

Isn’t it just frustrating to see the profit and loss statements really positive and you know you played a big part in it?

Yes it is. So I’ve chosen to channel the frustration to something that I know will give me better long term gains. I learnt a long time ago that there is no point in believing that a corporation or an entity owes me anything. I only believe in loyalty as long as the balance of benefits – the “What in it for me?” question – is fair. For now, because the learning curve far outweighs the pay, I’ve channeled my frustration to goals that I know is impossible under normal conventional circumstances.

There is no real “one-size-fits-all” method with dealing with the question of whether or not you should take bigger assignments without the dosh to follow. However, what I have found over the years is that, for younger workers, the potential to learn far outweighs the uncompensated short term stress. Opportunities only come once in a blue moon and forgoing it will only mean that you lose the opportunity to clock experience points.

For me personally, the only rule that I use is asking myself the question of whether or not I will regret the move if I die tomorrow. If the answer is yes, then I follow the path which lets me live, like I’m dying, and push ahead. Life’s too short to be pissed off all the time.