The dilemmas of choices – A mixture of kicks and constraints

Opportunities at the business school pose their own dilemmas. One of the biggest I believe is the choice of your career path. I know people who have chalked it out completely, and to be honest, I envy them. For most, including me, we are still defining our career paths.

All career counselors give you a single advice – “Do what you like doing.” Out of my own experience I think it’s a little more complicated than that. What you like doing is just one part of it; a very important one for sure. These are the reasons they give? Well, if you don’t like what you do there is a very good chance that you would not excel. Two, even if you force yourself hard, irrespective of all the glory you won’t be happy. I find both these reasons skewed away from reality. I believe that the choice of your career path depends primarily on the right mix of two things –

· Derivatives that give you the kick
· Your constraints

Things that give you kick are often confused with things that you like doing. In most cases however what gives you the kick is the derivative of what you did and not essentially the actions you performed while you were performing a particular task. For example, you may hate filling excel sheets at two in the morning and binding folders at a photocopier for the next day presentation but the excess money in your bank at the end of the month gives you the kick to pursue a particular career. This is so true at least for one's preliminary years in the banking industry. Who ever I have spoken to so far is excited about the money part of banking which is a derivative rather than the actual work. Is it true only for banking? Not really. People who decide pursuing general management have their own kicks. Here it’s the essence of operational execution and proclivity for power. Again, it’s not about right and wrong, the point I am trying to make is that it’s the result that drive people more than their mere likings.

Constraints on the other hand play a much bigger role. You may want to use constraints and priorities interchangeably here, but the zest is the same. You may call time for family life a constraint or a priority. If you are unmarried you view it as a constraint that you don’t’ want while taking your career decisions. If you are married you want to rename it to ‘priority’ to justify your decisions to yourself.

All in all it’s a complex mix. I believe most here at Wharton are trying to come up with their own ideal mix of kicks and constraints. If the mix is biased towards either there is a good chance that we may end up regretting later.

Continual improvement - Part 1

I am sure I would be writing many posts around this theme. This is the first of the series.

Being surrounded by so many extraordinary people can at times be intimidating. One it gives you the reality check of your own meekness and two it forces you towards self realization. I however am seeing this more as an opportunity to push myself and improve. For example, one big change I am seeing in my own behavior is that I am becoming a better listener. The experiences and backgrounds of people here are so diverse that I am enjoying more just absorbing the experience rather than dispersing my ideology; A very significant shift in my personality. So much so that some of my newly found friends confuse me to be an introvert. I think this change is coming from me being overwhelmed by the immense quality of the human capital around me and my innate need for personal growth. For good or bad, I feel I am becoming more modest J

Another very positive change I am seeing in just three weeks is my comfort towards ambiguity. I have never liked not being in charge of the situation. I always knew what I want and I always had a plan. For the very first time I am seeing the advantage of just going with the flow. I am letting every new exposure come and hit me and all I am doing is absorb. It is different, but it is a lot of fun.

I have always been very open to change so that trait is sure coming to my rescue here. I do see a lot of folks who are very comfortable in the whole setting and I also see folks who are pretty stressed out. I (like many) believe I am pretty much treading a middle path right now. Am I fully comfortable? May be not. Am I getting there? I think so. What ever be the case, I am pretty convinced that coming to Business school was sure an excellent decision.

Images of leadership

Doing this assignment at Wharton about finding an image that describe your idea of leadership (yes you do all this too here) I got the content for my next post. It was a good exercise at the end of it. And trust me if you think hard about your own idea of leadership its not easy. We all end up associating leadership with individual leaders that we know. And then, we try forming our ideas of leadership around the qualities of those individuals. I mean you think of leadership and say you then think of Jack Welch or somebody and then you start defining leadership around the qualities that you find interesting about Jack Welch. I am not 100% sure how effective that is in terms of formulating your leadership style.

So I tried taking a different approach to the assignment, I started with ideas and not people. Without thinking about anybody in particular (Well that was hard, it was as if somebody sits infront of you and asks you to try and not think about a monkey for 30 sec, all you end up thinking about is a - monkey) I tried thinking about what my idea of leadership is and the kind of leader I would want to be. These are the three things I came up with

• leaders foster trust
• leaders nurture confidence
• and leaders drive individuals to the next level

I think all my ideas come from my opinions about how growing others propels your own growth. That's my idea of a leadership. Here is my image of leadership; I hope it captures the three traits i thought about.

Why all techies want to go to VC after an MBA

Believe it or not almost everybody with a tech background here at Wharton wants to join a VC firm post MBA. Here’s my take why

Prestige & Power
VC jobs and firms hold a lot of prestige, especially in the tech domain. The rise and rise of Silicon Valley is so much attributed to the Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.

Money is power & we have seen how VCs hold this powerful position to structure the technology roadmap. Last, with so much competition for so few job positions, the overall industry becomes pretty coveted.

Money and ROI
I am not sure how true it is but all the hearsay and surveys say that VC positions, even as low as associates make a lot of money and I mean lot. Sure MBAs, as always in history, are running behind the money – this makes Private Equity, both LBO and VC the most aspired jobs. With a 150K+ loan you sure are looking at ways for higher return on investment.

We have no other place to go
Well, coming from tech most of us don’t want to get into banking. PE firms don’t take us for we have no banking or deal valuation skills. Some (including me) believe that the first few years are really grunt work and we have pretty much had our share of grunt work in our own industry.

Getting back to a GM/PM position back in tech does not sound very exciting. One its not a lot of money to start with and second most of us have had stellar career growth till now and would have reached to such a position within 4-5 years and a calculated job switch. So why do an MBA and invest so much money and time.

That leaves us pretty much with three options – Entrepreneurship, VC and Consulting (of course if you don’t have a clear untypical goal). Well all techies want to be entrepreneurs at some point in their careers but entrepreneurship is high risk just off school. You really need the right idea and the right team to start something right of school. Chances of doing that are pretty grim. Consulting excites most and hence become the ‘Plan B’. VC becomes a natural choice because we feel that we can leverage our tech experience to make the right investment decisions and have a high growth career.

Caveats I see in an Associate position in a VC firm -

Of course, most of us do not have any deal sourcing, deal negotiation or deal execution skills. And the irony is that associate positions require just that. I could be wrong in this but I think that all we are banking on that time are the skills we gathered in the 2 years of business school. So where thus it lead –
Most get saturated at the associate or principle level and then look for exits in the industry for faster growth. That’s still fine, but what turns me off is that even at an associate position the entrepreneurs do not take us seriously for we have not lived it all and have just landed in the firm using our B School ‘stamp’.

While I search for answers, I have pretty much concluded for that VC positions are great if you are at the partner level, because that’s when you are driving the technology roadmap. I will search for the right path for getting there ( If I decide VC as the career) – Through an associate position with a VC firm, serial entrepreneurship or general management seems the choices today.