An old colleague of mine posed a very tough question to me yesterday. She talked about a particular posting that was given to her during my tenure that, she felt on the hindsight, pulled down her career prospects leaving her far behind her other contemporaries in the rat race. She also candidly admitted that she could pose this question to me onlywhen I was no longer in the services consequent to my superannuation.
Frankly speaking, I couldn’t recall the event as there were several such instances where in my long tenure I had to take decisions that were unsavoury to the people affected by such decisions. But I distinctly recall her to be a good, intelligent, reliable officer on whom I would rely upon for difficult assignments. While expressing my inability to explain the rationale behind that decision, I advised her to move on because not only the rankings in rat race, rat race itself was temporary that was of no consequence once the tenure of an office ends.
There are so many articles being published these days on the management policies, work life balance, PMS etc., but there’s something that’s beyond all these that’s sometimes referred to as larger or greater purpose. After bowing out of rat race after active participation for almost 4 decades, I think our personal beliefs, contributions, passions, families etc are of far greater importance than promotions and postings for which we toil all our professional lives.
Arvind Arya blog 