New Paths - Day 27

Day 27

27 Club is the term that refers to a significant number of singers
and musicians who died aged 27 (a statistical spike). The list
includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ron McKernan (Pigpen), Brian Jones,
Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain.

Today's piece is written by the talented Matt Ballantine, who is currently the Interim Product manager for the UK Government's Digital Service. Prior to becoming a consultant, respected writer (he is a regular contributor to CIO magazine) and digital guru, he was the former Head of IT at brand marketer Imagination and had also worked as an enterprise and solutions architect for the BBC. Matt crosses the divide between Technology, Management and Marketing and has a keen interest in collaboration, connections and content. He writes an interesting blog on the topics that interest him. Or you can catch up with him on Twitter (his handle is @ballantine70)

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In December I’m running an event for a HR group in a big telecoms company on the theme of modern career paths and planning. It’s been an interesting commission - an area in which I’d claim interest and active practice, but not necessarily “expertise”. And that’s one of my main points for the day - in a world of unknowns, looking for “experts” is a natural human instinct, and deeply flawed. I hope that they’re not expecting me to give them all the answers.

The idea of a career path is something that has changed, I believe, pretty radically in the two decades in which I’ve been working. When I started in the 1990s there were still a many in the workplace who thought that they had an anchor in “job for life” working. That decade saw the last phases of the dismantling of the nationalised industries, and the rise of the global corporations. The social contract between employee and employer was broken, but with expectations of loyalty and trust remaining on both sides.

Times have changed
LS Lowry's Coming From The Mill, 1930
Picture credit to estate of L.S.Lowry

Technological change has also radically altered the workplace in those 22 years. Work is no longer necessarily a place where you go, and can be anywhere. The same technology has shaped and formed the nature of jobs along the way - swathes of clerical and administrative staff no longer exist, yet new roles have replaced them. Not one of the job titles that I have had since 1997 would have existed when I had careers advice at school a decade before. But to be fair, some of the dafter ones I have made up…

One of Matt's job titles is Angel of Disruption!!
Picture: Angel of the North, by Anthony Gormley

In this world developing a career path that involves job titles is a risky business. The next one might be there for you, but having a sense of direction much into the future becomes a challenge. I spoke recently to a friend Matt Desmier who has been living a free agent career for a few years now, and when I asked how he described what he did to others he said he took the lead of another mutual connection John Wilshire in outlining:

• The last thing I did;
• The current thing I’m doing; and
• The thing I have on the horizon

That helps in answering the “What do you do?” moment at a dinner or kid’s birthday party, but doesn’t provide anything more substantial to plan one’s life around. Maybe that’s it - maybe we can’t plan in the ways that we traditionally have done. Do we need to throw ourselves to the wind and see where our careers take us?

Tibetan "wind horses" (called Lungta): pieces of paper, decorated
with a bejewelled horse, tossed into the wind for good luck.

That would be a reckless approach.

I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that what I need to help us through this dark maze is a narrative, a story. A personal career story that spans my past, my present and sometime into the future. The nice thing about stories is that whilst they might not necessarily be completely factual (and anything into the future by design isn’t factual), they can contain truths that give us anchors around which to make decisions in the future and make sense of our past: a path trodden and a path ahead.

My own story starts with some of my grandfather’s achievements, which in turn tie into some of my earliest childhood memories. They then in turn weave into the education and training that I have received, the jobs I have taken, and why some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Looking forward I have some aspirations that in turn become the way in which I assess what pieces of work I should take both in terms of short term needs and longer term goals.

In sharing this story with others, funnily enough I’ve found a wonderful prop in that very 20th Century corporate artefact, the business card. On one side of my cards are contact details. On the other, a photograph. A photograph I can use to be able to tell my story in a way that hopefully makes sense to whomever it is I am talking. Telling and retelling the story helps me to navigate through the maze.

Longleat House maze, UK - photo BNPS
Google Earth, technology is helping people navigate faster than a decade ago

What's your story?

Finding Sunlight - Day 26

Day 26 (Boxing Day)

26 - the number every side must add up to in Henry Dudeney's Heptagon Puzzle.
Using numbers 1-14 place a different number in every circle.
Dudeney was an English author & mathematician who specialised
in mathematical games & logic puzzles. If you enjoy maths problems you should
try Dudeney's book "Amusements in Mathematics" published in 1917,
with over 400 puzzles + solutions.

I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday, full of all the things you like and value. Welcome to Boxing Day.

Today's post is by Ryan Cheyne - whom I met in real life for the first time at the CIPD conference this November. I have followed Ryan on Twitter for years (His handle is @ryskicheyne). Ryan works as the People Director at Pets at Home  (awarded as one of the Best Places to Work in the UK) and his passion for his work and colleagues is infectious. Ryan is a retail expert. Outside work Ryan has a passion for music, both playing (he is a talented guitar player) and listening (he's a great source for musical inspiration). He lives in Alderley Edge and is an active member of the Manchester CIPD and ConnectingHR groups - always willing to support and encourage others in the profession.

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I last wrote a blog for the Advent series two years ago, it was one of the first blogs I’d written. The theme was essentially, life is challenging but I guess things aren’t that bad really, there are always people who’ve got it worse and it’s New Year so here’s to the future (it was a little longer than that to be fair!).

This year’s series of Advent blogs with the theme of Pathways has been excellent, and has helped me reflect on the last two years and it suddenly occurred to me, I’ve started to find the Sunlight!

Photo by Debi Ireland (@MajikBunnie)

2012 was a tough year personally for a number of reasons. I was genuinely grateful for the things in my life that were good: my health, my job, my kids, but my route forward had changed completely, I hadn’t anticipated it changing, I couldn’t control it, I couldn’t change it and most frightening of all I couldn’t SEE it.

Unanticipated life changes
Brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) mired in oil from spill
 on beach at East Grand Terre Isle, Louisiana coast, 2010
photo by Charlie Riedel for AP (via Boston.com)
,

Where was I going? What should I be doing? And Why?

Hand stamped nickel silver sheet metal bracelet

At this stage of my life, I hadn’t anticipated finding myself living alone in a flat, with 4 plates, 4 knives, 4 forks etc. I was supposed to be the family man in a family home, supporting the kids as they moved seamlessly through teenage life (still keeping my fingers crossed on that one) and starting to enjoy the freedoms that come as the kids get older. Plans around houses, holidays and more quality time disappeared to be replaced by a complete lack of PURPOSE!

A rudderless boat

In HR we’ve built an industry around, objective setting, goal setting, succession planning. We know that great businesses have a “clear and common purpose” that their colleagues can unite behind and we measure success on how well we do against these measures but what happens out of work, in real life when that purpose goes?

It threw me, I felt lost! Work was great, but, what was it for, if it was not helping build a life outside work?

Destination Lost in the Fog, photo by Stu Willard

Now don’t get me wrong (and this is important), the last two years have not been bad at all, in fact they have been amazing. Professionally my proudest moment was when we were named as The Best Big Company to work for by the Sunday Times. Personally, I rediscovered my love of music and playing the guitar and I am having a ball playing live. The kids are doing well and I’m very proud of them, I’ve travelled, I’ve enjoyed the freedom of living without “stuff”. I’ve also met some amazing people, made some fabulous new friends and spent time with a very special person as we both tried to work our way through the fog of life. Our paths have now taken a different route, but you know who you are, Thank You.  

So life’s been good but all the time it has been clouded by a lack of purpose and a lack of clarity and this troubled me. What did I want to achieve at home and at work?

Claude Monet, 1879 Path in the Fog oil on canvas

A turning point came when I spoke to my coach about this (everyone should have one). She listened to me bemoaning my lack of direction, ambition, clarity and purpose. She listened and then asked, “Why are you worried?” It’s ok not to have a plan for a while, it’s ok just to live for a while, rediscover who you are and what you want to be, plans can come later.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, living life with no plan and trying not to worry about it, going with the flow, living in the moment, right here, right now and seeing what happens.

To be honest that’s still where I am, but over the last few weeks something strange has started to happen. I still don’t have a plan or a route but there is a gap in the clouds with the sunlight breaking through, a beam of light hinting at what could be ahead. Sunlight as a metaphor works well, but it has also started to feature in other areas of my life. I’ve discovered Port Sunlight on The Wirrel, in itself a little oasis of a village, created as a twentieth century approach to employee engagement (well worth checking out www.portsunlight.org.uk) and at work I’m starting to rediscover my own sense of purpose.

Images of Port Sunlight, model village
built from 1888 for his workers by William Lever of Lever Brothers.

I am not a religious person but I do (somewhat bizarrely) believe in fate and that what’s meant to be will be. Who knows what the future holds? There will no doubt be bad things and challenges thrown in along the way because there always is, that’s life, but for the first time in a while I am starting to see a potential direction, a possible pathway, I am starting to find The Sunlight.

Photo by Debi Ireland (@MajikBunnie)

Natasha Bedingfield - Pocketful of Sunshine

Possible Paths - Day 25

Day 25 (Christmas Day)

25 is the transmission rate of pictures per second (FPS) used for television
anywhere but in the U.S. or Canada (where the power grid does not run at 50hz).
British photographer Eadweard Muybridge created slow motion photography
that enabled "moving pictures" using his zoopraxiscope, after being
 asked to prove that a horse could have 4 feet simultaneously in the air.
His work was published by Stanford but not credited to him.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London, A galloping horse and rider, 1887.

Welcome to Christmas Day - as I am sure you know, a traditional Advent Calendar stops on the 24th December, but there have been so many excellent submissions that this series will continue well into 2015. I am delighted to provide you with some special reading to enjoy today during a moment of calm.

I would like to take the opportunity of wishing you a very happy Christmas, regardless of your faith. May you enjoy a day filled with love and laughter.

Antique postcard

It seems appropriate that today's post is by the lady who founded this series in 2011, Alison Chisnell. Alison is an exceptional HR Director, mum, wife, friend, marathon runner, mental health champion, role model, inspiration, and a host of other things. She was one of the first to warmly welcome me into the Twitter HR community (her handle is @AlisonChisnell) and I responded when she asked for contributors for the first Advent Blogs series in 2012. We are friends and I have huge professional and personal respect for her. If you have not read her blog, I suggest you read this post before galloping on to her comments below.

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Thank you to Kate for running the Advent series this year, I'm genuinely honoured and delighted to be peeking out from door number 25, Christmas Day...and am enjoying the series immensely so far.

"The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination" - John H Schaar

It turns out, I rather like certainty, or at least, more accurately, the illusion of certainty. It hasn't always been so, I was never one of those teenagers who knew exactly what they wanted to do - far from it, I was determined to study something I enjoyed and that was intellectually interesting at University, rather than focus on what my career would be at the end of it. I figured it would become clear nearer the time....and, with a few well-chosen summer placements along the way, a bit of help from friends and family and a fair dollop of luck, it did. 

Mist clearing - painting by Lauren Johnson, 2012 

Until recently I've always shuddered at the idea of a 5 year plan, resisted inclinations to impose certainty where there was none, other than a fluid sense of direction and intuitive instinct. Relying on instinct and intuition is fine as far as it goes, but when the when the landscape shifts dramatically, as it did for me earlier this year when I found myself unexpectedly facing redundancy, I rapidly ran out of road on that pathway. Temporarily I floundered, unable to envisage a path different from the one I had been on, in hindsight realising I could have done more to lay the foundations of a potential new path, plan more for where I wanted it to take me, who might help me to get there, how I could create bridges to different paths. 

Foundation stone programme for laying of Foundation Stone of the Victoria & Albert Museum

It takes a surprising amount of energy, patience, determination and resilience to create a new path, as well as the ability to accept and live with the complete lack of certainty....or indeed the removal of the illusion of it. At times it can feel like a game of snakes and ladders, when on a good day I move a few spaces forward with an interesting new opportunity to look at, an interview or a new, promising connection; on a less good day I slide down a slithery snake as potential roles come out of scope. Sometimes, it's a case of chip, chip, chipping away at where I know I want to go and trusting that the path will open up. Trying to be patient and accepting I can't dictate the pace on much of this journey, trying to avoid that fact becoming a source of frustration and irritation. I'm reminded of some yoga classes I did years ago, when the teacher encouraged us to still the monkey in our minds, to visualise training it to climb up and down a very tall tree, to occupy that wildly distracting, disruptive force to enable us to focus better in the here and now. Simply that could easily take a lifetime’s work…!

1930's Brooch of monkey climbing a palm tree

And yet, there are so many new possibilities, so much adventure to brand new paths, so much permission to try different things, to invest in myself in new and different ways. I'm thinking creatively about what I want for a change, where I want to be, how best to get there. I'm forming new, valued connections, stretching and challenging myself more than I have done for ages. I'm learning, I'm planning, I'm exploring and discovering. In the process of reassessing, somehow I emerge stronger, surer, empowered. 

I'm also trying lots of new things outside of work that I have wanted to for ages, but never made time for: learning to swim better so I can attempt my first triathlon next year; one to one pilates coaching so I counterbalance the impact of running and strengthen and improve as I train for next year's London marathon. Planning a memorable family trip to Australia that we have always talked about doing someday and making that someday a reality in early 2015. Seizing the moment, in the realisation that there may never be a better time than now and feeling genuinely excited about what's ahead, treading an unknown path, allowing the exploration and creation of it to change me and my perceptions. 

The illusion of certainty continues, of course it does: I think to all intents and purposes we need at least a little bit of that to function effectively as human beings. My Mum often quotes a lecture she listened to as a young woman, where the speaker proclaimed that “if we knew what lay ahead of us in our lives, none of us would ever have the courage to live them.” Perhaps that’s true, perhaps said gentlemen was simply a "glass half empty" kind of person, given to dramatic statements. What I do know is this: we can’t predict the future, none of us truly know where our paths will lead, which ones will stop abruptly and which ones will lead to unimagined wonders. It’s no life at all to be so caught up in the “what ifs” that we neglect to make the most of the opportunities that come our way and close our minds to the endless possibilities that lay ahead, forget to simply look up and around us.

Sunrise - endless possibilities ahead

 

So this Advent, I'm thankful for the unpredictability, the preciousness of the pathways that we consciously choose and the life-affirming adventure of those that we find ourselves unexpectedly on. Thankful for courage, for determination, for positivity, for choices, for luck, for new experiences, for friends, for family, for connections, for health, for laughter and support. Thankful even for the uncertainty, that I still occasionally inwardly rail against, which I know holds depths of unexplored possibility and opportunity. It is, after all, a very small price to pay when weighed up against what is at stake.

Wishing you joy, peace and wonder as we move into this festive period, tread familiar pathways of seasonal traditions and make a few new paths too. 

I'll raise a glass of mulled wine and drink to that!

Beguiled By Beginnings - Day 24

Day 24

24 - the number of blackbirds baked in a pie in the well known nursery rhyme
My favourite interpretation of the meaning of the verse is that it refers to King Henry VIII who
was offered an entremet of live birds in a pie by Anne Boleyn (she was a Maid in Waiting
to Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon and became Henry's 2nd wife, until having
more than her nose cut off, she was beheaded). The word "sing" was Tudor slang
for stinking (much like "hum" today) and live birds shut inside a pie crust for hours
were reported to smell vile when the pie was opened...

This wonderful post is by the ever inspiring and often challenging Simon Heath. It is my delight to call him my friend and we have had some great times working together (and just messing about) over the past couple of years. Simon, having escaped corporate toil (he was COO of a significant Financial Services business) is now using his significant artistic talents as a freelance facilitator, illustrator and observer. I first met him via Twitter (his handle is @SimonHeath1) when he was just setting out on his new career. It has been fantastic to see his popularity and reputation grow. 

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Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path - Bodhidharma

Mark and Kathryn Daughhetee's garden, Seattle

Paths and perceptions, eh?

Paths and perceptions.

Journeys and discoveries.

Well, I’ve had a pretty unconventional journey on the way here and my perception of the world has been shaped as I’ve travelled. Often crashing into the sides. Which is fine. It knocks the rough edges off.  I left school in 1989. I couldn’t see much point in pretty much everything school wanted to teach me so I could pass exams. 

1980's Science lesson

So I didn’t pass exams. But I learned more at school than I’d ever have imagined possible. 

Clifton College's Tribe Building (which housed the Art School)

Some people will try and tell you that if you don’t have great grades and decide not to go to university, because you don’t have a clue what you want to do with your life, a lot of doors are closed off to you. That, quite frankly, is utter baubles. The people that tell you these things work behind some of those doors. These are the doors you want to slam gleefully shut as you run naked down the corridor of possibilities. 

Running Naked by Steven Pippin

Protest at D&G Spring fashion show 2014

Who wants to climb on the conveyor belt churning out command and control stormtroopers when the world of work has moved on? A skills gap that had been opening at a glacial pace is now yawning open at such speed that it’s swallowing entire industries whole.

Charles Chaplin as the Little Tramp in Modern Times, 1936
A satirical Fordist nightmare of the future of work & society

And yet still the handle keeps turning in the sausage factory.

You do your SATS. Your GCSEs. Your A-levels. You go off to university. 

You get a job (perhaps). 

You wear a suit.

And.

So.

Does.

Everybody.

Else.*

Genuine advice provided in The Art of Manliness, December 2011,
illustration by Ted Slampyak

You aren’t everybody else. When you stick your anorak hood over your head and wear it as a superhero cape and whizz round the playground going “Neeeeeyyyyyyyaaaaaarrrrrrrrr!!!!”, you’re not everybody else (especially when you’re 43). 

It’s your path. 

Your life. 

Let others choose it for you and the next time you regain consciousness you’ll probably find yourself sardined on a train, the windows fogged with the condensing breath of a hundred other slowly marinating mammals. 

Tokyo Compression, photograph by Michael Wolf

That’s not what you imagined as you danced round your bedroom singing into a hairbrush. When you swallowed a tadpole because Sean Jenkinson dared you to. When you waited on a street corner for two hours in the pouring rain on the off-chance that Laura Mills would walk by. When you climbed the tallest tree in the park even though you were so scared you called out for your Mum in front of your friends when you slipped on the way down. When you swung so high on the swings it felt like you had a zero-G bladder. When you got an Etch-A-Sketch for Christmas. When you spent three hours one Saturday perfecting your stone skimming technique. When you laughed so hard at a joke someone told you that a little bit of wee came out (again, especially when you’re 43).

Advent is all about waiting. Don’t wait. Don’t let life happen to you. Don’t be everybody else. Take the road less travelled. Write your own story. It’ll be unconventional and uncomfortable. Sometimes (a lot of times) it’ll require bloody hard work. But tomorrow, for a great many of you, it’ll be a day off. Of celebration and relaxation. With friends and family. Amongst all the turkey and trimmings take a moment to reflect. It might not be too late. Advent ends today but your story could be just beginning. 

Brave First Steps

Merry Christmas and Bon Voyage.

*I realise that not everyone does this. A lot of people have to go off and do real jobs. The jobs that make our society function. The people who keep the world turning. And the lights on. And make sure when you do a poo after Christmas lunch and pull the flush that wee jobbie actually has somewhere to go. But those folk don’t have time to read blogs so I wrote it for you lot.

Simon at work

A silly song for Christmas Eve

sung by Bryant Oden