How Long?

I remember reading an article in a magazine which displayed the grand salaries that young CEOs had begun to take home. The search company executive quoted said that a competent CEO could be taking home anywhere up to a few crores a year. The examples cited were of CEOs who had hopped jobs efficiently. He concluded explaining that the way to grow the pay packet was to basically not stay in a place for more than three to five years. The cases were mind boggling- like say, a 30-something fellow grows from a senior manager to a CEO many times over in less than a decade.

As I talked to people after that, the general opinion that emerged was that you are perceived as ‘successful’ if you move within five years and a ‘laggard’ if not a ‘loser’ if you don’t. Smart people move. That was the essence.

But recently for some material that we had to put together, Charubala and I were going through the work histories of over a dozen industry and public leaders. Verghese Kurien, K.V. Kamath, Lalita Gupte, Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Parekh, Shikha Sharma, Kalpana Morparia, Bharat Patel, Pradip Shah, Naina Lal Kidwai, Vinita Bali, Shashi Tharoor were among others were those we looked up. And this is what we discovered: None of them had changed jobs more than once or may be twice in their careers; they built their reputations as people of reckoning at jobs they held for generally close to a decade or sometimes more; they moved up stealthily in their companies and organisations and grew their roles and profiles within rather than looking for greener pastures outside.

And was I surprised? For a moment, may be. And then when I thought about it more closely, may be not, really. If one defines success with simply what one is able to buy with his salary one needs to jump on to the former bandwagon. But if you want to become someone who stands for a success story and become an icon, an inspiration, then these case studies indicate that you have to look beyond. You may be a smart mover but people do not understand what you stand for, sometimes. On the other hand, leaders such as these are clearly identified with their beliefs to make the brand they choose, to become a success. So in short, you probably have a longer shelf life as a success story if you build the success of other brands besides your own self. What do you think?