She was born in Odisha and grew up in Pondicherry and after getting an engineering degree, she began her career as a coder at Infosys. Today, she makes up the 10 per cent women who make it to partners in top management consulting and strategy firms. Namrata Dubashi, partner, McKinsey & Company, shares her journey to show how women can — and must — push for leadership roles.

CALL OF CONSULTING 

Even while I was studying engineering, it was quite evident to me that while I quite enjoyed analytics and the scientific approach, core engineering was not for me. The problems of management were more appealing, and two years of working at Infosys confirmed those views. I couldn’t imagine making a career out of software engineering.

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore changed my outlook. I think just the exposure to different kinds of problems, to academic literature of all kinds, the way you can think about strategy, the way you can think about marketing, it just opened that up. The view of an organisation, why would you even have an organisation, the difference between markets and hierarchies, all of that fascinated me. If I had my way I would probably get into academics, do a PhD and get into research. So for me consulting was, and even today is, like a great middle ground between doing pure academics and research, which doesn’t have much application, and getting into a pure corporate profit and loss type of role. It gives you the time and space to think and push for insight. Also, I met my husband (Anirvan Panth) at IIM Bangalore. So that was pretty significant as well.

THE HURDLE

The beauty of consulting is in its diversity, the travel, the different kinds of problems. I think the first three years of my 12 years at McKinsey, I did everything — IT, cement, telecom, media, retail. The diversity of sectors is just fascinating. And, as is natural, you start to gravitate towards a sector. I started to gravitate towards technology. I think just to be a coder and have that perspective and then as a consultant to get that perspective of an organisation is very different and the group of people within the tech practice were people I naturally gravitated towards. For the first eight or nine years of my McKinsey career, I essentially did technology, so technology providers, Indian, global and of all scales and all kinds of problems — strategy, operations, transformation. 

What also happened during this phase was, for the first five years of our marriage we lived in two different cities and one day we just said ‘enough is enough’. My husband decided to join IIM Calcutta as a professor and so I just decided to follow and we set up home in Calcutta. For the first couple of years I was still travelling up and down, but given that all of the tech work is on the west coast it just became insane.

I thought about if this was sustainable and if I was still going to do this. What was very clear was that we were going to stay in one city, so that was not negotiable. I still enjoyed what I was doing at McKinsey, so I was unwilling to let that go. As I started having conversations with my mentors and my sponsors, we decided to try something and so over the last three years I have been spearheading McKinsey in eastern India and Bangladesh. Today, 100 per cent of my portfolio is clients in this part of the world. 

So it has pushed me to reinvent myself. This not something I would have done naturally. But I now love it. I serve industrial clients, I serve the government, I serve family-owned businesses. My topics vary from economic development to digital and analytics, manufacturing operations, due diligences. For me it has brought about a whole new surge of energy.

THE SWITCH

Four years ago, I decided to opt for the flexibility of a part-time programme because I was running at a pace I didn’t want to and it was just getting unmanageable with the travel, the distance, the little time I was spending at home, and it was out of balance. I wanted to do this work but I just wanted to do it at a slower pace. 

Not everyone understands flexibility, so you start to hear comments around ‘are you phasing out?’, ‘maybe you are not serious any more’, ‘you are off the track’. Absolutely well-meaning, well-intentioned people, friends, who just didn’t get it. So, initially it was frustrating. Teams don’t necessarily understand what it means. There are questions, ‘you are not there, can we still reach out to you, can we call you?’ and there is a need for balance there. If you say yes, and they do too much of that, then the whole part-time thing gets vitiated. Figuring out how to navigate that took sometime, but today I am absolutely comfortable with the 80 per cent programme I have opted for.

Some people from the beginning understood it and those were the people with whose support I actually moved. I can see the needle moving in some but there is still a vast majority where it has not changed. The change that has happened in India, for us, is that there are a lot more people today who are on this programme, and that is a good indicator of the fact that it has slowly starting to become a little more acceptable.

The other big shift that happened, something I didn’t realise, and something that again took some time to hit me was that the share of women leaders is sad, compared to the number of women at the entry level. And when you look at family-owned businesses and industrial companies in this part of the world, I think it is tougher. For example, I went into a client meeting a couple of years ago in this part of the world, my colleague had just stepped out and we were going to start the meeting and he says, ‘should we wait for the team leader to come in?’, but I was the team leader. There have been multiple instances of that. 

I don’t need to fight every one of those battles but you do have to push back at some of them. It is easier to do when they say it, but a lot of time these things are left unsaid. So I think in my own evolution as a professional, my sensitivity to some of these issues have become starker as I have taken on this role in Calcutta. 

Today, I am part of the All-In Initiative that we are driving within McKinsey in India. I am driving the sponsorship programme for women in India and it’s become a personal mission. Two years ago if you had asked me I would have said, ya it’s okay, everyone makes their own way but I think I have a very different view point today. I believe that the needle’s got to move on the share of women in leadership, and for us it has got to start within McKinsey. We are after all a microcosm of the environment that we operate in. That a bunch of us has been successful is testament to the support we've got from our sponsors and our mentors, most of whom have been men. But it is clearly not enough because there are just not that many of us in the partnership in McKinsey India. My mission is to change that. 

NEED FOR A NEW STRATEGY

When we look around it feels like we have survived, as one of our male colleagues pointed out to us. So there is a very tight bonding between the small bunch of us who’ve ‘made it’ and it feels good. I think the conversation has started to shift but there is a long way to go before the needle moves on the numbers. The number (of women) at entry are far higher, usually three or four times the percentage who make it to leadership positions. That’s got to change, and it is a steep challenge.

There are two things companies can do about correcting this imbalance. One is that if you are serious about it then make it a top-three agenda item. When you have a business meet or the top team is meeting business priorities, are you discussing women? If it is not on the agenda, then you are not serious. And if it does become that, like every other goal you will measure that goal and you will have an implementation plan, you will have sponsorship and you will put in what is needed. 

The second thing I have is around unconscious bias. Are we really talking about it enough to uncover unconscious bias? For example, I remember this one person at entry level saying women are a CSR agenda. Someone pointed out to me that I am tougher on the women than the men on my team. So men on my team get away with more nonsense than women. When it was pointed out I realised it was true. And there is a gamut of such unconscious bias.  

A lot of companies are doing a lot on the recruitment front. At entry level the number of women getting in is actually reasonable healthy, but as our research has shown that it is not just one glass ceiling, there are multiple and you lose people at multiple levels. I think really zeroing in on who are those women and how can you make them successful and solving problems for them one by one is needed. I don’t think there is one broad sweep answer. Because for each of us who are there, we have had a different stories with different problems and different solutions. 

Creating opportunities is for both men and women, but you also have to create an environment where women don’t drop off, because the challenges on the social front aren’t going away. All of their responsibilities at home will continue. So women will continue when they feel there is at least a potential to be successful. That she is getting set up for success. No one can assure 100 per cent, but at least if I can feel that I am in an environment that is setting me up for success I will soldier on.

For me flexibility gave me the option, but also there was a core group of four-five people who really stood by me, who told me it was fine. And if you don’t have that quorum then it is hard. But I am optimistic and think every organisation has people like them.

I think women also have to take charge. I don’t think we should sit around for that to happen. Define very clearly what is non-negotiable for you. For me it was health and spending time at home. For my colleague it is about being able to spend time with her children, for someone else it is travel. So take charge, define your non-negotiable and fiercely guard it. What I am also saying is that you need to give way on some other things. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought which says you can get everything. There are trade-offs and there are choices to be made. Just be clear about which ones you want to make.  

As told to Chandreyee Chatterjee