I started working more than thirty years ago. Since then I have passed through government, consulting, telecommunications and printing. The offices changed, the industries changed, and the titles certainly changed. The people problems stayed almost exactly the same.
When I was young, I believed work was mostly about proving you were capable. Do good work, meet your deadlines, and the rest would sort itself out. Competence does matter. It just turned out to be a smaller part of the picture than I thought.
The first thing I got wrong was assuming that being right was enough. You can hold the correct answer and still go nowhere with it, because people need to understand it, trust whoever is presenting it, and see where they fit in. I used to get quite frustrated when a sound idea failed to win support. It took me years to ask the less flattering question: had I actually brought people along, or had I simply announced that I was right?
I also noticed how many problems survive because nobody wants to have the conversation. I have watched organisations spend weeks designing around one awkward talk. Weak performance becomes a new reporting template. Confusion becomes another meeting. A broken working relationship becomes a restructuring. Very often the kinder and more useful thing is to speak plainly, early and in private. I learnt that later than I should have.
A title gives you authority and a better position on the organisation chart. It does not give you trust. That gets built in smaller moments, like whether you keep your word, whether you own up when something goes wrong, and how you treat people who can do nothing for your career. Titles are temporary, and people have long memories.
Over time I also became slower to blame individuals. Sometimes blame is deserved. But I have seen capable people stuck inside processes that practically guaranteed delay, duplication and confusion, and telling them to work harder only wears out the ones who care the most. These days, before I ask who failed, I try to ask what made failure so likely.
I used to think seniority meant having more answers. Mostly it means carrying decisions that have no perfect answer. You listen, weigh incomplete information, decide, and then own the result. A bigger office does not make the uncertainty go away. The good leaders I have known were not fearless. They had simply stopped handing every difficult decision to a committee.
For a long time I treated finance as somebody else’s department, which was a mistake. You do not need to become an accountant, but you do need to know how your organisation earns money, where it loses it, and what your decisions cost. A strategy that ignores the numbers is usually an expensive wish.
There is a particular pleasure in being the person everyone relies on, and it can be a warning sign. If everything stops when you are away, you may not have built a team. You may have built a queue. Real leadership leaves capability behind, which means sharing information, giving people work that matters, and letting them solve problems in ways you would not have chosen.
Work will also take everything you offer it. There is always another email, another target, another problem that looks urgent at 5.30 in the afternoon. Work matters, and so does providing for a family and building something worthwhile. But a job will not notice the years you gave it. The people at home will. I am still learning this one.
One principle I have held onto through all of this is that everyone is an adult. I treat people that way whether they report to me or I report to them, and I expect the same in return. We are all grown-ups, so we can say what we mean, hear things we would rather not, and get on with the work. In much of the West, that is a value people take for granted. Here in the East it is often read differently. I learnt that early. Many years ago, as a junior officer in government, I spoke candidly to a senior officer and got the cold shoulder for quite some time. It has happened more than once since, in different forms. I still think the principle is right, but I have learnt that being right about a principle and being wise about how you use it are two different things.
If I could sit down with my younger self over teh tarik, I would keep it short. Be useful, stay curious, learn to speak clearly without humiliating anyone, understand the numbers, and do not confuse being busy with making progress. Build relationships before you need them, and leave every role with your integrity intact. And remember that a career is one part of a life, not the whole of it.
