Lessons from My First Job: Partha Basu, Akzo

Partha Basu, CFO and Whole Time Director, Akzo Nobel India and the author of the book ‘Make It or Break It’ shares his journey of learning from unlearning
My First Job: I was a management trainee in IFB Industries Ltd.
My Experience: I was amongst the first few employees at IFB’s new venture to create washing machines. I was posted at a plant in Corlim, which is away from the main city of Panjim, Goa. My seniors did not restrict my job to the job description. I was given freedom given to go beyond the function and work with larger teams. I worked closely with manufacturing, stores, IT, planning, logistics, projects, which allowed me to learn operations at an early age. I was fortunate to have seniors who guided me at every step. I still remember the pride and joy I felt when we invoiced the first machine from the factory.
Things I learnt: Being away from home for the first time taught me a lot. My biggest learning was when I realised life is beyond the safe hands of parents. I learnt to manage myself as an individual, live on my own.
Skills I Acquired: Managing adversity, team work, importance of unlearning and relearning, managing transition, ability to accept mistakes, power of positive thinking.
My Manager’s teaching:  Late Mr. B Mukherjee was my manager and mentor. I was fresh from the college with no idea about the corporate world.  Being away from home and friends I was home sick. He treated me like his younger brother, who I could share my problems. His message to me was ‘if you work you will make mistakes. If you don’t, you will never. Hence never be ashamed to make mistakes.’
Turning Point in my Career: The turning point in my life came when I decided to leave my job at the Tata group and decided to leave my home town Kolkata to join a start-up joint venture between IFB and Autoliv. I was 27 years old and had a chance to manage an independent finance department reporting to the head of business. I was advised against this move by many as it was ‘risky’.  However, I am happy that I took that decision that day.
My most crucial step/assignment: It is difficult to single out one assignment. However the one that I can cite is of when I took over as General Manager-Commercial in Coke, I had very limited exposure to logistics & planning function. But, my zeal to learn and excel paid back since that assignment taught me how tough operational roles can be. Similarly, when I was driving the margin management for Asia in Whirlpool, after many months I realised that I was the only finance guy leading a large geography, the rest of the team comprised of marketing/sales folks. That assignment allowed me to learn about global business. Similarly when I was raising fund at SpiceJet, it was an immensely important assignment for me since at that point of time, the economic scenario was difficult and raising fund were not so easy. It too gave me a great exposure.
My Advice: There is life beyond the so called ‘success’; and the four walls of your office. One must explore it to understand and enjoy every day of his/her corporate journey.
Where I see myself 5 years from here: My dream is to mentor young India, especially the youth from tier 2 or 3 cities. This would also help me walk closer to my dream.