Managing: Me Inc.

It's alright to be selfish. To be ambitious. And to look out for yourself. Something is happening to careers and it's got every thing to do with the letter I.

It's official. On January 1, 2001, when the 41-year-old Raj Jain (on opposite page) walks through the main door of Whirlpool India's South Delhi office, he won't, as has been his practice for the 12 months he's been the executive director of the company, take a left turn and walk down the hallway to his room. Instead, he'll turn right and stride into the room earmarked for the company's chairman and managing director. At the threshold of this small-step-for-mankind, giant-leap-for-Jain event, the man is quick to remember those who've helped him get where he'll soon be. And on top of this list is a familiar name: Raj Jain.

The theme of this Abou Ben Adhem-esque anecdote isn't modesty, it's career-mobility. And, as Jain's example illustrates, God (and companies) helps those who are ready to help themselves. That (helping oneself) isn't as politically incorrect as it sounds; nor is it very difficult. Jain, for instance, was transparent about his ambition to head a company. And he put himself through a series of rigorous job-rotations and training programmes to hone his skill-set. Grins a visibly up-beat Jain: ''You have to be the CEO of your own career. You can't expect the company to do all the planning for you-nobody has that kind of time.''

It isn't just Jain. Across the country, executives in different stages of their organisational existence have started spelling careers with an I. Anuroop 'Tony' Singh is one: despite being offered the top job in the merged entity after Standard Chartered acquired the Asian, and consequently, Indian operations of ANZ Grindlays (of which Singh was the CEO), he left to head the Max-Group's insurance foray with New York Life citing an ''opportunity to create and learn''.

Aditya Srinath is another: after four years in SSKI as an infotech analyst, he's decided to spend the next few years of his career in the semi-arid wilderness of self-employment. His vocation remains the same: equity-research. Only, he claims 60 per cent of this is for his own consumption (the remainder is hawked to buyers to keep the home-fires burning). And the purpose of this exercise? To enrich himself in the short-term, and to prove that pure research does pay in the long-term. ''It's an experiment; I'm using this time to develop myself,'' says the still-under-30 Srinath.

Developing the self is what it is all about. And developing the self is the term you'll hear most often on the career I-way. As the pioneers of pop-positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout advised many years ago: ask not what you can do for your company. Ask what your company can do for you. If it can't do much, then its time to move on-either to another company, or to doing things by yourself. The newest organisation species to descend on Indian shores (after the dotcom) is Me Inc. And if it's suddenly alright to look out for oneself-instead of just serving as a cog in the wheel and hoping that a bigger cog will notice, it's because of the realisation that the smallest and most significant commercial entity is the individual.

It's easy, almost unavoidable, to run into stories of individuals who decided to take charge of their own careers. Dig deeper into the story of Compaq's global acquisition of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1998, the merger of the Indian operations of the two, Compaq India and Digital Equipment India (DEIL) the same year, and the consequent de-merger of the two in 1999, and you'll uncover a small chapter on the career of a man called Som Mittal. Mittal, the head of DEIL was named head of the merged entity, but last year when DEIL was spun off as a separate entity with a born-again focus on the high-growth area of software services (as against its earlier hardware-orientation), he chose to head that. Today, twelve months after the de-merger, DEIL has grown from an employee strength of 280 to 900. Shrugs Mittal: ''Every time I have made a (career move) it was because of a chance to grow beyond the ordinary.''

The Me Incer Start-up Kit

Networking skills: If it's a sport, it's got to be golf; building a Rolodex is critical
Traffic Skills: Drive in the fast lane; push yourself through the system
Team Skills: Drive others as much as you would drive yourself
Learning Skills: Look for opportunities to learn within your organisation
Selection Skills: Move jobs and companies only after a serious SWOT analysis

In many ways, the Indian executive's newly-acquired emphasis on the self is an imported notion. Explains Deepak Gupta, the Managing Director of search-firm Korn/Ferry International's Indian operations: ''...it's a very westernised trend. I am in this for myself. I am being paid for what I deliver. No one is doing me any favours. I'll keep an eye open for something better. And these are the skills I need to acquire to move on.'' Not all career moves are planned with Clausewitzian precision, but, increasingly, most are. Uday Chawla, a partner at another search firm Heidrick & Struggles, thinks so: ''The brighter ones-those employees who can pick and choose-are doing this (scripting their own careers) more than the others.''

If the Me Inc. movement is catching on rapidly, there are reasons for it to. Ambition isn't one of them: it isn't as if Indian executives have suddenly grown more ambitious than they previously were. When viewed through the cold clinical lens of economics, this phenomenon throws up one demand-side, and one supply-side reason. The d-s motive is the surfeit of opportunity. Says Sanjiv Sachar, the Managing Director of Egon Zehnder, a Delhi-based search firm: ''More opportunities mean more chances to make a career-move. Earlier, there weren't this many opportunities. Today, there are great jobs going in sectors like tech, insurance, telecom...''

The s-s motive is the increased risk-taking propensity of the Indian executive. Earlier this year, SmithKline Beecham's Marketing Chief R. Shyam Sundar, who'd long held out against offers to join a range of big Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, quit to join the Max India insurance venture (that same one Tony Singh will head). ''I am betting that I will be able to do what I want to for the rest of my life. (If not) there's experience to fall back on,'' declares Sundar.

Circa 2000, risk-taking-ironic as it may sound-does look safe. Stop reading this article for a minute and scan it in its entirety for terms like search-, hr consulting-, and placement-firm. Whatever be the handle these companies go by, they are head-hunting tribes. They work the phones for a living, pump their Rolodexes for exercise, and include industry fora under their definition of recreational activity. And, unless an executive has been busy at work in a lead-lined bunker a few hundred feet below the ground, they know about him or her.

Not only is it safe, risking it all has become an essential ritual in the corporate equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses. The woman who used to sit in the cabin next to yours now makes three times what you do, leads an exciting work-life, and actually gets written about by the pink brigade every now and then. Binod Choudhary, who heads Rediff.com's operations in Delhi, and who has, in a 13-year working life seen the insides of five companies, is very conscious of where he would have been today if he hadn't decided to take a few risks: ''If I'd stayed on in Maruti, I'd probably be a regional manager, earning half my current salary and the job would just be more of the same.''

There's also an international-dimension to the risk thing. Over the last year (or two) a rash of Indian executives has moved on to larger, global responsibilities-in the international operations of their own companies, or in other companies. The list includes notables such as Muktesh Pant of Reebok, Keki Dadiseth of HLL, Vijay Advani of Templeton, Ravi Virmani of Hewitt, and Alok Kochhar of Bank of America. Why, at the end of a two-year assignment at SmithKline Beecham's London-headquarters, Shyam Sundar was offered the option of staying on there. ''It's a great (ego) boost to know we can make it in other countries as well,'' gloats Sundar.

There's an emerging dimension to the I-revolution: careers and organisations, we are now told, can be mutually exclusive. Companies no longer believe it is essential for someone who performs a certain task for them to work exclusively for them. And executives are realising that they can enrich themselves-in terms of money as well as learning-by doing a certain thing (or several things) for several companies.

If this realisation hasn't translated into a large number of such relationships between individuals and corporations, that's because attitudes to a work-life outside the corporate domain are just changing. Agrees Chawla: ''In time, we'll see the ultimate fall-out of the emphasis on the self: the portfolio worker.''

Shorn of jargon, what that means is that some Me Incers will start treating their work the same way they do their investments. Thus, just like their investment-portfolio is a mix of equity, debt, mutual funds, or any thing else depending on their individual preferences, their work will be spread across companies.

You aren't likely to find portfolio workers at the upper end of the corporate totem pole: most of them will be young. And most of them will give up great jobs in sectors like software and financial services.

As Narayan Seshadri, Head (Business Consulting), Arthur Andersen, details: ''Five or six years in some industries is adequate time to build a respectable nest-egg. So, by the time you are 30, you can afford to take some time off or try and build a career outside the organisational domain.''

Fortunately for individuals seeking to do just this, companies increasingly becoming open to the idea of part-time contractual relationships with specialists. Says Choudhary: ''It's time for companies to accept that while they can hire the services of the best person for a task, they can't hire the person.'' And in all but the most critical of positions companies are willing to do so.

That's not to difficult, not if you can bury hopelessly old-fashioned notions about loyalty to the company, and worrying, not about the rewards, but about the work itself. The recipe for a thriving Me Inc includes equal measures of unbridled ambition and plain old selfishness (that's right, selfishness).

Choudhury of Rediff started his career, with a degree in business economics, at Maruti. He sold his educational qualifications to a few Citibank executives he met during his stint with the car-maker and got himself a job with the transnational bank. From a blue-chip bank to a b-c financial services company, GE Capital, was a small step. Then, with infotech becoming the flavour of the month (it still is), it was on to Satyam Consulting, and finally Rediff. Confesses Choudhury: ''You have to do what is right by yourself.''

Switching companies, though, isn't a must: it's possible to switch jobs within the same company. Piyush Gupta, the CEO of horizontal portal go4i.com, did just that. In the 20 years he spent at Citibank, Gupta clocked time in functions as diverse as hr and infotech. ''The only assignment I didn't choose for myself at Citibank was my first-management trainee,'' says Gupta.

It's only when opportunities within dry up that it makes sense to look without. And look without at relevant opportunities. Sudershan Banerjee, the 53-year-old CEO of Essar Cellphone-he describes his role as that of an ''interim CEO with the mindset of a consultant''-offers his own career as an illustration: CEO of Kodak between 1982 and 1998; CEO of direct seller Amway between 1998 and 2000; and CEO of Essar C since May, 2000. ''If I'd received an offer from Fuji while I was still in Kodak, I would have definitely refused it. The move must come with a bigger agenda.''

The balance has tilted; companies can no longer afford to dictate terms to their employees. Faced with a take it or leave it option, most Me Incers choose the latter. Dinesh Mirchandani, the CEO of hr consulting firm Boyden, believes the relationship between companies and their executives has matured: ''The employer-employee equation is becoming more transactional. Each side works hard to protect its interests.'' Only, companies are rapidly discovering that satisfying Me Incers often involves wrenching organisational changes. Agrees Ralph Heuwing, the CEO of the Indian arm of the Boston Consulting Group: ''The modern employee is more concerned about job content, responsibility, and (the) impact (of his or her role) than the traditional employee. He or she still wants to build a career, but many large organisations have not (yet) adapted to these needs. This requires major organisational changes, and many young people have lost patience.''

The result? Retention strategies-that's the term hr mavens use to describe things they do to ensure that their best and brightest do not walk out of the front door-are getting a face-lift. That's easy in companies like GE (the original boundary-less corporation) and transnationals like HLL and Citibank where emplo-yees can be posted elsewhere in the company's global operations. Says K. Murali, the Head of hr at GE's Indian operations: ''People are no longer loyal to a company, but to a way of working. They demand a portfolio of experiences.'' Murali should know: from being in charge of the hr function at one of ge's businesses, he became the Master Black Belt (a facilitator of sorts who helps improve operating efficiencies. See GE's Secret Weapon, BT April 22-May 7, 2000) of that business, then headed the hr function at another business, before moving on to a corporate responsibility.

There's a flip-side to this focus on the self (what did you think?). No company can afford to have a workforce with too many Me Incers-conflicting priorities would rent the organisational fabric. And at a time when work processes are being built around teams, executives can't afford not to be seen as team players. As Banerjee of Essar Cellphone puts it: ''You can't take care of yourself at the expense of the team.'' Then there's the issue of proportion.

There's very little that separates selling oneself to the company from thrusting oneself down its throat. Avers Sanjay Sakhuja, who's just moved from Arthur Andersen to the top job at Lazard India: ''It's important to build yourself without selling yourself every day.'' That apart, frequent career moves, or an unconventional career, could well be looked on with suspicion and invite comments like: He's good but doesn't seem to be able to hold down a job, or, If he's such a great equity analyst why isn't he working for a transnational fund. Still, these are minor irritants: in a business environment where ideas and little else matter. If e has been the preferred vowel in the English language these last two years, then it's i's turn now.