Career paths in 2023, amirite?
This is not a fever dream, a new newsletter is already out
Ok, I’ll give you a minute to go over the shock that I’m writing so often again. For those new to our Lateral Thinking family - this newsletter started out as a daily send for the first few months, but then life got in the way and apart from a short hiatus, ending up becoming bi-monthly, more or less.
I’ve always said that I’ll be sending this out as often as I can as long as I enjoy writing it. Hope the shock is over.
Yesterday’s piece was really well received and I really did take pleasure going down that rabbit hole, so in case you missed it, here it is again:
As promised, in today’s piece we’ll be chatting with Mehul Mandalia from Moving Walls. Let’s jump into the questions:
What's the one business lesson you wish you learned earlier in your career?
It's great timing because I recently heard James Clear on The High Performance Podcast refer to something that I really resonate with. The two-part lesson is to "build assets that compound" and to "optimize for reach over revenue". I'm part of a business that has quickly grown from being a couple of people to having hundreds of team members across the world. I can't even begin to count how many times I may have repeated the same lessons or tips or helpful resources to new team members or when speaking to new partners. I wish I had the foresight to turn many of these into reusable and published resources rather than the individual emails, calls, and discussions that were obviously limited in reach.
Being a cynic or an optimist - which do you think serves you better in life and why?
I would say being a pragmatic optimist has served me best. You never lose but you learn is how I approach both life and business events. This does two things - It keeps me positive enough to try out new things but it also makes me actively look out for whether the potential outcomes from this contribute to my longer term objectives.
What are you absolutely spectacular at? How did you figure out you're good at it?
I do two things really well. I can quickly figure out what something new means - short term, long term, to me, to the business and I can also find the most relevant information about something fairly quickly. Yes, these two capabilities are very generic but I can pretty much relate most business successes I have had to them.
Thanks, Mehul!
Figuring yourself out (professionally)
Since Mehul’s questions and answers drifted towards the business side of things, I thought I’d throw in some career advice in this piece.
Over the past decade, I’ve had the genuine pleasure to interview probably hundreds of people for a lot of positions - anything from internships at a local PR agency, to strategy roles at Leo Burnett, marketing roles at Vola.ro and, of course, a lot of various roles for Blindspot.
I’ve chatted with people who were way too full of themselves and talked to people who were shy beyond belief.
Some I still talk to, regardless if they ended up getting that job or not. Some still trash talk me for being tough during the interview. It is the way the cookie crumbles.
What I’ve realized, though, is that I can split up the majority of the people I’ve interviewed into 3 categories. There’s always a percentage that doesn’t fit in anywhere, let’s call them the rowdy 10%. But the reason it’s important to understand these categories is because most people you’ll be interviewing with will do the same thing - put you in a box. If you don’t like that idea, don’t go to the interview, start your own thing and change the system.
But until then, you have to learn how to play with the cards you’re dealt.
The categories I’ve seen are:
Doers, need guidance - these people have a ton of energy and aren’t afraid to throw themselves at a problem. However, due to either lack of experience or lack of focus, they’re very inefficient when left alone. Pair them with a responsible manager or senior that can give them daily to do’s
Thinkers, need KPIs - these people have had some hands on experience, but it didn’t really suit them. They’d much rather delegate or work on planning rather than getting their hands dirty. Nothing wrong with that, but make sure they have actionable KPIs otherwise you’ll never be able to gauge if their work is meaningful
The fabled hybrid, needs focus - these people are pretty rare. They’re great in startups, but not that great in fixed roles, because they’ll either get bored or frustrated (or both) with their role pretty fast. You need to give them clear objectives and support in order to reach said objectives, otherwise you won’t have a great time
Everyone is, of course, a combination of all these, it’s very rare to find someone who is 100% a thinker or a doer. For what it’s worth, I’m somewhere between 2 and 3 - I mostly enjoy planning (which is why I need to set clear KPIs for my work, otherwise I’ll end up planning with no real outcome), but on some matters (like copywriting) I tend to get more hands on.
Once you understand exactly who you are, it’ll become much more easy to present yourself in a manner that’ll propel your career, since you’re not playing pretend anymore, you’re just presenting the best version of yourself.