Playing a role of a CIO again! Journey is everything.

Last year, I went through a period of career reflection. I summarized almost 10 years of my consulting work and, to my surprise, discovered there was a lot going on under the surface.

First, I realized I was no longer learning. Situations began to repeat themselves, and companies started to look increasingly similar. I also discovered that the thrill of being proud of advising others, which initially motivated me to start consulting, was no longer compelling or necessary for me.

Second, I felt I wasn't building anything I could own in the long term; my need for ownership was clearly unmet. Similarly, my need for belonging was unfulfilled—people and companies changed, but I always remained an outsider.

My energy was flowing in one direction only: outward, with no chance to achieve balance and get some energy back. While I helped many CTOs, PMOs, TOs, PMs, and executives, I realized I hadn't been helping myself.

In conclusion, I decided that my next mission is to focus on one thing, with the same people, and build something together for the long term.

So, I switched to a CIO position. My first impression is that it is a far better position to promote personal and systemic change than that of a Transformation Coach. It is much more effective than being an external consultant because my voice is from the inside.

Being a CIO provides me with a better ability to be effective and create a higher impact.

Playing this role comes naturally to me this time. I am finally capable of leveraging people skills, tech skills, and organizational skills. I must admit it wasn't the case the last time I held a similar role. I spent a decade maturing after acting as an IT director for the first time.

The journey is everything. I can now openly recommend myself as an IT director to any company, which was not the case ten years ago. But that's just a side effect ;) Primarily, I feel I am using my energy for the right thing. I derive my actions (again!) from my personal inner locus. This feels really good.

I enjoy reflecting on my journey and am happy to share it with you and as many people as I can influence, to leave this world a better place.

A journey of self-transcendence - towards expressing myself

Summarizing my experiences and building my own understanding of what is important, what is meaningful and what is relevant resulted in a few mini books published on Leanpub and one fully fledged book - Good Companies, published on amazon. Clearly writing is my channel of expression.

The journey took me a few years before I was able to make my own sense of reality, extract the essence of my experience and use it to switch to the forward-looking frame. In this new frame I discovered endless potential for growth and transcendence. For me personally, for companies, and for societies.

Even now, one year after the Good Companies book was published, I resist removing a weekly reminder in my calendar that I set years ago in order to shape and define the rhythm of my efforts. Clearly the journey has transformed me and became a cornerstone of who I am, of my identity.

What's for you in my story?
1. Hear your inner voice, grow up to your mission, let it become the source of your actions.
2. Find your natural channel of expression
3. Let the change happen despite the associated feeling of "losing control" and departing from what you are used to and how it used to be, from your comfort zone.

A refreshing switch from enterprise to small scale

During my first weeks of work that I had started recently, my family and colleagues were empathizing with me asking about how I found the company. I came up with two metaphors that I feel are describing my thoughts quite accurately. To give you the context I started my career in small startup companies, spent the last decade with enterprise size companies, and joined a small company a month ago.

Boeing vs light plane. Joining a small company of 40+ persons after working in enterprise size companies feels like switching from piloting a Boeing intercontinental to piloting a light recreational plane designed to carry two persons. It feels light, agile and lean - every manoeuvre is possible! A decision made in seconds? Yes! Talk to a person responsible directly? Yes! Find a spot for a meeting today in calendars? Yes! Talk to the CEO? Surely, yes! :) This feels absolutely amazing! 
Also, activities like planning a workshop for the product team a week ahead is possible. Defining the strategy for IT department, nominating chapter leaders is doable darn fast! And so on.

City habitants vs villagers. Another change when changing the scale so rapidly is the change in interactions with people. Interactions are direct. There are no line managers, hierarchies, etc. Awesome, easy. Yet the most significant change is in how people present themselves. What do I mean by that? Enterprise makes people feel and behave as if they were anonymous, similarly to how I find habitants of big cities. One interacts with a shoal of anonymous, similar people. One cannot have time to distinguish them by investing in building individual relations. In a small scale the interaction is of a completely different nature. It resembles the interaction between habitants of a small village. Firstly, everyone knows each one - there is no anonymity. That's how I like it! There is no thing that your colleagues will not know about you. Also, personal characters are fully visible. I say the characters are sharply cut from wood by a talented artist. Everyone has a personal cut. The same applies to me, too!

Overall, this change of daily experience feels refreshing to me. Real people and high decision power to create reality every day! Sounds awesome, doesn't it?!

Loose birthday morning thoughts

Even people who write about an alternative thought framework of economics, the relationship between business and society, and those who would like to see this entire system based on and derived from the mission of humanity [please wait for this! ...] keep arguing, exercise pecking ordering, fight for the primacy of their ideas.

Writing the Good Companies book was wonderfully liberating and helped me make sense of the mess around. I learned a lot and it taught me a lot. It also has given me a few important lessons. And as you can guess, it had both positive and negative consequences. 

That's what happens if one pursuits her/his self-developmental path: breaks from the socialized mind, discovers the self-authoring mind, and explores the self-transcendant mind. 

With regard to family life, I have always been on a path to build multi-generational family that has roots in one place where kids, with their kids, meet for family events. I am far from achieving it. But it remains my dream.

p.s. I called a friend with whom I attended my secondary school and a few years at university. Feels really good investment of time at my birthday. A follow up planned.