Beyond the Résumé

I have spent much of my life exploring ideas, building things, solving problems and occasionally finding myself in situations I could never have anticipated.

Looking back, there has been no single profession, industry or discipline that defines my journey. Technology, business, entrepreneurship, government, education, wellness and human development have all been part of it. Some transitions were deliberate. Others emerged from circumstances, opportunities or simply the curiosity to discover what lay beyond the familiar.

What has remained remarkably consistent is my interest in understanding how things work, why they sometimes don’t, and what might be possible if we looked at them differently.

I enjoy the process of taking something that is ambiguous, fragmented or seemingly complicated and discovering the underlying structure. Sometimes that leads to a business, a programme or a framework. Sometimes it leads to a conversation, a piece of writing or an entirely new question.

Over the years, my attention has increasingly turned towards the people behind the systems, organisations and ventures we create. What enables us to exercise judgement, solve unfamiliar problems, adapt to change, sustain ourselves and influence the world around us?

These questions now sit at the centre of my work in capability development. But they are also a continuation of interests that have accompanied me throughout my professional life.

I remain, above all, curious about what comes next.

I seem to have developed a habit of building things.

Some began as business ideas. Others emerged from an interesting problem, an unfamiliar technology, an opportunity to bring people together, or simply the thought that something ought to exist but didn’t.

They haven’t always belonged to the same world. Over the years, I’ve found myself building computers, companies, digital platforms, cultural initiatives, agricultural facilities, wellness products, books and frameworks. Some were commercial ventures. Others were experiments, communities or ideas that I wanted to see come alive.

Not all succeeded. Not all were intended to become businesses. And not everything survived long enough to become particularly significant. But each represented an attempt to turn a possibility into something tangible.

Looking back, I find it difficult to place all these creations within a single category. What connects them is perhaps the pleasure of beginning with a possibility and giving it form.

Some worked. Some didn’t. Some lasted. Others served their purpose and disappeared. But I suspect I’ll always be building something.

Four decades of working across different industries, organisations and environments have taught me many things. Perhaps the most important is how much there is that I still don’t know.

When I was younger, I probably placed greater value on having answers. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of asking better questions, particularly when dealing with unfamiliar situations or problems that refuse to fit neatly into established frameworks.

I’ve also learnt that experience doesn’t necessarily make decisions easier. It makes you more aware of their complexity, the assumptions underlying them and the consequences that may not be immediately visible.

Some of my most interesting experiences have come from entering domains I knew relatively little about. Technology, entrepreneurship, agriculture, wellness and education have each required me to begin again, learn a different vocabulary and understand a different way of looking at the world.

That has reinforced a belief that our ability to learn, adapt and exercise judgement may ultimately matter more than the knowledge we accumulate.

Building things has taught me something else. A good idea is only the beginning. Bringing it into existence requires imagination, persistence, resources, timing and, quite often, a willingness to abandon assumptions that once seemed perfectly reasonable.

Perhaps the most significant change in my thinking has been a gradual shift from focusing primarily on systems, technologies and organisations towards understanding the people who create, operate and sustain them.

We spend considerable effort developing knowledge and skills. Yet much of what determines how effectively we navigate life and work lies in capabilities that are harder to teach, measure or even articulate: judgement, creativity, adaptability, resilience, the ability to understand value, and the capacity to influence others.

These questions increasingly occupy my attention today. I don’t see them as conclusions reached after a long career. They are questions that my experiences have made more interesting.

And I suspect the learning is far from over.