Roopa Unnikrishnan - The Career Catapult: Shake-up the Status Quo and Boost Your Professional Trajectory

Shake Up the Status
Quo and Boost Your
Professional Trajectory

ROOPA UNNIKRISHNAN

Copyright 2017 by Roopa Unnikrishnan

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

CAREER CATAPULT

EDITED BY ROGER SHEETY

TYPESET BY PERFECTYPE, NASHVILLE, TENNESEE

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Dedicated to

My father, whose vision and work ethic is, and always will be, a key motivator.

My mother, whose steel backbone and determination is part of my core.

Sree, Durga, and Krishna who surround me every day with sheer joy.

Jalal uncle, who taught me the special magic of the shooting sport.

TP and Lekha who have been like an added set of parents to me.

My siblings, who taught me to keep my chin up, always.

And a special thanks to the global community of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), Ray and Steph, who supported my research efforts immensely

We live in an evolving economic environment, one where job security and certainty for the future are a distant memory. The old rules for navigating the turbulent waters of employment dont apply anymore. In the face of these changes, its easy to become fearful and discouraged. In The Career Catapult, through my experience as an innovation and career consultant, I give passionate individuals regardless of their current position in the job hierarchya way to gaze into this uncertain future and shape it to their advantage.

Using the skills and knowledge gained from working with Fortune 500 companies toward success, I look forward to walking you through a doable and innovative five-step plan to achieve your goals in business and find the fulfillment and sense of adventure that everyone truly desires at their core.

This book may challenge your preconceived notions of success and guide you toward defining achievement for yourself, equipping you to seize the endless opportunities to make that success a reality in your own life. People who will find The Career Catapult essential for career growth are those who are wondering whether theyre in the right job, in the right organization, or in the right industry. They worry that their true purpose is calling them, but they just cant hear it. Or perhaps they arent entirely satisfied with their job, the pay, or their performance. These are the people who likely believed they would achieve something way bigger than mere compliant satisfaction. With The Career Catapult they still can.

When someones career trajectory flatlines, then its time for a disruption. Using the same disciplines that innovative companies use to achieve high-level success, this five-discipline plan for personal success guides readers to disrupt the status quo and make the leap toward true satisfaction in business and life. I call one of the key elements bottling serendipity, because there are opportunities constantly presenting themselvessometimes as obstacles, sometimes as weak signals, and sometimes as trendsthat The Career Catapult thoughtfully grabs a hold of to drive change in peoples lives and careers.

A few years ago, I set out to frame my own sense of selfwhat drives me, and hence, what drives my actions? Here is the story of my personal journey, which helped lead me to sharing these insights with you.

Youd think Id be the last person to write about serendipity.

I was 13 when I first contemplated the end of life as Id known it, the youngest child in a quintessentially striving, middle-class Indian family: three children, a stay-at-home mother, and a father serving as an officer in the highly respected Indian police. Then one day, he was no longer reachable. My fathers disappearance unleashed a combination of political and professional conflicts that hit our family. It rocked me to my core. Nothing had ruffled the calm surface of my life until a sunny Friday morning in 1987, when we were turfed out of our flatthe physical manifestation of having been jolted out of our life, out of comfort, out of certainty, out of the future we had expected, and into a very dark unknown. Although my father was back with us within the year, in the eyes of society, we were condemned. With these circumstances and the questions they raised came a black hole of issues that had to be considered and confronted.

As a sheltered 13-year-old, I could in no way understand what had happened to cause our change in circumstances, but I quickly comprehended the nosedive into toxicity from what had been a comfortably elite perch. I saw clearly that I could either curl inward and wait for the bad stuff to go away, or find a way to do precisely the opposite. That was the clarifying part about the jolt.

Curling inward seemed a deadening choice; I went the opposite way. I had earlier shown a talent, encouraged by my father, for rifle shooting. With the support of my mother with her spine of steel, my uncle, and my exceptionally kind shooting coach, I entered competitionspublic derision and hostility be damned. Putting myself out there like that was my way of clearing away the fear and embarrassment and asserting instead, This is me; I am here. I will disrupt everything you think you know about me! I decided to snatch victory from the fangs of dishonor. This was the cleansing part of the jolt.

Learn from the last shot and keep going. That is how my shooting coach always put it, and it is what the sport teaches. Olympic-style shooting competitions had you shooting 60 shots in about as much timean hour and 15 minutes. The goal was to shoot right through the center of the targetthe 10 ringaim, breath, account for wind and other factors, squeeze the trigger, follow through, and then look through the telescope to see where the shot landed. Get too excited by a 10 and you risk raising your heart rate and messing up the next shot; get too dismayed by a bad shot and you dont focus on the next shot. This is yogic non-attachment at its best!

I began to win competitionslots of them. Among other victories, I was named Indias 1999 Arjuna Award winner for shooting (Indias hall of fame for all sports in India) and in 1998 I brought home the gold medal and record in the Commonwealth Games. It was gratifying indeed to make my own headlinesRoopa Wins Gold!and to realize I had the skills and power to create my own future. You take what you can from the last shot, set up the next, assess whats before you, and keep going. Thats the liberating part of the jolt.