I could not become the CEO of a company.

I could not become the CEO of a company!

I worked for 26 years, which was long enough to become a CEO, yet I couldn’t become.

Some people around me climbed the corporate ladder and made places in the CXO circuit.

I got stuck in the middle management.

Some of you will be able to relate to that feeling.

You think you are doing everything right; you are loyal, sincere, delivering numbers, your team loves you, etc.

Yet you are not going places.

Then there is a crippling feeling, and then you become so-called pragmatic.

You say to yourself, maybe I do not have it on me or, oh! I can’t do bootlicking, and that’s why I am not progressing.

You reconcile with the situation and try to make peace with yourself.

And that’s almost the end of the story.

Every year you get a single-digit hike, and eventually, you become a senior citizen in the company.

Sounds familiar?

But why does it happen?

Because things do not happen, you have to make it happen!

You have to believe that it can happen to you.

More you are sold that you have the potential of CXO, easier it is, next step you need to take is to make a solid execution.

Identify the gap areas in skill sets level, work on your mindset and capitalize on every opportunity to project your competence.

This is not about blowing your trumpet.

It’s about telling your story.

Now, let me look back at my career and analyze why I could not get to the level of CXO.

Don’t get me wrong; this is not a fifty-plus-old, not-so-successful professional whining about things.

Despite little disappointed with myself, I still believe life has been good so far.

When in doubt, I look back at where I started.

I started in the vernacular school in a very remote village in Assam.

My school did not have even four walls; it had only a roof.

When it rained, we all huddled in the middle of the room.

We used to sit on the gunny bags.

We went to the school barefoot.

Therefrom running a business of multi-hundred crores for top IT companies is no mean journey.

Then why am I writing?

Firstly, I could have still done better had I worked on myself a little harder or had somebody been there to mentor me well.

Secondly, can somebody get cues from my life and maybe plan a little better for their own life.

So, here are my cues :

I was underconfident and never believed that I could achieve a CXO position in a large company.

The self-image I created for myself was not congruent with the top business leaders.

I was happy to be part of the crowd rather than get into the limelight.

I would do the job silently and never come up to lead situations proactively if I was not asked to do so.

In fact, I feared the limelight.

I was going with the flow and never masterminded the next move.

I was part of a world where people around me were like me only.

I was happy to flock with them, and I feared to be different, thinking I would be an outcast and abandoned.

The environment I created around me made me so contracted I grew too small for dreaming big.

That does not mean that I did not dream; I did, but those were occasional flings.

There was no long-term commitment, so I did not prepare and act.

Today, in hindsight, I feel that had I dreamt of that, I could have made it probably.

Had it become a survival issue, and if my life had depended on that, I would have done everything possible to make it.

The problem is that we fancy good things in our life, but we shy away from committing the work required for the same.

Now you will ask, even if I put in my best effort, can I be sure of success?

That is where ordinary people and visionaries differ.

Elon Musk is also not 100% sure that he will be building a colony on Mars.

I remember reading somewhere that he regrets that building a colony on Mars may not be achieved in his lifetime; it may take more time.

Successful people work on possibilities.

They are not looking for absolute surety.

Now the question is that, can anybody become a CEO?

I do not know.

But I know that if they believe that they can, then they will be most likely.

People can be someone only if they think that they are born to be that person.

Dreamers build great careers, great businesses.

All visionaries have proved, be it Steve Job, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates.

Apple was created not because of Steve Job’s technical prowess but for audacity for his dream.

Similarly, Tesla was also not created because of Elon Musk’s great technical knowledge but for his power to dream.

Microsoft was created because Bill Gates dreamt of providing a desktop at the very desk, not for only uncanny ability to write programs.

Why only career and business?

All human endeavors' history is about dreams, undying efforts rather than innate talents or qualities born with.

There are innumerable examples where people started their careers on a very humble note but eventually became the echelon of the industry.

That is because of their undying desire, focus, and commitment to achieve more.

Sometimes we give a disproportionate amount of credit to skills.

We know skills can be acquired; they can be perishable.

Particularly so-called Hard or Technical Skills.

People have created legacies only with their creativity, imagination, and unquenched desire to make an impact.

Albert Einstein had dyslexia; a boy with a learning disability became the most profound theoretical scientist of the century.

I had the privilege of occasionally meeting Mr. A H Premji, chairman of Wipro when working for Wipro.

He had to leave Stanford without completing his Engineering after his father’s death to take the baton of his family business.

He never wrote codes yet built a multi-billion dollar IT company.

He could do it because he had a dream.

Mr. Narayana Murthy was rejected for a job in Wipro, and he then built Infosys, which surpassed Wipro in valuation and revenue.

These successes have been possible because of people’s passion because they were driven by a bigger purpose, extreme humility, their ever readiness to learn all the time, and more than everything else, their willingness to sacrifice.

Once you have those qualities in place, you can hire people who can put nuts of bolts business most efficiently; you need to keep them motivated and enable people to perform.

Yes, anybody can be a CEO if that is their calling and they are ready to do whatever it takes to do it.

And the major work to be done is on yourself rather than external factors.

People have to work till the point they become invincible.

For an argument, even if they cannot be CEO, they will be much better off than their current career.

If you commit 100% to the purpose, it is bound to happen.

Becoming CEO is a little rhetorical here, just a metaphor for operating at your highest potential.

Not that everybody wants to be CEO, but we want to be our best at something that we love to do.

Frankly speaking, I never wanted to become CEO but wanted to perform at my best potential.

What is your thought?