Deepak Mehra - Ready, Steady, Go!

Praise for Ready, Steady, Go!

Ready, Steady, Go! reveals the essential rules of career building.A must-read for anyone carving out a career in the corporate world.

RAKESH SINGH, Group Head - Investment Banking and Capital Markets, HDFC Bank.

A refreshing book full of practical insights, real life examples and the right values. A must-read for young professionals who are aspiring to achieve corporate success.

SANJOY SEN, Head of Asia Pacific - Retail Banking, ANZ.

Ready, Steady, Go! is the new mantra for the high achievers. Deepak has put together a great recipe for success in the corporate world. A must-read for anyone with ambitious career plans.

SAURABH KAPOOR, Director - Ericsson India Global Services.

Deepaks book clearly elevates our understanding of what goes into making a successful career. A compelling read for anyone looking for a perfect work/life balance.

VIKAS JAIN, Former Director, General Motors India.

Published by Jaico Publishing House
A-2 Jash Chambers, 7-A Sir Phirozshah Mehta Road
Fort, Mumbai - 400 001
www.jaicobooks.com

Deepak Mehra

READY, STEADY, GO!
ISBN 978-81-8495-654-2

First Jaico Impression: 2015

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

With love to my parents Vijai and Kulyash Rai Mehra, my wife Ruchi, daughters Shreea and Sstuti and all my family members. I treasure your blessings, good wishes and unconditional love.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank you, the reader, for picking up this book. Your personal success in the corporate world is now a matter of choice, not change. Please read this book, share it with others and gift it to anyone you really care for.

I would like to thank my literary agent Urmila Dasgupta for representing me and finding a top-notch publisher.

I would like to thank Jaico Publishing House for believing in the manuscript and making this book a reality. Thank you, Akash Shah, Sandhya Iyer, Vijay Thakur, Nita Satikuwar and Disha Jayadeep for your efforts, and to my editor Srija Basu for your valuable contributions to the book.

I would like to thank my parents, both published authors in their respective fields, for being the inspiration to write.

Finally, I would like to thank the three business leaders who have played a tremendous role in shaping my career and professional thoughts: Sarvesh Sarup, Ricky Madan and Moukarram Atassi. I thank you, gentlemen, for being my friends, philosophers and guides.

Introduction

S everal academically brilliant students, who could endure the tough competition and grinding selection process at school, college, and university, eventually bag a lucrative career, but soon find themselves at sea, when they are in the complex world of a corporate. Even though it is assumed that good students would make successful corporate executives, in reality this may not always be true. Havent we all come across intelligent and hardworking executives, who were bright and brainy and had everything going for them during their academic life, but are now toiling without reward or recognition while many others just seem to whiz by? Many of these dedicated and passionate employees are inundated with work; they slog late-hours to ensure their bosses meet their deadlines and their organizations look good and are in a way the back-bone of many organizations. Even though they end up laboring and carrying the load of the organization, many fail to make it when it comes to rising up the levels of hierarchy. They are a delight to their bosses who love to use these zealous workers, but very often a colleague who is seemingly ordinary or less deserving gets to the next level faster! Sadly, many of these capable and committed employees end up being bitter and frustrated because success eludes them.

In many of these cases the problem can be traced back to the attitudes and attributes these executives developed way back during school and college days. Many professionals fail to realize that there is a world of difference between school life and corporate life. The mind-set they acquired in school was relevant for academic learning and appropriate for the classroom environment. However, success in the real world is a different ball-game. Very often, the tenets of success that worked wonders in school suddenly seem to not work at the place where this very school led us to. They fail to recognize that they have to completely overhaul their outlook and conduct in order to succeed in the real world.

So, while your organization may conduct an orientation program to make you productive for achieving its goals, you need to personally take a re-orientation program unlearn what was acquired at school and learn new mind-sets that can help you transcend from the Classroom to Corporate Office and achieve your personal goals.

The purpose of this book is to provide such a re-orientation program and define the basic rules of success in the corporate world. This book presents a collection of highly practical ideas, rules, suggestions, tips and even warnings to help you negotiate this switch from the classroom to the office and jump-start your career.

This book proposes a three-pronged Ready, Steady, Go or in other words Prepare, Protect and Propel strategy for jump-starting your career and winning in this unique race:

1. Ready!
   Objective: To prepare.
   Executives starting out in the corporate world need to put in extensive groundwork to ensure a smooth and a successful ascent. This includes developing the basic traits and characteristics that every organization expects its employees to possess. As we will see in the book, in many cases these are vastly different from the basic attributes that an educational establishment expects from its students. The presence of these basic skills may not necessarily boost someones career prospects for the employer expects these in any case, but their absence will surely rob the person of opportunities for personal growth irrespective of how good the performance is.
   Rules governing the preparatory skills are covered in Rules #1 through #19.
2. Steady!
   Objective: To protect.
   Many executives entering the corporate world sabotage their own careers unknowingly, while engrossed in performing their tasks with all possible dedication and commitment. They lack defensive skills to protect themselves not from others, but from themselves. They need to acquire skills that are not necessarily developed during student years since there was never a real need for them there. These skills act as a harness that protects a person from slipping back while climbing up the pyramid vertically.
   Rules on how to develop defence mechanisms are covered from Rules #20 through #40.
3. Go!
   Objective: To propel.
   This set of skills helps to develop the attitude for altitude and thereby skirt the forces of corporate gravity something akin to the booster rockets that provide escape-velocity to spaceships. In their eagerness to excel, young executives are so focussed on their work that they often fail to see the bigger picture. Skills that serve in developing the bigger perspective of work, of other people, of life and of self are required to boost a career to lofty heights.
   Rules for developing these physical, mental and spiritual skills are covered in Rules #41 through #59.