Just me
I have recently gone through some transitions from entrepreneur, to failed entrepreneur, to consultant, to capital raising, to job hunting, to general manager with freedom, to demoted manager without freedom - and it has inspired me to do some internal thinking and reflection about who I am, what I want, what I am good at AND not. Although beggars can't be choosers, I think it is really important to go into your next project or job with clarity on those things that work for you and don't.
Here are the things I know I am really good at:
I can take external learnings and completely customise them to what is needed based off feeling without remembering where it came from so that is completely original.
I can construct futures that don’t exist anywhere else and deconstruct them to a tee
I can help people, they listen, they trust me.
I can learn and build a future strategy for any business in any field within 3 months.
I can design before it existed elsewhere - digital community app, a way to bridge the gap between business school and accelerator, a blockchain enables system to pay mentors for support, a personal general financial management advisor and support system, a full flywheel for a media company and accelerated research to media, a supercluster design for fintech in London and I designed multiple trend based sets in fashion before larger houses brought out those same designs.
I can build highly complex future strategies and reverse engineer them to hourly tasks.
I can see how multiple key stakeholders and their technologies can work together.
I follow them through to prove them, put the right people in their place, empower them to execute and then I get bored and move on.
Here are the things that I would want in any job or business I start:
1. What is my perfect business, the one that serves ME the most.
What is my perfect business consist of:
* Variety
* Complex challenges
* Future scenarios/ Big tailwinds
* A core/ happy customer base
* Some scalability
* Driven people who learn quickly
* A big vision
What serves me:
* Creativity
* ‘World firsts’
* Working with people I love and respect
* Fixing problems
* Flexibility
* To be paid what I deserve
* The ability to have a laugh and or a break without guilt
2. What is my perfect role in that business.
* Strategy - opportunities, threats, positioning, key stakeholders
* People - hiring, inspiring, guiding
* Structures - setting up best practices and thought guides and allowing staff to own and evolve them
I believe it's worth understanding yourself and what you want before you start looking elsewhere. Sometimes you are interviewing the manager us much as they are interviewing you.
J