Reconciling corporate career, social and family responsibility and personal fulfillment

I first wrote this as an email to a few students who are graduating this year.  As an afterthought I decided to leave it in my blog.

 

For most of us, when we are young achievement is almost synonymous with success in terms of stature in an organisation, financial wealth and the external recognition that go with these two elements of achievement.  For those of us who wish to excel in a field of individual achievement like the arts or scholarship, success in an organization is replaced by excellence in the chosen field.  The other two dimensions remain the same albeit to lesser degrees.  The attainment of these goals leads us to a sense of personal fulfillment.  The level of fulfillment depends on the extent to which we have attained those goals.

Those of you to whom this email is addressed seem to look for something beyond these common sources of fulfillment.  You seem to be asking yourself questions like what will be the impact of what I do on society?  Would I be crossing the lines of social responsibility or even ethics or morality as I pursue my corporate career? 

These questions took me back to my own days when I graduated from IIMB.  A few of my batch-mates and I were possessed by similar questions.  That was in 1982.  We lived in a dirigiste India at that time.  George Fernandes came to be known as George the Giant Killer because he had signaled to the MNCs in India, just a few years earlier in 1977, that they were no longer welcome in the country.  Our dilemmas in that context in time were therefore a bit different: If we worked for MNCs would be ant-national?   Would we serve the larger public better by working either for the government or at least for PSUs? 

Thirty five years later the MNC vs Desi divide is perhaps no longer relevant.  Roughly 50% or more of all major desi enterprises are owned by foreign shareholders.  Thus one way or the other the economic surplus from Indian trade is flowing out to foreign shareholders.  That leaves the corporate vs non-corporate debate.

I believe my motivations behind those dilemmas back then were similar to yours now.  I think they can be broken down as follows.  (i) If I were to pursue a corporate career would I be working against the larger interests of society?  (ii) Assuming that it is possible to somehow reconcile a corporate career with public interests where does one draw the line between what is in the larger public interests and one’s own career interests in one’s day to day work? (iii) Is there a way to serve public interests even if one were to pursue a corporate career successfully.  (iv) And finally can the pursuit of a corporate career come in the way of one being a good, responsible member of one’s family – spouse, parent, child, sibling, whatever?

I asked myself how would I respond to these questions if I could turn the clock back by thirty five years in my professional life?  What would I write in a manual for guiding my own conduct that I can turn to when I have moments of self-doubt?  So through this email I do not mean to pontificate.  I am merely indulging in soul searching in public.

Given the nature of today’s economy I think a career in the world of business is inevitable, no matter whether one is an entrepreneur or a corporate executive.  That is evident from the shrinking share of the government in the GDP.  I for one believe that financial security is essential to be a good citizen.  My friend Parag Dhol often repeats that armies don’t march on empty stomachs.  If we buy into that principle it is very obvious that a corporate job is inevitable. 

One might ask what about the social sector?  I do not see that as an alternative that resolves that conflict.  I will save a lengthy defence of that position for now.  What about academics? From seventeen years in academe I can assure you that the academic story is not very different from life in the corporate world.  The joy of intellectual stimulation is offset by the poor pay.  In any case intellectual challenge is not part of the rainbow we are chasing here.

That leaves us with the questions of reconciling potential social, ethical and family conflicts.

To me ethics is a non-negotiable consideration.  But with the benefit of the mistakes I made in the past I want to define ethics carefully.  To me ethics is something that (I)

Violates the laws of the land – cheating on tax (as distinguished from tax planning for example or cheats on say pollution / safety norms (ii) Treats deceitfully anyone that one engages with, no matter whether for one’s gains or not, especially if that other person is defence-less against oneself  - for example shortchanging a colleague, lying to a distributor to get him to agree to unfavourable term or (iii) a cts against larger public interests – for example cola manufacturers depleting scarce ground water knowingly.

Most of us who have an ethical bent of mind would not remain a party to an act that falls into one of the categories above.  The trouble though is that until one reaches very senior levels one would never know enough that one’s employer is indulging in one of these types of behaviour.  Sometimes one gets to read about them in newspapers.  But then we know that the media can often be either blindsided, or worse,  compromised.  The Nestle episode is perhaps a case in point.  At the end of all the dust that was raised I am not sure if Maggi noodles were any more harmful than they had been thought to be all along, before the fssai kicked up the controversy.

The point I am making is that while the choice is very clear if one were to know of an infraction for sure, in the absence of incontrovertible evidence I do not see any harm in extending the benefit of doubt to one’s employer.  Clearly, that approach is self-serving to some extent.  But it is not promoting or preserving self-interest at the expense of ethics.   If that was so none of us should be using smart phone considering the harm that industry does to people (either in Philippines or Indonesia I cannot recall) who mine a certain material that goes into its making.  (I did not have a smart phone for a while for that reason.)

Can one pursue a corporate career and still serve the interests of society?  My own sense is that it is impractical to look to marry social or public interests and one’s corporate career.  As Kanwal Rekhi once said, apart from paying taxes honestly it is too much to expect a business enterprise or its executives to worry about public or social interest.  Doing one’s job well in a competitive world is tough enough.  To circumscribe oneself with all social responsibilities on top would be akin to running with one’s hands tied behind one’s back. 

But then thanks to initiatives like corporate social responsibility and to a whole lot of NGOs there are a number of ways in which one can contribute meaningfully to society.  Apart from giving one the channel to serve a needy soul they also provide opportunities to assuage the sense of guilt one might suffer from the huge and often growing pay differential between one’s own pay and those of less fortunate ones in the organization that one works for.  Finally, on that topic, I believe that the mere thought of wanting to help the less fortunate, the mere ability to sense the hardships others face, will in itself transform one into a better person and eventually lead one to engage in acts that benefit the larger society in some way.

In short, making a lot of money is not itself is bad – as long as it is not made in a bad way and as long as at least a part of it is spent on less fortunate people around oneself.  Gandhi was never against amassing wealth.  He merely called upon the wealthy to look upon themselves as custodians of their own wealth on behalf of society at large.  He coined the idea of Gopala to explain / justify this philosophy.  While trying to hire me into his fund in 1994, Bill Draper the famous VC, said to me that he was not offering me a fancy pay on the expectation that I would blow it all on myself.  That was coming from a hard-core capitalist!

I want to make one final distinction before I leave this topic.  What about selling something that society does not need at an exorbitant price that fuels consumerism?  Well there is much to be desired about rampant consumerism.  But I would like to believe that as one individual marketer or business manager one cannot stem the flow of consumerism in society.  Selling a premium shirt for Rs 6000 at a gross margin of 75% of not the same as, let us say, promoting the use of substances or even like pushing the clinicians in one’s hospitals to recommend unwanted procedures on to unsuspecting patients.  That reminds me of an interesting question:  What about hard-selling liquor or encouraging people to indulge in it excessively.  You may have seen Seagram’s ads about responsible drinking.  At a more extreme level many investment institutions do not invest in “sin industries” like liquor and casino businesses.  The appropriate response may lie somewhere in-between the Seagram ad and total avoidance of those industries, depending on our personal sensibilities.

That brings me to the question of one’s family.  How much care and concern for one’s family is adequate?  When would one have sacrificed the welfare of one’s family at the altar of one’s success?  By far I see these as among the trickiest questions. 

From the benefit of my own experience – and I have been through a painful one with my mother’s passing – here again I believe corporate careers today demand a lot more in terms of one’s time that one may not be able to attend to an ailing parent every day, less so all the time.  One may not be able to play with one’s children every evening.  One may not be able to spend quality time with one’s spouse every evening.

But I do believe that it is possible to make one’s family believe and realise that they rank high in one’s mindshare.  That when their need is critical one will make a sincere effort to be there when needed.  I would like to believe that even in the highly demanding corporate world of today it is possible to devote that much of mindshare.  I suspect that those who experience conflicts in these priorities are probably saying to themselves, Well given my current race for the next promotion, raise or bonus or whatever, I simply cannot be bothered about my Dad’s visit for his annual health check-up.  It appears to be a question of whether we are willing to allow space to one’s family in the midst of that race.

I have consciously not added two other key dimensions to my first list of questions.  One, what about one’s one sense of professional fulfillment? And one’s sense of relevance in the organization.  Secondly, when does one say that one has had enough of corporate life?  I realise that these are important questions.  But how important these are will vary for each of us.

The tricky part is that I suspect that we often confuse these issues with unhappiness over the other issues that I list above.  One may be unhappy with the last bonus.  And then one may start thinking am I doing anything that is socially responsible as regional head for sales in this organisation?  I think these are two different questions.  One has to be honest enough with oneself that the missed promotion is the pain point and not the lack of social sensibility in one’s corporate job. 

 

As for deciding when one has done enough corporate life, I believe that the answer is when one is ready to retire.  And that moment in time will vary for each of us.  But as in the response to the previous question it is important to acknowledge that one is not / need not retire because the corporate job(s) one has did not allow one to be socially sensitive, ethical or responsible to one’s family.  To those who offer that reason I would ask them why it took them so long to realise the absence of those elements of fulfilment in one’s job.

Nanni...Namaskaaram...