I never really wrote much about my explosive ‘career-reset’ moment of late last year. On one level it was brought about by the equally-explosive changes taking place at the company where I worked, and an increasing realisation that I was neither value-aligned nor in agreement with their strategic direction. (There were other reasons too which I can’t go into in a public forum at this time.) But it was just as much caused by the slow simmer of change that’s been brewing in my personal life – no, let’s say “in my true self” – for a good few years now.
Of course, I have been reflecting deeply these last 12 months on that episode, the why’s and the how’s of it, in amongst all the studying, experimenting and exploring I’ve been doing. But it somehow didn’t seem appropriate to write publically about it before.
I started this year with a clear goal to pivot to a new career direction, one that’s underpinned by emerging technology, since I saw it (still do see it) as a fundamental ingredient of any successful career or professional role in the next ten years or so.
In support of that goal I’ve been spending a good deal of my time exploring and studying emerging technology like AI, machine learning, neural networks as well as getting my hands dirty with various self-initiated programming and data science projects.
I was struggling though to develop a grand unified theory of my career: what should it look like if it was no longer going to be accountancy? Perhaps that’s a reflection of my indecisive nature (always seeing more than one option makes it hard do plump for just one). But maybe it’s deeper than that; maybe it’s because I instinctively recognised the need to keep options open, allowing me to sweep up all these disparate strands and experiences and weave them together into something stronger and more meaningful, as well as something uniquely mine.
Working on a consultancy basis part-time for my former employer – on a systems implementation project – prevented me from making a clean break (but helped me keep some financial stability for which I’m grateful). But that project got shelved so I’m back doing accountancy stuff for them until the end of the year. I can’t hide how personally disappointed I was at that turn of events – I was learning so much and I really believed in the good of what we were trying to achieve with that project.
But working on that systems project helped me gain a new perspective on ‘the business of business’. I was able to see the company – the ‘activity’ or ‘purpose’ it’s engaged in – as more than just a collection of ‘things’ or ‘tasks’ or individual actions each employee and each department was doing in support of that business’s activity or purpose. I was able to see the relationships between the different people, the different departments or functions in a new light. The information flows and processes that should have encompassed all departments, as well as the bottlenecks and communication failures holding them up, along with all the fear-driven tensions and the politicking.
While I probably didn’t fully realise it at the time, I should have been there not as someone just doing more activities along side the activities others were doing. Not just carrying out this task or that action (finding out peoples’ needs, configuring the system, setting up new processes, testing things, training people). But helping to bring people together into a new wider understanding of how they should and could work together as one team united by a common purpose.
As a key player in bringing together the company and the new system and helping it fit together and work seamlessly without causing disruption or interruption to the underlying business purpose, my number one role was facilitator of change. I had long sensed a need for change and advocated on behalf of it. I rationally understood and argued for that change. And here I was now, helping to facilitate it. It should have been a dream job and a dream experience.
Well, no systems implementation is ever easy. One moves (or, should move) very rapidly from idealism to realism, from dreaming of elysian fields to just slogging their way towards ‘good enough’ and ‘just get it done, we can perfect it on the tail-end’. Not everyone came with us on that journey into cold, stark reality. Not everyone kept the faith. Perhaps most didn’t have the initial vision that lead to that unswerving faith in the first place.
And maybe that’s a pointer to something about me, something which sets me apart and makes me different? Not everyone ‘thinks in systems’; they’re too busy ‘doing’ the ‘stuff’ that needs to get done.
But this summer, that systems role helped me see how, despite my commitment to a systemic approach, I don’t yet have all the skills and tools I need to ensure I can successfully facilitate that transition to a systems-based or holistic business*. The spirit was willing but the mind-body-personality complex was unable to act in accordance with that will.
So I had to do something if my vision of a greater systems-driven efficiency in the world wasn’t to die a death as a result of that one bad experience. This was a critical factor in my decision to start studying the OU’s System’s Thinking in Practice post-graduate programme.
So now, my stated career-change goals have shifted and pivoted again. And I’m committed to keeping things fluid and open, to see where things take me… I know the intellectual challenge and rigour of a post-grad course of study – while obviously difficult – will be immensely rewarding for me at this mid-life inflection point.
I’m looking forward to kicking off my studies with module TU812 Managing systemic change: inquiry, action and interaction. One part of this module is to blog about my reflections on my own developing systemic approach and systemic practice. So this blog will move heavily in this direction for the next few months. All my reflections and explorations on this module will be found under the category Systems Thinking and will be tagged TU812.
* It’s worth bearing in mind that, while I was always quick to judge and disparage myself for not having all the skills to single-handedly drive through the change that was so desperately needed, I have to reflect and realise that, with the best will and all the skill in the world, some situations just cannot be changed. I read now this is referred to in the field of systems practice as ‘cultural feasibility’: change may be possible in theory, but in practice it cannot come about due to other factors which hinder or prevent it.