Last year I decided to exit my first ever job and enter an unchartered territory with unforeseen challenges in an area I had never touched upon earlier, within the risk management domain. This move was necessary and easy given the challenges facing my then employer. Though it was tough to leave an organization where you have dedicated your first 4 and a half years of professional life, but the decision itself was not so difficult.
A year and a half down the line, I had made a similar decision and this time around though it still is a necessary decision, me having to make it, but it's a difficult one. I have been pondering over the circumstances that made this decision so difficult for me, and concluded the best way to analyse is to write it down.
Well first, there is the professional aspect, and though I have written off the financial aspects of this transition, I just concentrate on what I have to gain and to lose professionally. First, it's that professionally cosy environment you work in, where you have performed well in the last year and have the required knowledge and understanding of the functional aspects of your job in order to be able to perform well in the next year. This confidence or support is difficult to find in any new role or job that is being considered. Of course, if you don't have any option this factor is ruled out, but it becomes difficult when you have the option - the option to stay and be confident that you are secure for the next year or to move on and take the risk of being exposed to unnecessary insecurity. Probably, if this was the only factor influencing my decision, I would have never moved on, but there are yet others carrying more weight than this one. The second factor up for the trials would be the learning curve. I have a general notion that you can do anything you would still learn and be more experienced after each task you complete, the thing that matters is the complexity and the quality of the task you do and the value addition to your profile once you have completed this task - successfully or unsuccessfully. This is something that influenced the decision to a great extent, as the new opportunity was providing me a chance to move on to the business itself, probably to a support function within the business from an external support function where most of the complexities of the business itself are abstracted and it's more the technical aspects that you focus on. This movement to the business side and it's immediate impact on the learning curve was a big deciding factor. Finally there was this sense of leadership that I have carried around for long but have never got a chance to exercise it. Though I had a hazy view of me having a chance to do so in the near future in my current job, but the new one offered this in a much more complete way.
The three factors mentioned have gone through my mind a million times in the past couple of weeks, and have confused me what should I vouch for - stay or move on, This was further complicated as I was finding it difficult to assign weights to these factors to come to a final conclusion. I had to resolve this by assigning more weight to factors carrying a high risk but high return and a low weight to factors associated with uncertainty and unchanged return. Having done so, I got an almost balanced outcome - now what should I do, I have wrecked my brains at such a complicated analysis and still I am undecided.
This is when the personal aspect takes the front stage in driving my decision, The only question to be asked, where do I see myself in the next ten years, once I answered this and was sure of it, it became necessary for me to take this decision. I am not sure if this is the right decision or the wrong one but the important thing is that it is absolutely necessary for me to take this in order to find out and give myself a chance to be where I want to be in the next decade.
Hope I have not bored you, even if I have, I hope at least 1% of this would influence your next big decision. I would like to end this with a quote which my dear colleague and friend shared with me after I resigned -
“As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavour,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.”
(Hermann Hesse)
Thanks to all.
Chetan
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