Marketing maven Rajeev Karwal, everyone knows, moved recently from Philips as Senior Vice President in Mumbai to Electrolux Kelvinator as CEO in Delhi. But did he? As in, did he really? Judging from the number of Mumbai-Delhi flights he's taken in recent months, it appears that he's still shuttling between the two. Is he? Ask him, and he'll admit he had an informal sort of dual charge for around two months-in the transition period-lasting a few days even after he formally left Philips.

Sounds strange? Well, welcome to the world of assuming 'responsibility' as understood in an old-fashioned way, even if it means blurring the otherwise hard-and-fast boundaries of corporate competition. To Karwal, it's a plain and simple matter of commitment to task completion at the old job. And of personal effort. "One has to burn the midnight oil," he says, almost nonchalantly.

But don't assume even for a minute that Karwal is an exception. The phenomenon is more common than you'd think, especially at the apex of the corporate pyramid.

Split Roles...

Juggling two jobs is tough. Juggling two top jobs is super-tough. Ask ex-Hutch head honcho Sudarshan Banerjee, who joined the Dalmiya group's rural-marketing retail startup recently, and spent two months juggling two jobs. While still at Hutch, during his two-month notice period, he was busy talking to retail consultants and commissioning research studies to get a grip on the retail venture's competitors, so that he could analyse their strategies well before getting into his new saddle.

Banerjee even went about the recruitment process, hiring nine function heads (with much cross-functional exposure) so that the new company's team would be ready to roll by the time he got there. This, of course, meant granting them a fair degree of operational leeway (in his day-to-day absence). Co-ordination would have required his presence, but he was confident that they'd get on quite well without him. And so too for the Hutch team. "I never keep people in silos," explains Banerjee, "they have to have experience of other functions also, so it helps them in taking decisions (in my absence) that I would have taken."

Hutch, you see, was still Banerjee's moral responsibility, till a new CEO could take charge. So, in effect, he found himself alternating his time between the two roles. "But when you are experienced," he says, "you are in auto mode-you tend to compartmentalise the two responsibilities."

As far as time and documents go, compartmentalisation is not terribly difficult. While still at Philips, for example, Karwal had his office desk strewn with Philips documents, even as the inner recesses of his desk were packed with confidential Electrolux folders on finances, people, processes, products, marketshares, virtually everything imaginable.

To hit the deck running, Karwal wanted to be clear about his strategy as Electrolux India's CEO (his first ever assignment as top boss). His last working day at Philips was January 24, but he was still to be spotted in office on the 25th, priming a caretaker management team and helping it tie up "loose ends" of Philips' World Cup strategy. That this strategy should meet its objectives was an onus he felt morally, personally and professionally obliged to bear.

Meanwhile, Electrolux's outgoing CEO, Ram Ramasundar, has done something similar. He is also equally clear about the principles underlying his actions. "It is one's fiduciary responsibility to give 100 per cent while you're on the job," he states. No two ways about that. So, what did he do during his own transition months? He devoted his three-month notice period's days to keeping things in fine order at Electrolux, and evenings to analysing the BPO business, so that he could take charge as COO of Satyam's BPO operations, Nipuna, the very next day after leaving Electrolux on December 31. He pored over NASSCOM reports, called friends and colleagues, and surfed the web intensively, preparing for his new job.

That's homework, period. A must-do. Something that also involves getting the new team in sync with one's plans. Almost all the transitional CEOs, for instance, were in touch with their new colleagues while they were with the old company. Karwal spent three-to-four hours with each of his senior colleagues at Electrolux.

Ramasundar, on the other hand, flew to Hyderabad to hold a session with his new colleagues. It's part of the process. "You have to give the new colleagues a value proposition," says Banerjee, "you have to make them part of the shared vision."

...But Split Minds?

Juggling time and dockets is fine, but what about the mind? Wouldn't a strict compartmentalisation drive any sane person schizophrenic? And can one really be passionately loyal to two companies together?

Perhaps juggling is a bad analogy when it comes to that. The mental experience is more like being in two boats at the same time. "You may have the best resolve," observes Karwal, "but the mental conflict is still there." It is all the more excruciating when colleagues and others try to pry information and exploit the peculiar circumstance.

The best way out, according to Banerjee, a veteran of many shifts (Kodak, Amway and Hutch), is to be in 'auto mode' even on the bigger issues. "You are like a caretaker prime minister," laughs Ramasunder. Just detached enough to avoid any traps, and involved enough to have the two boats' control panels embedded nicely in one's mind. "In an overlap situation, the important and urgent decisions can be taken by the shared team, but critical decisions will be taken by the caretaker CEO," says Rahul Taneja, Vice President, Consindia, a head-hunting firm. Passionate steering can come after the transition is complete.

In the interim, though, dual loyalty works if and only if one does equal justice to both the roles (and the two companies appreciate this fine sense of fairness).

As for loyalty, well... at such 'visionary' levels (ahem!), it's not just about loyalty to this firm or the other, but perhaps a higher sense of professional purpose. A unifying sense of far-sighted ambition, for example. One can have a foot each in two boats and still cruise along fine, so long as the mind's gaze remains focused on the destination.