The thought of starting all over again used to completely paralyse me. Although I am not out of the waters yet, I’m proud to look back and reflect on the progress I have made to date. I still remember how I felt in 1995 when I was changing schools and was told to repeat a class. This was odd because I had been in the top 5 in the grade. My father used his wisdom because I was a year younger than everyone, it is best if I repeat a grade (was called standard at the time). He then told me that it was because I didn’t do Afrikaans as a subject in my previous school. This made me angry until recently. It felt like I was cheated on my price. I wanted to be the smart youngest kid in the school, much like we see in movies. It wasn’t apparent at first, but starting all over again became less daunting.
Start Overs and Change Resilience
There has been a fair share of start overs in my life. Some were forced upon me while others were self-inflicted wounds. I prefer the self-inflicted ones because they brought desired lessons. Although at times, the forced start overs have the biggest lessons I cannot forget. An example of a forced one includes my parents’ divorce in 1996, our father kicking us out of the company house in Wenela Village (TEBA Welkom Campus) on 31st March 1998, my sisters filling in the role of my father and we kids having to do our part, having to walk my mother as a hawker to reconcile her received payables account, having to move house multiple times, etc. The self-inflicted ones are my choice to start a family, choose my career in banking, stay longer with one employer, and advance my studies for a better job title or more money.
Corporate Chameleons
The current world of work tells us that many corporate chameleons manage to advance their careers using simple relationship tricks. I have tried those tricks, and nothing worked. To my surprise those tricks were ineffective. It might be due to all of us reading the same books and being alert about how people at work could charm you for their career advantage. The frustration was real. The solution began in the pause area when having coffee with colleagues. We then decided that it was time to reinvent ourselves and committed to booking a peer review every Friday to share knowledge. These sessions were amazing as I realised that I needed a master’s degree to really show that I have mastered finance. Master’s degree wanted someone with an honours degree thus had to do one in Informatics. The other colleagues went for MBA starting with PDBA and PgDip. The other went to start his own business.
Jumping Desire is Universal
I’m sharing the above to show you that the need to jump was not a private matter. I shared a need and longing with many other colleagues in the same company. All we wanted to do was to find a way for career progression. Not just empty job titles, but rather good and honest career progression where one’s contribution matter and makes a difference. Some of us have been scared by our childhood experiences. These experiences might have left deep scars like me having to repeat a grade in 1995. My later experiences ensured my resilience in seeking change; when I felt stuck, I knew I needed a fresh start. All of us know the moment in time we knew a fresh start is needed. We might have delayed taking the decision because of the unknown. The unknown brings more fear than following an approved plan. Attending master classes and furthering one’s studies is an option for a lot of us middle to senior managers. But this breeds unfulfillment as I have experienced.
Past Behaviour = Future Behaviour
I am no saint at all. My belief in further education is so strong that just this morning I enrolled in a qualified director course after completing my professional director certification. What I know is a formula for reinvention in a career setup. Its results are not as instant as some books I read claim the process to be. It takes time and needs long-term commitment. At times I thought and longed to speak to someone who would really appreciate the pain of a young, hardworking, male, previously underprivileged professional with no political connections. Most people I chatted with were experts in their own fields and were missing the exact answer I was seeking – career progression from where I am right now. Mentors told me about their life experiences and what they would do if they were to start all over again at my age. Nonetheless, neither of those was exactly helpful in correlation to where I was then.
Speaking to Others
Being An Analyst was a project (philanthropic side hustle) I started in 2020 during Covid to try and help colleagues with steps to take for career progression. Working from home allowed my wife to overhear most of my Teams or telephonic conversations. She asked me why I don’t join her and operate a YouTube channel to chat about analysis. The truth is that my earlier videos were crappy and not up to par. This is because my initial thinking was to chat about how to get into the analysis as if you were a high school matriculant. Quickly forgot that I was not talking to high school pupils at the beginning but rather colleagues who are recipients of various university degrees and higher certificates. My stubbornness compelled me to seek out my previous high school and offer a mentoring program hoping I can coach them into future analysts.
My Audience
The answer came smacking me in the face. The main issue to solve was helping people to jump and change their course. High school pupils don’t need to jump, they just need to proceed on their way. I then went to YouTube to analyse who watches my content. YouTube was honest to tell me that my audience is aged 24-35 and is mostly females in South Africa. LinkedIn gave me all their job titles from accounting to business analysis. With this information, I knew immediately that I am forced to change my direction. Thanks to a conversation with Buzz who was my strategy lecturer and GIBS, I received clarity about what everyone would benefit the most from me. Telling them how to make the jump. Whether you are jumping from employee to small business owner, accounting to analysis, small family business employee to corporate, accounting to finance, sales to technology finance, finance to strategy, bachelor to master’s degree, and now employees to professional director. Being An Analyst could provide authentic answers just like ask sis Dolly did in Drum magazine.
Conclusion
The thought of change was paralysing given my childhood experience back in 1995. Having to repeat a grade made me feel like I was not adequate to fit into the fast-growth pipeline yet. Despite many forced and self-imposed changes in my life, I was still scared of making a drastic change. I resorted to reading about all the corporate chameleons and asking them how they grew into the career of their dreams. All this was unless given that most mentors are referencing a reality I was not living in at the time. This frustrated me and I found relief when chatting with colleagues about what to do to grow their careers given my experience. It was a “how to jump” conversation that we were having. I totally lost the plot when I created Being An Analyst and only realised now that I have a different audience. My YouTube audience is no different to my corporate colleagues who needed a chat about how to shake things up. Whether they chat in small groups for peer reviews or seek out someone like me for a reflection. Either of these options would be a new perspective and they might drop the fear and “JUMP”.
