The Executive Never Sleeps

REMEMBER the time when jobs used to be neatly packed in sealed nine-to-five envelopes with regular breaks, well-defined responsibilities and rigidly structured salaries? Those jobs are fast going the way of the dinosaur. Instead, work—a lot of it—is in. In corporate India, as industries and services get more competitive and spread their wings across the border, time zones get blurred. The typical executive or professional today is finding his workday stretching far beyond his job profile and spilling over into what was so far his personal territory. And in the relentless drive to maximise his gains from the professional environment, he is juggling hectically to absorb the rising elasticity of work.

 "The 40-hour week is a relic of the past. A 60-hour week is more of a ground reality," says Ravi Virmani of human resources consultant Noble & Hewitt. "A day at PepsiCo is made up of 12 to 14 hours. Doesn’t stop at that. It spills over to non work hours through phones, fax and computers," says Mahendra Swarup, executive director, PepsiCo. Corroborates Nandan M. Nilekeni, deputy managing director of Infosys Technologies: "The line between the hours of work and non-work life has blurred. My work begins at daybreak with a business call from the US. And there’s no saying when it’ll close. It depends on the e-mail messages. It may even stretch to midnight while entertaining business clients."

Are companies driving people harder? Or are executives being suddenly bitten by the workaholics’ bug? Or is it globalisation that is sucking the Indian executive into a free-flowing, timeless orbit?

A bit of all this really. Globalisation is the single most important factor that is reshaping the professional work environment. An environment that demands and ensures that the executive’s day doesn’t end with sunset. The night doesn’t necessarily herald the break of another day. One work day often glides effortlessly into another as globe-trotting executives hop from one time zone to the next and one geographical boundary to another on the call of duty.

Take the case of Mohan Menon, sales director, Motorola India. Menon reports to the vice-president for Asia-Pacific who sits in Singapore, a fact that makes him fly to the country at least once a month. His typical time schedule: Board the Singapore Airlines flight from Delhi at 11.15 pm after a full day’s work, spend roughly three hours on the flight to reach at 7.05 am Singapore time, freshen up at the hotel and reach in time for a 9 o’clock meeting. He finishes the day at 5.30 in Singapore to reach home at around 9 pm Indian time. The next day he may be off by train to Jalandhar. "It’s a number of days rolled into a day," says Menon.

Menon is hardly an exception among executives. "I meet my industry colleagues more often in airport lounges and the aircraft aisle than anywhere else. When I am not travelling, I am in the field, office, hotel and home in that order," says Anurag Srivastav, managing director, Parametric Technology for India and SAARC countries. Srivastav’s family is based in Singapore and he meets them only once a month.

One factor which is imposing this itinerary is the organisational structure of TNCs wherein staff functions like finance, human resources or sales are aligned on a regional basis. Specialists in these areas report to their regional heads and also to functional bosses at headquarters. Companies like AT&T, Motorola and American Express amongst others are structured in this format.Executives in these companies, therefore, not only report to a country manager in India but to a boss who sits in, say, Hong Kong or London. This structure of functioning demands interaction with countries in a different time zone.

Besides, there is a deeper change that is taking place in the domestic environment that is forcing executives to break out of the traditional mould of regular jobs. This change stems from the new forces of competition unleashed by the global economy. Taking shape is a new services economy which aims to mollycoddle the customer 24 hours a day. Banking is now "anytime anywhere banking", and "the Citi never sleeps".

The rub-off on traditional sectors is palpable. "There is this constant need to be at the place of action. You no longer have the luxury of letting others take care of what’s happening. There’s no enabling super-organisation anymore. Decisions have to be on-the-spot snapshot verdicts. Competition is ensuring that," says Swarup. If one company cannot serve up a customer what he needs or expects, a rival will. "You have to be on your toes all the time and broaden your horizons," says Bishwajit Parashar, marketing manager for 3Com. "The whole work situation is very dynamic today. One has to think harder and smarter to provide value-addition to customers, employees and shareholders. That’s the challenge of work today," says Sanjay Rishi, business head, American Express. "On hindsight, nobody would excuse you for not being able to give your best," says Swarup.

As a result, no one’s taking any chances. Companies are breaking the frontiers of time and space to cut costs, standardise service and implement global processes. American Express Travel Related Services, for instance, has reorganised its entire financial backroom accounting at three resource centres—at Phoenix in the US, Blighton in the UK, and New Delhi in India. Consequently, Delhi executives work on a schedule dictated by Singapore or Indonesia or Hong Kong times depending on the market they are servicing. Technology is the great enabler. "With my laptop I’m connected to everywhere from anywhere. And my pager keeps me in constant touch with customers," says Menon. And e-mail is in.

SO is teleconferencing. "Earlier I would be telecommuting once a month. Now I make five conference calls a week," says Virmani. "We’re no longer living in the industrial age, where the worker leaves the tools behind as he steps out of the factory. This is the information age where the worker’s tools are his intellectual ability and infotech gadgets. You can’t leave your brains behind. Hence there is no downtime, not even in the middle of the night, not even when you are vacationing on the beach. Newer technologies like cellphone are ensuring that," says P. Rajendran, chief operating officer, NIIT.

Global acceptance of Indian managerial skills has also spurred the process. Culturally, Indian managers are among the most adaptable and flexible, says Virmani. "If an American Fortune 500 company were to implement the 360-degree feedback process (which entails evaluation by subordinates, peers, bosses and business associates) in its subsidiary in Hong Kong or China, it would invariably meet with stiff resistance. In India, it would safely be able to implement it," he says, by way of example. Consequently, more and more and more Indian managers are transcending country limits to take up regional responsibilities. Naturally, these men are eager to prove that they are as good as anyone else on the planet. "Earlier only a few senior managers got regional responsibilities, now even middle managers are moving up to them. The increasing geographical spread of jobs means an increased demand on their time," says Virmani.

The other aspect is that as a market too, India is suddenly high up on the TNCs’ list. Consider consumer non-durables. While in the West, growth is hovering at a 2 to 3 per cent, in India, it’s a jumping-jack 30 to 60 per cent. At the current dollar-rupee parity, this might not be making any terrible difference to the bottomline of the parent company, but if enough volumes are generated in the coming years, it might shore up profits significantly. "Earlier, a monthly report to the headquarter abroad would suf-fice. Now the person sitting in London or New York wants an update on a day-to-day basis. Nobody, in marketing, finance or HR wants to miss out on any part of the action in the success story that’s unfolding under their noses," says Swarup. "I am being given an enormous opportunity and responsibility today because as an Indian manager I hold the key to a vast untapped market that is waiting to explode," says Srivastav.

EGGING him on to put in his best is also TNC culture: a belief in non-hierarchical, flat organisations that respond faster and better to market needs. Of course, that makes life tougher. "Earlier, most senior managers would have a team of assistants, analysts and managers to help them. Now look over your shoulders and even your secretary may be missing," says Swarup. Secretarial and support jobs are fast vanishing from organisational matrices. Managers are increasingly looking after their own paperwork and managing their own appointments.

Motivating them to do so is the instant-rewards-for-results TNC tenet. "When rewards are built around results and not activity, it liberates you from the 9-to-5 routine and puts you in a flexible time mould that makes for more productivity, creativity and innovation. I feel more in control and more motivated to perform," says Parashar. For other managers, monetary benefits provide the incentive to work those extra four to five hours.

In the new work culture, everything is fluid. Attendance registers are disappearing as is the concept of casual leave and privilege leave. Pay packets are also becoming more flexible and performance-linked.

Executives are no longer shy to admit their craving for money nor are companies stingy in awarding monetary rewards.

The bottomline: the new Indian manager is a highly self-motivated man pushing at the frontiers of his job responsibility. Srivastav of Parametric Technology is looking to head the Asia-Pacific operations of his company soon. Rishi of American Express punches in the maximum in a 10-hour day by practicing Steven Covey’s prescriptions and builds his stamina by playing squash. The new manager is not a workaholic in the sense that there’s nothing compulsive about the hours he puts in. Call him rather a self-motivated staminiac who finds the environment too challenging to let time or energy impose limits.

As Menon puts it: "In any other place or time or job, you would be playing the rules of the game. But in the current Indian environment, with new industries springing up, you are setting the rules and making others play. That’s the stimulating factor. It keeps me going." Says Rajendran: "I’m working longer than ever before. But the diversity and richness of work—the opportunity to interact with the best minds across the globe and to soak in market dynamics of the most nascent economies as well as the most mature ones, more than compensates."

All, it appears, that today’s Indian executive has to lose is a belief that the day has only 24 hours.