No, I’m not crazy enough to begin teaching dance lessons as my next service offering. 🙂 Maybe a bit less exciting, I will discuss my career through the decades, emphasizing my solopreneur journey over the last five years. A funny thing happened on my path to career development. There was a first job. Then a second, a third, and another, and yet another. At each of those stops, I learned a great deal about myself and what I want.
Changing industries, changing roles, yes, changing cities and provinces, it was an adventure in helping companies and growing as a professional and as a leader.
Despite my lengthy “corporate” career (there were more larger companies than smaller ones), I have consistently thought about having my own business. Sometimes, when I felt I wasn’t ready, I considered returning to school to get a Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship (which, looking back, seems a bit contradictory). My first attempt at starting a business arose in the early 1990s, fresh out of University, and again in the early 2010s when I wanted more control and input into how I spent my time (after all, work comprises a significant percentage of our lives).
At those points in time, my focus was (a) software development and IT support for the veterinary industry and (b) continuous improvement tools (LSS, Technology) and project management support, focusing on the manufacturing industry.
Fast-forward through those decades and into the pre-COVID year of 2019, when I decided to put out my own “shingle” and go all-in with consulting (or so I thought; more on that later). Over the following few blogs, I will reflect upon some lessons learned, maybe a few successes, but more importantly, where I see my solopreneur path taking me. It has been an enjoyable ride so far. Yes, it has been filled with unexpected turns and a few potholes, but it has also had some exhilarating moments.
I usually like being open about mistakes (or calling them misjudgments), and I’ll start the same way here. When I relaunched JEWAL in 2019, I kept the same core service offerings as in 2011: CI tools, PM skills, overlaying technology, and data mining, while focusing on the Manufacturing industry.
Guess what? Of the customers I’ve had over the last five years, only two have been in the Manufacturing space, and neither wanted me for CI implementations or PM project oversight. They primarily focused on leadership skills, developing other leaders, longer-term planning, and some KPI implementations.
It took me until last year to realize an important fact. I was a different professional in the 2020s than I was in 2011. I spent over a decade in healthcare, and my IT and Manufacturing days were more in the rearview mirror (still in sight, but not crystal clear). In the last decade, I focused more on building (teams, locations, business operating systems) than managing (people, tasks, projects). The days of being an SME for programming and development are well behind me. Similarly, while I’m proud of my work with continuous improvement and Lean Six Sigma, I know there are Master Black Belts out there who could run circles around me with their knowledge of the lean tools, not to mention statistical control and run charts.
I don’t write this with any regret or sadness. It’s a natural sign of career evolution and, to a large degree, what excites me to be doing right now. I’ve taken this newfound self-awareness to update my business profile and website, even though I can’t do the same with my 200+ business cards from 2019 as quickly. Side note: How long will that business communication tool be around anyway?
Recently, a colleague asked me about the type of engagements and projects I was working on. When I mentioned my focus the last year or so has been (surprisingly) on forming and coaching leadership teams, strategy deployment and execution, business operating systems, performance management tools, and organizational structures, many of which I would (incorrectly, I know) caption under an “HR” type of role. She quickly responded, without missing a beat, that as we move later in our careers, it becomes more about people, leadership, coaching, and guidance as we begin to pass along our knowledge to the younger generation of leaders and try to assist them in their own leadership journey; however, that may look.
I’ve often referenced the Japanese term ikigai as that ideal spot when trying to align your passion and unique skills, where you can provide value to others (and maybe even the world) and earn an income. “A reason to live”, roughly translated. The pragmatist in me wonders how realistic it is to find such a place. I’m sure many do, but I suspect it’s the minority of us. Regardless, as part of these reflections, I’ve started to think about what exactly my ikigai would be. After all, even in the back end of one’s career, it’s never too late to consider.
Over the last few years, I have begun to narrow down my core strengths (or unique skills). They differ from what I thought in 2019, though they remain equally valuable (if not more so). I’ve written about many of them in earlier blogs over the last 6 months. I still need to develop these very skills, even though I consider them to be a strength already – there is always room for improvement. I read and reflect on those books and articles that help me continually optimize my ideas on these core skills. After all, little in this world is a “one size fits all.”
So, where do I excel? Building and implementing business operating systems is my unique skill, in whole or in part. This includes strategy deployment frameworks, balanced scorecards, OKRs and KPIs, dashboards and review processes, with monitoring, tracking, and adjustments (PDSA cycle) to optimize performance and operational execution. I provide guidance and training to leadership to ensure that top performance can be achieved. That’s where I’ve seen my skill set surge and be recognized over the last five years as a consultant. I wasn’t solely responsible for any of these in my corporate career, but I had a lot of exposure to different ways these companies worked to sift through their systems and identify the good (best practices) from the bad. Some individuals have more specialized expertise in these individual skills. I won’t disagree. However, when I bring them all together cohesively, incorporating my experiences and learning from both my successes and failures, I can enable successful execution. That sounds like a unique skill to me.
If I have now identified that portion of ikigai (skills), what’s next?
What do I love to do? I’ll save that for the next entry.
Darren