Immersion in work - Claire Donald

00:00

I was really wanted to be more involved in setting company strategy and yeah, steering the ship a little bit more. And I couldn't as a freelance contractor, I maybe could have if I went to consultancy. But yeah, I'm too honest. I swear too much to be a consultant.

00:16

And again, I made a hard choice then to do something different and become a permanent member of staff, one for the professional reason. But then the other bit was an intrinsic motivator, really. I wanted to feel part of a community again, like I belonged to something. And for all its flaws, the civil service is very much that.

00:43

And I was purpose driven as well. And I think that was the key bit. I really felt that every day that I went to work that I was contributing to something that was way, way bigger than me. And it wasn't monetary reasons either, because I think back to my role at HP, they were a private public organization, but the money making organization so that the purpose driven part of the company was I probably didn't realize until I had to make that call how important that was to me.

01:17

If life is a maze and our job is to figure our way through it, how have you chosen to navigate yours, and how has it changed at different points?

01:28

Yeah, different points in my life. I mean, I suppose I like to go the way back to when I first started my career, to be honest because I think when you're younger, you may a bit more gung ho and just go with the flow like I certainly was. I left school when I was 15, straight after I'd done the equivalent of GCSEs. And to be honest, I just wanted to earn some money.

01:48

I'm from quite a deprived area in Scotland. And yeah, I just wanted to be earning. I wanted to be a little bit more independent. And I just wanted to get into the workplace. I've done pretty well at shcool, despite not going very often, to be honest. I obviously had the brains, but I just wanted to get to workplace.

02:10

My first job, I worked as an IT and admin assistant for the local council, fixing PCs and fax machines and things like that back then. It gives you a taste for work. And it probably wasn't until I was in that job that I even thought about what I might want to do next.

02:35

At the ripe old age of 16, I'm thinking, "All right, well, I'm quite enjoying this tech thing. But where do I go from here? I'm 16 year old. I've already left school, and don't come from a wealthy background. It's not easy for me to now go to university or whatever. Yeah. What do I do next?"

02:53

I made as a 16 year old probably a really bold and brave decision and has impacted the rest of my life. I don't think I realized the magnitude of it at that time, but there's a beauty of use sometimes. Isn't it? And I decided to join the army. And I joined the Royal Signals who specialize in comms and IT.

03:17

To all intents and purposes, that was my college and university training, technically. But I also learned how to be a soldier at the same time. Yeah. That took me off through the first part of the maze. I lived all over the UK. I lived in Germany, Northern Ireland, and went to various other hot and sandy places for the first seven or eight years of my life.

03:46

And when you're working in that type of environment, you go with the flow. You commit to a lifestyle. It's not just a job. And you go wherever you're sent, but do whatever is required as you go along the go way. But it becomes second nature to learn new skills, to be part of a team, to be a leader, to be a manager. I was quite quickly promoted and enjoyed the aspects of managing and leading people, as well as the generalist technical skill set that I built up.

04:24

I was doing that phase of my life, that seven or eight years I was content with the path that I was on, and was navigating my career in the army. But that all changed when I had my son. Again, another big, pivotal moment in my life where it makes you stop and think. Doesn't it?

04:46

You're in the maze. Where are you going next? Are you turning left or you turning right? And I decided to turn, don't know if it was left or right, but I made a sharp turn. And I left the army. And my husband was still serving. I chose that. I didn't want both of us serving in the army whilst I was bringing up my kids. But plenty other people did, but just wasn't for me to be honest.

05:11

Yeah, again, I was 24 by this point. I made another really big, bold decision to leave the army. And I joined Hewlett Packard when I left the army, which at the time, I was grateful to find another job easy enough, to be honest. It wasn't hard at all. Thinking back, I probably should have tried a bit harder to look at my options, but I was content to be joining a well known brand, haven't been in the army that long.

05:47

But I was 24 then with a one year old son. And I was hired as a technical consultant of being interviewed as a network engineer. And this is when I realized that I had skills that I didn't really realize I had.

06:04

When I got there, I realized that we had all these different teams. We had a network team, a messaging team, a server admin team. Everyone was a deep, deep specialist. And I was a generalist. At best, I was maybe stronger in the infrastructure networking side of things. It wasn't even a conscious decision at that moment in time.

06:26

But it's when I made a stronger pivot into management whilst I was - and you know, HP were very supportive at the time of being, helping me figure out what I wanted to specialize in and to help train me up and all the likes. And whilst I was giving that a ponder, we had all of these big, huge complex projects and programs going on in physical data centers at this moment in time.

06:49

Hiring loads of people, we need figure out how to do migrations, this, that, and the other. And I naturally just gravitated to there and started getting stuff done. Yeah. Inside two months I was more of a technical manager, managing a worldwide rollout, a team of 40 people. And yeah, managing a team of 40 was now my problem.

07:16

Yeah, as I reflect back on some of these things, I made some quite bold decisions that had big consequences I think because I was so young, I think I wasn't phased by the gravitas or the magnitude of what I was doing.

07:31

Do you think that ignorance worked here?

07:33

I think so. If I had to do some of these things now, I would massively, massively overthink them. And I think that comes with life experience as well. Don't you? Yeah, I mean, I couldn't say that I didn't have any responsibilities. I had a baby, a mortgage, and I wasn't with my husband at the time, but a long term relationship.

07:55

It's not as if I was fancy free and no consequences. But yeah, I guess I was just quite brave I suppose, happy to go with things. And that was certainly true in the next pivot that I made as I left HP. We're in 2008 now, the start of the last big recession. As much as I enjoyed working at HP, it was a big enterprise at the end of the day. And I felt like quite a small cog in quite a big machine.

08:26

Couldn't see me of being there for life, to be honest. And I made the decision to then move into doing contracting work. 18 months out the army, I could see what the world had to offer. I had a better grasp of where some of my unique strengths lead. My broad generalist technical skillset might not have been good for being a deep specialist, but it was certainly useful when it came to management. Being able to speak to almost anybody about almost anything technical, and track, and then translate and speak to the rest of the business about what we're doing was a pretty useful skill.

09:11

Yeah. I can remember my mom saying to me, she thought it wasn't a very wise move. As far as she's concerned, I was off temping, leaving a well known brand to go off temping. But off I went and done from contracting for another seven years.

09:28

I had quite a second career almost in contracting, moving around, doing lots of different roles between engineering management, engineering director type roles, product management, agile coaching, project and product management. Really exposing myself to all sorts of different environments, different people, different ways of working, different industries.

09:54

And this was whilst I didn't plot every move that I made, quite often, there were via networks. That was a conscious decision for me to do that for a few years and gain lots of different experience and exposure to so many different working environments.

10:11

By the time I got to ferry, in comparison to some of my peers that had been through the more traditional route of going to university and the like, I had over 10 years management experience. And yeah, that was really helping me stand out. And I did pursue an academic career in a different way throughout my time in the army. I built up lots of different vocational qualifications.

10:42

And as I in fact, I started doing, I was on maternity leave, I started a degree with the Open University. And it took me about seven years to do, part-time. Figure I had a degree in leadership and management at the end of that, which was really useful because as I was doing more and more management stuff, I was applying it in practice as I went along.

11:11

Yeah, not the most traditional path to getting into technical management. But I think the broad array of different places that I worked and different people that I was exposed to made me a bit older than my years, to be honest, probably why I've got so much gray hair.

11:28

When I spoke to Marta, who's CTO of Bloom and Wild, about you, she said that you were very inspiring. Why do you think people say that?

11:44

Yeah. I don't know. I wish I knew. People often say to me that I'm very transparent and pretty open to being vulnerable, I guess. I think because I'm transparent, people see that I'm watching all, I'm not afraid to share my experiences, good or bad.

12:06

Yeah. I think people find that inspiring because it helps normalize. Doesn't it? Like what I talk about is what normal people go through. Yeah. It's tough decisions to take to change jobs. Part of the reason that I was a contractor was to be able to afford the childcare, to be perfectly honest. These are normal problems that normal people have. I don't think I shy away from talking about normal issues, to be honest. That's the best that I can do to link the two together.

12:41

And yet now you are the VP of engineering at MOO and many people would think that's not necessarily the job of a normal person. You've got a really successful job. And it's something that a lot of people look up to. You can't be completely normal.

13:03

I don't know. I don't think I'm anything special, to be honest. I'd see what was my superpower, I think that my ability to reach very broad and of cut across. I'm a good generalist, I suppose. My specialism is being a good generalist. And I think I'm a naturally empathetic person.

13:21

I relate to people and their problems quite easily. And then the engineer comes out to me and I try to solve them. I think that combination of things is really useful and it helps me get things done, which in time is ultimately what companies want us to do. Isn't it?

13:43

They want us to get things done for the company. And I've got a good track record, I've being able to do that in lots of different ways with lots of different people. Yeah. I suppose that within itself is inspiring in as well. I think I can draw upon lots of different places I've worked and experiences, and try and relate them to the situation that I'm in, and can combine some experience with current context to create a new approach to something. It's getting back to that problem solving thing. Isn't it?

14:15

You said that you're a specialist being a generalist. And I think that the idea of a specialist is deeply rooted in our society because it comes from this division of labor. And the fact that we as individuals can share our unique gift with the world. And often that tends to be some kind of specialism. And there are some amazing pros to that.

14:42

You can become an expert at something that's relatively niche, and being an expert gives you a large sense of pride and that's good. But then there's also part where our identity is... That's not really one thing. That's why there's so many different things, we have so many different parts to ourself. And being a generalist perhaps enables us to live all of those different lives. What benefits do you think being a generalist has given you?

15:20

Yeah, it's a good way to look at it. I think I've got quite a broad tool kit. I've got lots of different skills. And sure, I might not be the best screwdriver in the world, but I can put together a flat back piece of furniture as good as the rest of them. Yeah, I think the benefit of that is that you are able to apply yourself to lots of different situations.

15:46

And the companies like me, where I am now, the size that they're at, like SME stage, or maybe even earlier with a startup. But you have to wear many hats. You can't afford, or they're moving too fast to have specialists in everything.

15:59

They expect people to adapt to the environment that they're in and grow with it and learn new skills. I think as well as being able to apply myself in different situations, you naturally want to learn more supplementary and complimentary skills.

16:18

One of the things that I... I still don't consider myself a specialist, but many other people do. And I've put a lot of time and effort and to learn in facilitation and coaching skills. I took to compliment my management and leadership ones, which not a lot of people do.

16:38

And that really helps in any situation like being able to facilitate or design a workshop with whatever audience is quite a powerful skill to have. And you can apply it to anything that you're doing, regardless of the context, really. Apply yourself in lots of different ways. And I think it just naturally lends to continuing to learn more. You can only go so deep in one thing. Can't you?

17:03

How have you managed to balance the, on the one hand, these external motivations and the other, these extrinsic motivations? And sometimes they can compete. And it sounds like your story has so many different moments where actually you're okay. It's nice to say that we're all going to have our intrinsic motivations and we're going to follow that all the time.

17:26

But sometimes you've got a problem or you've got an opportunity, you've got something that's happened in your life, and you need to make the decision to do something not because you, some kind of inclination that you've got that's just born out of you, but because the practical scenario suggests that I do some contracting because I need some money.

17:44

How have you navigated that? And I guess what I'm really interested in is how you've navigated it against your own personal happiness? Because the moments with which you are going further away from your intrinsic motivations, I guess, you're likely to become more unhappy.

18:03

Yeah, hard. Yeah. I've had another part of my story, the job that I had before MOO. I stopped contracting, and I took a permanent role as a civil servant, and this was a personal and a work-related decision. So like you're saying, a point there where that really makes you pause and reflect.

18:25

Professionally, I probably hit a glass ceiling as a contractor, but you can only ever get so far. And I was quite lucky to have had management positions as a contractor anyway. But you get to the point where you're just not allowed in the room like you. And I was really wanted to be more involved in setting company strategy and steering the ship a little bit more. And I couldn't as a freelance contractor. I maybe could have if I went to consultancy. But yeah, I'm too honest. I swear too much to be a consultant.

18:55

And again, I made a hard choice then to do something different and become a permanent member of staff, one for the professional reason. But then the other bit was an intrinsic motivator, really. I wanted to feel part of a community again, like I belonged to something. And for all its flaws, the civil service is very much that.

19:26

And I was purpose driven as well. And that was the key bit. I really felt that every day that I went to work that I was contributing to something that was way, way bigger than me. And it wasn't monetary reasons either, because I think back to my role at HP, they were a public organization, but the money making organization so the purpose driven part of the company was... I probably didn't realize until I had to make that call how important that was to me. But that came with huge compromises.

19:55

I went from being a contractor to being a civil servant. I won't say the actual numbers, but it was easily a 40% pay cut. It had an impact on my life. And I had to speak to my husband about... He actually was contracted at the same time. So he went contracting in order to fill the gap on some of the money in order for us to be able to afford childcare so I could pursue some of my career ambitions.

20:24

When you're part of a family and you've got more than just yourself to think about, you have to do that. You've got to think of all the different aspects that you're going to have to juggle. And then think about the impact that it'll have on your life. I'd done all the sums there. I could afford it. We'd have to make some changes to our lifestyle, but that's what I wanted to do at the time. And that's what I done, but only for two years.

20:54

What do you do now to determine your expectations at work and what are they? Okay. I'd love to, on a personal level, get deeper into what your expectations of work, where they come from?

21:15

Yeah, it's actually harder nowadays. How I gorge success, it's not via a job title or not the amount of money I earn, or the number of people that I manage. For me, I feel like I'm succeeding if I'm learning and I'm helping other people succeed as well. Those are my primary intrinsic motivators.

21:44

And then I have this, I don't know the right way to describe it. When I feel like I'm too comfortable and my feet are under the table and I'm comfy in my chair, I get restless. I get that feeling in your stomach where you're being stretched, where you're just outside your comfort zone, but you're not. Terrified of what you're doing, and that's growth. Isn't it? It feels uncomfortable, but you know you're growing, and I've experienced that feeling many, many times throughout my career. I don't need to feel it every day, but I need to know it's there.

22:21

Otherwise, I'm getting, comfortable and complacent. That what spurs me on. That's probably why I've chopped and changed roles so many times. But when I think about my career at MOO because I have had a career at MOO, I've had multiple different roles. I think this my fourth job at MOO. They've been able to challenge me and provide me with different opportunities. Sometimes plan, sometimes not, to help create that feeling now.

22:52

And as I start to think about what I would do after MOO, I'm not in that space yet, but I'm sure there will come a point where I'm not feeling that and I may want to move on. Or maybe I'll be at the point in my life where that's not something that I want to chase anymore. You have different career anchors at different moments in your life.

23:18

And my son's 15 now. Scares me that when he's six months older, you've been the same age when I left school, terrifies me. I've got different attributes whizzing around me. And the world has changed as well with the pandemic, and remote working and the like. Maybe I won't go off chasing the next thing. I don't know.

23:42

That's where I'm at right now, actually. I'm actively thinking about what the next stage of my career looks like, be at MOO or otherwise. So I'm back to one of those inflection points where I'm consciously thinking about something. I've talked about a few that I've had in the other parts of my career. And I'm definitely thinking about this one a lot more than I did any of the other ones, a lot more.

24:05

Wonder why that is?

24:06

Yeah, I don't know. Like I say, I think it's because I'm older, but maybe not. Maybe I suppose all these lived experiences build, they build emotional baggage. Don't they? Or battle scars, or war wounds, or whatever.

24:24

And certainly, as I think about changing roles now, there's overhead to changing roles. It's hard. It's hard to find a job. It's hard to go for an interview, especially when you're speaking to multiple companies at the same time. Then you've got to go through all of the onboarding, proving yourself again.

24:42

It could be a year or maybe even two to go through that whole process until you're feeling happy and content again. You've got to really want to do it. And when I was earlier in my career, the overhead was worth it. I was changing often, but I was having huge learning opportunities every time I changed.

25:01

And that's probably less true now. I'm not saying that I know everything, but the overhead is going to be pretty big. I'll always learn something from a new role, but you have to really, really want to know that there's going to be something in it for me to want to make the leap. And when your current company is offering you all the things that are ticking your motivators, then yeah, it makes you think twice about it. Doesn't it?

25:33

Maybe your ignorance was greater when you were younger, and as you've got older, your risk appetite has reduced?

25:43

Quite possibly. Yeah, that's probably true. And I mean, I've burnt out once, and you I've been close to it many times. So I think I've got good reason to be more apprehensive nowadays as well.

25:56

What was that like?

25:57

Yeah. It's hard to describe. And at the time, I probably didn't realize it was happening. And I probably went for a period of six months where, when I look back, I can see the attributes, the symptoms that were present. I was emotional. I'd walk to work crying must days for probably six months. I dried my face off before I went into the office. And that would be that.

26:29

That became my pattern. Just get the emotion out before you go to work, Claire. And at some point, I normalized that, and that's not normal. I think anybody that's crying before they go to work needs to change jobs. But then there was the other trait which I always keep on look out for now is cynicism and negativity.

26:48

I'm quite an optimistic and positive person. And when obviously everybody has their ups and downs, but when I'm looking at everything through a cynical, more than negative, actually, really can't see the positive in anything, that's not normal for me.

27:05

I didn't realize I was like that at the time. But yeah, looking back, I could see that I definitely was. Whenever I see little hints of that creeping in now, I make sure that I write, Claire, time to look after yourself. Something's not right here. Figure out what's the balance. Is it burnout?

27:25

People think that burnout comes primarily from overworking, but there are multiple different attributes. That's just one of them. And when I think back to that period, it wasn't overwork. It was me not being involved enough in decisions that impacted me. And it was just frustrating the buggery out of me.

27:45

The bureaucracy, basically, within the civil service, I couldn't handle it. I was quite ambitious and bold in some of the ideas that I was trying to move ahead with, and made quite a lot of progress actually. But just not being able to lobby or be involved and actively shape some of those things because I'd been a civil servant for 10 years was the primary driver of it that drove the frustration.

28:13

That was the primary driver that drove me. And I get that took quite a while for me to recover from that. And again, I probably didn't realize. When I think back to when I joined MOO because I joined MOO after then, I was probably still recovering from burnout as I started at MOO.

28:29

Yeah. I took a couple weeks off. I probably should have took a couple months off and I wish I did. But burnout or not, next job I have, I will definitely have a break between roles. But here, I'm a privileged enough position to be able to afford to do that.

28:46

But yeah, you asked what does it feel like? I don't know it felt like at the time. I was just letting it happen to me. And I can remember having a particular cynical conversation with my manager at the time. And I was just like, "I can't go on like this." I started looking for a new role on the phone. And I found MOO. So ultimately, it was that me realizing that I wasn't being myself and true to my normal character. That was a wake up call for me to do something about it.

29:22

How has being a mum affected your work, and your choice of work, and the way that you've navigated this journey? Because it sounds like there's some obvious ones like just really obvious changes that it's going to make. But it also feels like you might have a better understanding than many, what the silent things are, both for good and for bad?

29:53

They're similar problems, but they're all quite different. Aren't they? How has me being a mum helped me in my job? I think there are so many skills that you get better at in being a parent that are totally transferable. I'm forever telling new mums how organized you have to be.

30:10

Get up. Get your kid up, dressed, fed, out the door, school, nursery, whatever, all on time, all synchronized, all organized. Parents are the most organized people in the whole world. Being able to deal with the pressure of doing all that every single freaking day, not just in the morning, you have to do it in the afternoon as well.

30:31

That's precision planning and organization skills are the up level your skills there. And I said earlier that I'm quite an empathetic person. I'm not sure I always was. I think me being a parent and not just a mom, but being part of a family unit, you need to think about more the people that you live with that are dependent on you and just try and think about their perspective and how you're all going to... Life's one big compromise at the end of the day. Isn't it?

31:07

I think as you're navigating that at home, where are we going to live? Are we going to move? Which town, which school is my child going to go to? You're naturally prioritize... You learn prioritization skills, your negotiation skills. You're just trying to figure out the best outcome for you.

31:24

I think the parent and skill naturally helps you think about outcomes really, but you're learning a skill in your personal life that can equally apply at work. But when I think about career choices along the way and what choices I've made, I doubt that being a parent, I think that could have been multiple.

31:49

Where me leaving the army was the first one. I made a very conscious decision that I didn't want both of us serving in the army and traveling around with a child. Plenty people do and they love it, got many friends that still do.

32:04

But I didn't want that. I grew up in a coal mining village in Scotland and I'm still friends with my best friends there today. And I wanted the same for my child to be able to grow up with a group of friends. And when you went off to university, we'd go off and meet new ones, but we'd still be rooted in where and miss our friends back home.

32:26

I got that, but I made a choice there to do that. And that meant after I left HP, we made a very conscious choice on where to live in order to provide some stability.

32:40

Bear in mind, I was contracting at the time, which is why I ended up where I live today, actually, Weybridge in Surrey. You're able to get up and down the M4 corridor. You can get down to the coast if need be. If need be, you can get up to Milton Keynes, and then to London. A location that would provide the stability for my family, but it still allowed me quite a lot of flexibility in work. That was quite a big choice.

33:04

And then there was a contracting thing. There's this misconception that when your kids go to school, childcare will get easier. I think everybody accepts, begrudgingly, that early years, childcare for a baby is expensive. But it's not any easier when you go to school. It's actually, if you go to nursery, drop them off at 8:00, pick them up at 6:00. And it's every single day, we only closed a couple of days a year.

33:31

There's lots of support and facility there to help you. But as soon your child goes to school, that doesn't exist anymore. There's what? 10 weeks holiday you need to figure out. They don't until 9:00. They don't always have breakfast clubs. Don't always have after school clubs.

33:42

And I tried so many different types of childcare. I've had child minders, before and after school clubs, I've had nannies, live-in nannies. I've done pretty much everything. They all cost an absolute fortune. During that period, my childcare costs were higher than my mortgage.

34:08

If I wasn't contracting, I couldn't have afforded to work, to be perfectly honest, or I would've certainly paying out as much as I was earning. I probably worked longer as a contractor for the financial benefit as probably a secondary benefit, but it was high up there, to be able to afford the childcare.

34:35

Me and my husband, both working pretty hard. Maybe we could afford a few luxuries in life as well. And yeah, I'm actually going to another mulling over point right now, talking earlier about how I'm contemplating what I do after MOO, well, if I do anything after MOO. Or if I never leave MOO, I'm part and part of that decision is around what my son does next.

35:05

He's doing his GCSEs right now. He's deciding whether he wants to go to the local sixth form, whether he wants to go to college and specialise in something else. He's not sure if he wants to go to university. There's T levels nowadays and B-techs. There's so many choices that it's just so many things to navigate. And yeah, I think as I think about my next stage of my career, I'll be making a choice in conjunction with him around what he does with his next stage of skill, to be honest.

35:37

It's so practical and it's so... Work is just so necessary. It plays such an important part to our life and throughout history all the way up until very recently. These are the only types of questions that we could possibly try and answer through work is how do we put money on the table, food on the table? How do we figure out how to live and support the people around us?

36:01

And yet we live in this new age where if you play your cards right somehow, you can end up pursuing your passions and your inclinations at the same time as also earning money. And besides the practical side to the way that you've approached your work, you've clearly also figured out how to cultivate your passions and pursue them in a working context. What have you done there that other people haven't? How have you cultivated those passions, and how have you listened to your own inclinations?

36:44

How have I done it? I think I'm quite self-aware, or I've put more effort into being self-aware. Yeah, different points in my career. I can remember getting some quite profound impact, feedback once actually about, which this is what got me into coaching and facilitation, actually, about how my passion for a certain topic just meant that I was railroading people.

37:10

I was talking over people. I was interrupting them, and inadvertently manipulating the room to get an outcome, mostly because I just wanted to get it finished rather than trying to coerce people. And somebody gave me that feedback. And I went off Googling listening skills.

37:30

All right, I need to listen a bit better. And that helped me off, sent me down the path of looking through into coaching and facilitations so I could handle those moments better. This was maybe 10 years ago.

37:43

And I think once I'd learned those skills, it becomes, that retrospective mentality becomes second nature. Yeah, maybe without realizing it, I apply just as much of those concepts to all of my life than I maybe realize. That sort of self-awareness and introspecting on, am I happy in what I'm doing? How do I balance? If I'm unhappy, what do I want to do about it?

38:15

Don't just sit there and whinge about it. I can even do plenty things. Sometimes it's leaving a job. Sometimes it's navigating the maze inside your existing job. The worst thing you can do is just sit there and be unhappy about it. Isn't it?

38:28

Yeah, that might be the thing that I do different is take action and acknowledge how you're feeling. And then take action upon it, and actively think about what your actions might be. And sometimes just making the conscious decision to be, "All right, this is uncomfortable, but it's fine." That's still a conscious choice to do nothing. Make you do nothing choice a choice, rather than just coasting. I don't think I just coast along much, or I might do it for a few months, but I'll stop in and check in with myself pretty frequently.

39:03

It sounds efficient and straight. And the counter to that, it's that often it takes us following our playful natures in a way, and playing and getting...

39:23

I don't consider it straight at all. If I draw my career coaching conversations with my boss and even with myself, sometimes, whenever I draw some of this out, I draw multiple forks in the path. I'm thinking about... I've grown up the corporate career ladder without that being my desire.

39:47

I've got multiple promotions and to the position I am today without actively trying to climb the corporate career ladder because it's not my primary motivation. I've got this path that I'm on. I didn't really intend to be on, but it's proved useful. I think ultimately I would like to end up in a role or a position where I have a core job somewhere, probably part-time, where I can apply someone of my experience and help, and folks out, which would pay the bills. Or maybe I'll get into the position where I don't even need that job.

40:26

Don't need that core bit. And having more of a portfolio career where doing things like this or speaking, or teaching, or mentoring, or coaching, or charity work, or whatever it would be, a collection of different things to help give me the variety that I always crave.

40:45

When I draw out my maze or my career path, it's multiple paths with forks and merges and branches. And when I talk about introspective and self-reflecting, I think about these paths in my head. And have I gone so far down one that I can't turn around?

41:03

Is there a way to cut from one to the other? My third path would be at some point I could see myself running my own company. I don't have an idea just yet, but I'm pretty sure one day it'll come to me. All the skills and experiences that've gained over the years will help me in doing that. So yes, there's one big messy path. Isn't it? Or it has been for me, that's the way I treat my life and my career, rather than it being a stepping stones or a ladder that you need to climb because I think that's just the nature of life. Isn't it?

41:41

How would you say that for you, your work becomes meaningful; how does it become meaningful for you?

41:53

Yeah, I don't know if it's a tough one because I think as I left the public sector, because I spent quite a long time working in the public sector, I had to think about this question. When you're in the public sector it's easy to find your purpose. You know you're doing something for a greater good.

42:13

And I really worried when I left the public sector that I would not be able to adapt to, I don't want to call it a corporate environment, but a different type of environment. And I had to question myself on this when I joined MOO. Is it enough?

42:32

And the thing that fight for me, and then I realized what's important to me, as I was waiting to join MOO, my manager at the time sent me a, I got a surprise package. And it was a package of our locks note cards.

42:45

And she'd handwritten a little note in there saying welcome to the team, blah, blah, blah. But I didn't know what this package was. So I'm opened up the package and it's in this beautiful, gorgeous little box that we sell. I'm opening it up, still thinking, "What the heck are these?" And I open it up, and there's a note card in there. And there's a little note.

43:02

One, the note that my boss had left me was nice and special, but I was more in awe of the product. I was like, "These are amazing. I'm going to work for a company that makes these." And I was smile on my face and was picking them up. And I was looking at them all and the colors and tapping the quality, and how beautiful the box was and the packaging that came in. And I just felt like our customers must feel like that.

43:24

And I remember that now. Our company ambition is be a great design for everyone. And I remember now the feeling that I felt the first time that I'd seen a high quality, well designed product, and how it made me feel. And I imagine our customers feeling the same.

43:44

Where I get the purpose and the desire obviously comes from making other people happy, and making other people feel like we've given them something useful or beneficial. And that was enough for me to join MOO. And it's enough for me to keep being here since. But I think keep, whenever I go next, I would seek that, this. What is it that's making somebody smile about why I'm helping and able to do?

44:15

And it wouldn't have been possible a century ago. And we would've seen those ethical careers, as you said, you're in the public service or you are a nurse instead of you can contribute something positive to society through companies.

44:35

Yeah, I agree. And I was talking to you about customers, but I think the same thing holds true with people that you work with. I take great pride of managing and leading other people, and not in the controlling sense, in the helping grow other people. I love when I've helped someone learn something different, or I've helped them solve a problem, or I've coached them to help solve their own problem and they've gone on to succeed. That's the combination of those two things together really, really, really inspire me and help me get to do my work every day.

45:18

We live in almost like a hyper personalized society ever since the renaissances where this romantic ideology has freed us in some ways from class or parental structures. And instead we can follow to our own ambitions. What do you think the positive and negatives are of that?

45:48

Yeah. I was reflecting on some of this morning, actually, with a colleague, like the future of work, basically. We were actually talking about remote working and video conferencing and whether that would persist or not. But they're interrelated. Aren't they? That nowadays there are so many different work opportunities on tap to people from wherever.

46:09

My son, when he enters a workplace, commuting to him would be completely alien. He's grown up his whole life virtually. And he is obviously as right now playing some video game on his Xbox with all his friends that are over the world. It's second nature for them.

46:29

The pros there are I think it's just opens up the world of work in ways that we probably can't even imagine nowadays. And that next generation of workforce are going to demand that we do things in a different way. The fact that we're all not quite sure about remote working and hybrid working and the stuff right now. We're going to have to get over it pretty fast.

46:50

Because the next generation are going to demand something that we probably don't even know exists today, which is a pro and a con, isn't it? It's scary because we've got to solve these problems and fast, but I don't think we know the problems that that's going to create for the future, to be perfectly honest.

47:12

Because the counter argument on spending more time in person in the more traditional jobs is we have more connections and networking, the camaraderie. We know how we used to do it in the past. We knew that meeting people in person achieved it. And you've got quite a big part of society right now that are still skeptical. Maybe they're afraid. Maybe they don't know how to do it.

47:37

But yeah, you're going to have this mix of those different people in the workforce where there will be attention. Some people are going to want to do it one way, and the other half are going to resist.

47:54

For everything that is a pro, there's a code that comes with it. Isn't it? You can't please everyone. Yeah. I think it's going to be fascinating over the next few years anyway, to see how some of this all ties together. As we properly come out the other side of the pandemic and companies realise how they want to run their companies, whether they're remote or not. And then the influx of the gen Zers and even younger into the workplace, I think the next five years are going to be really fascinating and it's going to create some new problems for us to have to solve, including how the heck to recruit great people.

48:37

And how would you describe your relationship with work now? And is there any way that you want that to change in the future?

48:48

My relationship with work? One thing that I've always struggled with, I think this has come from a lifetime in the army. I find it hard to separate life and work, and not in a work/life balance way. I get immersed. For seven years, my job was my life. The people that I worked with were my friends.

49:06

And the early part of my career, that was just life. And it was very similar when it was growing up in a village as well. I fully immerse myself in whatever I do, to be perfectly honest. And I think that can be great to get things done, but then yeah, I can take it to extremes.

49:30

I think as I've grown older and more experienced, I'm better able to integrate my work and life better, rather than work/life balance. I'm really enjoying the ability now to work in a mix from a home and in the office, create nonlinear days, and balance those things in a way that works for me.

49:56

And that works great. I have no qualms with going out in the middle of the day for two or three hours to go for a cycle ride or whatever if that's what I need to do. If I'm not in the mood for doing something, I won't do it. I'll go do the washing or something. I'll come back to work when I feel like doing it. And that really works for me now.

50:15

And I think that's going to help keep me on the straight and narrow of not pushing myself too hard and potentially burning myself out. I consider that level of flexibility, I suppose, as part and part of my package nowadays.

50:33

And most providing that benefit. And like any other company that I went afterwards, that would be quite high up on my priority list. Being able to have a fair amount of say in how I manage my time and go about doing my work. And for most of us in technology rules, that's viable. Yeah.

50:58

Thanks so much, Claire.

51:00

Oh, yeah.

51:02

I've really enjoyed.

51:02

Oh, good.

51:05

It's been great. And your honesty, clarity, openness, I think it's-

51:09

Is that what inspiring?

51:11

... really refreshing, helpful. Yeah. And it will give so many people a way clearer idea of how they could navigate their own journey, too.

51:19

Good speaking to you, Ben.

51:20

You, too. Loved it. Thanks, Claire.

51:22

Bye.