The primary colours of my career
As my career has gone on I’ve learned that over time you realise certain key and inescapable truths about your motivations at work. How well our most basic motivations are being nourished dictate the degree of fulfilment (or stress) that you realise from your work. You can try and ignore them for a while, you can bend them a bit but not for very long I have found.
An analogy that I quite like is that our most core professional motivations are like our own set of primary colours, white (the combination of all three in light) being ultimate fulfilment of them all.
As well as their foundational nature being comparable, I find that three is a good number to aim for because it focuses the mind, allows for some breadth and is easy to remember and communicate.
Mine follow anyway — what are yours?
People
I love building relationships with other people and like to be part of a team.
I thrive on getting to know people and what they’re trying to do, and feel vested in seeing how I can best help them be successful. I enjoy learning about people not just in terms of the business of the day but also in terms of their lives, what they enjoy in life and how they like to turn up. Long periods of isolation are really not good for me at all because of this fundamental motivation.
I also care a lot and am not comfortable with indifference. I’ve coined the phrase “condemned with caring” at work many times as it can cause a lot of frustration and heartache — for example if I can see something veering off course and my advice isn’t heeded. My best days are where I can use that for good.
When I look back over the different roles I’ve held, those that I’ve enjoyed the most have had a strong element of having relationships at their heart — for example as a consultant or technical leader focused on working with a particular customer and the people aspects of being a manager.
Technicality
Notice that I’ve not just used the word technology.
From when I was a tiny boy obsessed with Lego I’ve always been fascinated by the reasons why things are the way they are and how things work. The first job I ever wanted to do as a child was to be a mechanic.
When I studied languages at school, I enjoyed the the structure and rules of how sentences worked more than the cultural elements if I’m honest. I also taught myself how to write code as a youngster by reverse-engineering BASIC applications — my career in technology all stemmed from wanting to know how it worked. To this day, if at all possible I’ll have a play with some aspect of a technology to understand its fundamentals even if I don’t have to have hands-on knowledge to do my job.
I actually recently downloaded the judgement on a celebrity court case because I was fascinated by the forensic language and the precision of how the wording of the judgement was formed.
I just love technical things.
Creativity
I like making new things and coming up with different ways around problems, in all walks of live.
On an artistic level music is a big part of my life, and when I got back into my DJing creating flyers for events and my radio show unlocked the passion for art and drawing that I used to have when I was at school. I also love to write, which is why writing articles like this one I find such an outlet.
Fortunately I’ve been able to draw upon creativity in my work.
Essentially what I’ve spent my career doing is coming up with technology answers to customer problems — problem solving is inherently creative. Why I always enjoy working as part of a sales as a technical person is because there’s almost a constant stream of creativity required. The customer’s business is always evolving, technology is always evolving and there will always be a proposition to meet it. No two days are the same.
On a more basic creative level I always enjoy the visual aspect of my roles — for example when I used to build online shops, I used to take a lot of satisfaction with making sure they followed the branding properly. I still take a lot of pride in my presentations too.
