Fisherman's Cove: Company off-site

          Given my last post was a downer, I wanted to focus on one of the most positive aspects of being here:  Opportunity.  A few weeks back, I went to Chennai and a nice resort called Fisherman's Cove for a company off-site.  The office flew in everyone at my position and several of the more senior leaders of the office.  The time was spent getting to know one another (since travel model is 5 days a week, hard to know a lot of people well at your own level), gather advice and hear about the firm's prospects in Asia.

            While I was aware of the growth in Asia and my company's rapid growth here, I was still surprised by some of the figures being discussed in terms of the opportunity size.  The most senior partner there said on multiple occasions "I wish I was born when you were".  To illustrate the point, he mentioned the number of partners needed for the GDP/partner ratio to be comparable to other countries.  The figures were staggering since consulting is such a nascent industry today in India.  Effectively, everyone in that room had the opportunity to advance significantly in the firm.  In a traditionally skeptical group of people, everyone was a believer.

            This tremendous growth will also stretch all companies.  Some will go too far and fall away but for the winners, they will have a set of leaders who have risen during a very exciting and challenging period.  These individuals will be highly adaptive, self-reliant, detail-oriented and incredibly driven / motivated to lead their company to the upper echelons of the business world.

 It will be interesting to watch.