What got you here won’t get you there

I started a new job recently. First time in the best part of a decade that I’ve been the ‘new kid on the block’, and this time, I’m far from being a kid, too. The “new middle-aged man with white in his beard that makes him look like one of his parents was a badger… on the block” might be closer to the mark. If a little less punchy, and almost infinitely less likely to be used as the basis of a boy band name as a result…

A long time ago, I stumbled across a book called “What got you here won’t get you there”. The idea of this [or at least my recollection of it in the dusty corner of my feeble memory] is that whenever you move into a new job, or new role, or any new situation in life really, you have to let go of some of the specific things that actually got you into that new job or new role or new situation. An interesting thought, and one that I’ve kept with me since. So every time my job has changed, I’ve been quite deliberate in considering what were the things that got me that move, and what of those might be things I need to actively decide to leave behind rather than bring with me.

Sometimes that can be really hard. Over the years I’ve seen a number of people really struggle when they move from being the person who knows everything to being the person who can’t possibly know everything any more but has a team of people who do. That reassessment of what an individual has come to think of as their “value” can be jarring, and scary, and bloody difficult. I’ve seen people who never quite made that leap of faith, and ended up lost in the middle, never taking the half step away, and ending up in a limbo world of micro-management which limited them and frustrated the team around them.

But sometimes it’s gloriously easy because really you know that what go you here actually included some behaviours or habits that weren’t actually that good for you…

[If you’re sitting there reading this thinking “hang on a minute… he’s talking about himself, isn’t he?” then, Dear Reader, you are right again, you insightful delightful sprite you. Give yourself a high five…which is really just you clapping, I guess, but I only realised that once I’d written it and I can’t go back and delete it now or we’ll never get to the end of this little distraction now will we?]

Some of the things that got me here, also got me into some hot water along the way too.

I’m happy talking about this stuff because I’ve been almost evangelically open about my issues with anxiety through the last few years, in these pages and in person, and I’ve also talked here about my ADHD too, and how it’s now becoming clear to me that the former was the result of not understanding and accepting and learning to live with the latter. I subscribe to the idea that more people talk about this stuff the more people feel they can talk about this stuff: “it’s okay to not be okay”.

So with that in mind, it’s pretty obvious to me now, looking back with the clarity that only time and space can give, that the way I managed myself, and my “self” was almost a recipe for disaster. Give someone with a brain like mine – overthinking every possible outcome, empathetic to the point of paralysis, needing to love and be loved – responsibility for the hopes and dreams of a bunch of really nice, really bright people and I’ll pull myself apart trying to keep everything together.

I’ve also said before in these pages that I really think lockdown heightened everything for the empathetic leader, Suddenly we really were “all in this together” in way that the brands and politicians who spouted all that stuff could never comprehend. We were each others extended families through that, and I know I’m not alone in having felt the need to step up as the head of a frightened, often dysfunctional, understandably needy group of people. People whose careers I always felt “responsible” for in some way or other, but whose mental health and wellbeing and hope I suddenly felt were my responsibility too…

So much of that never changed back to “how it was”, of course – practically perhaps more than any other way. The idea of travelling into the middle of London to sit in an office every single day of the working week – and the fact that I did this for 20 years without question, seems faintly absurd to me now; like a dream I once had. [Someone asked if I wanted to meet for lunch in London on a Friday a couple of weeks ago and I honestly thought they had completely lost their mind.]

But beyond where I worked, how I worked had changed too. The feeling of being needed was intoxicating, and became way too personal. When anything needed fixing, even with a capable and committed crew around me I felt the responsibility myself to fix it, and I became so frantic trying to put out fires, small and large, that I didn’t realise I was burning up myself.

Yeah, I know. Not healthy, right?

It wasn’t all burns, of course. I had a lot of fun too, and made some relationships that will endure across time and despite a little more distance, and we did some bloody good work too. But I didn’t need to give all of myself so willingly to the whims of a wild working world. [Yes, I am quite pleased with that little stream of alliteration, you’re right.]

And so, as I sit here on a plane flying to Copenhagen for the second time in a week, next to a nice young lady who has to keep nudging me every time the flight attendant wants to ask me if I want a tiny pack of mixed nuts or the smallest bottle of water I’ve ever seen [international business travel isn’t what it used to be] because I’m too busy writing this for you to realise I’m being spoken to, I’m very conscious of the opportunity that comes with a new start. The opportunity to remember that some of what got me here, won’t get me there

It’s not as simple as changing the logo at the bottom of the PowerPoint document and uploading the new brand typeface [although God knows I do love a typeface] and just carrying on.

You can’t just shift one one place to another and expect that to be the change you need, because whether you like it or not there’s an inescapable fact that wherever you go, and whatever the new start is…

You take yourself with you

[Thanks to my coach for that memorable phrase – nice one Sarah!]

If you’re not deliberate about what you bring, you’ll bring the lot. Like that box in the attic from the last time you moved which never actually got opened because it just said “ODDS AND ENDS” on it in hastily scrawled marker pen.

You take yourself with you, with all the good and all the bad. Put another way: if we don’t learn from the past, we’re destined to repeat it.

Don’t get me wrong, there are massive parts of what got me here that will get me there, wherever “there” is. I’m always going to be ‘all in’. I’m always going to look for connections with people and try to build trust quickly. I’m always going to want to change things that I think need changing. I’m always going to be true to my values. I’m always, always, going to look for the chance to raise a smile and make this work thing we all spend so much time doing actually fun, because if it’s not fun then why the fuck am I doing it anyway?

Yeah, there’s a lot I’m bringing with me. Just not all of it.

So here’s where you come in. You didn’t think this was all about me, did you??

Take a moment. Ask yourself: what are you bringing with you that perhaps you should be leaving behind?

Well here’s the magic about a new start. About “what got you here won’t get you there”…

Here is just wherever you are, right now.

There is whatever’s next.

You get to decide now, right now, about what you leave behind here, so you can get there.

And if you fuck it up and take it all with you again, the good and the bad?

Well I’ve got yet more magic for you right here, because you get to decide again. And again. You can always start again, whenever you decide to.

You get to choose.

And that choice, Dear Reader, that choice is a freedom that you carry with you everywhere you go, every single day of your life.

You got here. Now, what is going to get you there?