In defense of "THE COMPANY MAN"

Do you feel underappreciated at work? Does the next promotion seem decades away, elusive and completely out of reach? Are lesser mortals at your workplace smoothly orchestrating their career progression, much to your disbelief?

Such feelings are common at any workplace. As a business school professor, one of my roles is to serve as a sounding board to students when they run into career difficulties. Once in a while, my students (who are usually working while earning their MBAs), will share similar concerns and ask me if they should switch companies or careers.

One school of thought endorses systematic career exploration even when there is no dissatisfaction with the current work environment. This belief system says that one’s resume should always be on the block. Many people see it as a stigma to remain at the same company for a long period of time. As a result, corporate tenures are getting shorter, and the Company Man seems a relic today.

But my aim is to offer a counter argument. It’s not always necessary to change companies to advance your career. Quite often, it’s possible to engineer your next career move right where you are.

Before changing your company or career it’s worth remembering the old adage “festina lente” – make haste slowly. If you are contemplating a change, consider the following:

Do you want a career change or a company change?

If you merely want to change your line of work, it can often be accomplished within the same company.

Jack Welch, the legendary former chief executive of General Electric, started as a chemical engineer, and gradually took on different roles within the company before landing the top job. Interestingly, he too contemplated leaving GE at one point early in his career. If he had succumbed to this impulse, he may not have had such a formidable career.

Every individual, however outstanding, will encounter a nadir at some point within his company. But that doesn’t mean one has to quit.

Success requires endurance and resilience. Quite often, if you stick around, the environment may change in your favor. A bad boss may be removed by your current company, or a new position may open up for you in another department within the same company.

But how long should you put up with a bad situation? The answer depends on your specific circumstances, but you should keep in mind that hiring managers generally don’t view candidates who have stayed in a company for less than two years positively.

It takes time to build a legacy: There are a number of examples of “lifers” who have stuck around with a company for most of their corporate careers. Besides Mr. Welch, other examples include Narayana Murthy of Infosys 500209.BY -1.43%, Sam Palmisano, who spent most of his corporate career with IBM IBM -1.58%, and Ellen Kullman, the chief executive of DuPont, who started there in 1988 as a marketing manager.

It’s hard to envision the legacy that these individuals have built without a focused commitment to a single place of work.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success, talks about the 10,000-hour rule, which basically says that to achieve excellence in any profession, one needs to commit at least 10,000 hours of practice. Assuming a modest 50-hour work-week, to achieve competence, you may have to spend at least four years on a job.

If you have already invested decades in developing specific expertise, your best work could still be ahead of you, and it may not make sense to throw it all away as a result of short-term frustrations.

But sticking around for a long time in the same domain doesn’t mean you should stop learning and stop looking for innovative ways to do your job.

Don’t underestimate the time needed to reestablish credibility: Even if you have a stellar track record, when you join a new place, you need to work hard at reestablishing credibility, and convince your new colleagues that you can do it all over again.

You may have good intellectual and technical skills, but those are only good enough to get you the job. In senior management positions, it’s more important that you demonstrate empathy for your co-workers and have the ability to navigate political structures. Understanding the politics takes time and this is harder to do if you keep moving from one company to another.

The more time you have spent with your current company, the greater will be the depth of your social connections. Job hopping may therefore be more suited to younger people.

Do an honest self-assessment: Sometimes when I speak to restless employees, I find they haven’t taken an honest inventory of their own capabilities. They are unduly optimistic in the evaluation of their own merits, and excessively critical of their workplace.

If an employee is endowed with a major behavioral flaw, such as poor communication skills or inability to work in a team environment, it will not help to move to another company.

When the fault lies within you, you are better off staying where you are and focusing on self-improvement first.

However, if after careful deliberation you find that it’s not you, but an un-supportive boss or your company practices that are holding back your growth, it may be time to move on. In this case, make sure you do your homework and that you have the full support of your new company and new boss.

COURTESY :- http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/11/02/career-journal-in-defense-of-the-company-man/?reflink=djm_naukri_career_journal&othersrcp=15079&wExp=N