On Thursday 1 March I spoke at the DisruptHR Conference held in Cape Town at the cool Travelstart offices in Kloof Street Studios. The opportunity allowed me to do 2 things: 1. Reflect on my personal journey from the advertising industry to product design, and 2. Practice public speaking (once more, after a hiatus of, say, a few years). If you’re unfamiliar, the DisruptHR format reminds me of PechaKucha in that it’s focused, timed and self running. Each presenter has 20 slides (no more, no less), slides rotate every 15 seconds automatically. You don’t control them. This makes things very interesting. It’s also fun. But terribly difficult to master. I felt that I had a particularly interesting story to share as a creative practitioner whom found himself in a world he did not recognize or understand. During that experience, I sometimes felt that I did not know who I was. I had lost my 'sense of self', as it were. In order to survive, I...
How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? Dr. Seuss
Last week I was laid off. On Wednesday last week, I was told that my job was no longer necessary. I guess the truth of the matter is that my position was made redundant. That’s different from being fired. Just to be clear: I wasn’t fired. Here’s an interesting statistic: over the last 27 years, I’ve been told that my job was no longer needed no less that 5 times. Let that sink in for a moment. I’ve been retrenched 5 times in my working career. Reminds me of that quote from Robin Chase, the co-founder of Zipcar (the largest car sharing company in the world), "My father had one job in his life, I've had six in mine, my kids will have six at the same time." In situations like this, I like to remember that ‘if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’ This is something that Dr Wayne Dyer enjoyed saying. And I often reflect on it. For example; instead of thinking I’m no longer relevant, I can take this opportunity and find the ne...
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Till the next one!
RAT