Building Adaptability Skills in both the Workplace and Life
During my period of career turbulence - which actually began as far back as 2014 if my retrospection is correct, but officially began in early December of 2017 - one recurrent talking point that my employer's CHRO and CEO both expounded upon was how they sought resources who were (not their words, I'm being succinct) emotionally intelligent and mentally flexible.
Another trending topic from both the HR and economic viewpoints, particularly in North America, seems to be that of how millennials are contributing increasingly to the creation of a "gig economy" - seemingly voluntarily jumping from contract to contract.
In both cases, it helps to possess a curious nature: learning curves, be they academic or social, are best scaled when one inherently enjoys the process of acquiring knowledge and then applying it. However, the bigger mental challenge might, in my opinion, be to keep an unflagging sense of optimism about impending change.
We may speak to it, but actually embracing change is quite difficult, I think, for many people. We may wish for difficult times to pass, but when a easier period of our lives arrives either logistically or financially, it's unlikely that we would seek out something new at the risk of dismantling what we have just for the sake of novelty.
Certainly, having carved out a high quality of living for ourselves here despite not even remotely approaching the 1%, both my spouse and I have focused our efforts in remaining physically put. However, when it was apparent to me that my time as an SEO was going to end, I was willing to embrace a significant change in job role. This separation which I had mentally made between job and life was almost surprisingly simple, considering my culturally inherited trait of inclining to be organizationally loyal.
Nevertheless I expect to always carry some of the habits I developed "marketeering". One sign of this is the chagrin I feel when I see Quora questions that imply that my employer has been failing ever since they stopped producing B2C products. Knowing as deeply as I do the effort and scope of B2B marketing that we do and the diversity of segmented audience we strive to reach, I'm disappointed that even the mainstream stories of interest, be they Watson winning Jeopardy! or the plans to commercialize Quantum Computing, seem to be brushed aside by the mindset of "but they don't do PCs any more, and aren't mainframes irrelevant?" (Answer: no, we now design and manufacture the hardware behind everyone's beloved "Cloud").
So, where did I end up? I intend to - without contravening any guidelines - delineate and present a newbie's view on cyber security incident response in future blog installments. So please stay tuned...
Another trending topic from both the HR and economic viewpoints, particularly in North America, seems to be that of how millennials are contributing increasingly to the creation of a "gig economy" - seemingly voluntarily jumping from contract to contract.
In both cases, it helps to possess a curious nature: learning curves, be they academic or social, are best scaled when one inherently enjoys the process of acquiring knowledge and then applying it. However, the bigger mental challenge might, in my opinion, be to keep an unflagging sense of optimism about impending change.
We may speak to it, but actually embracing change is quite difficult, I think, for many people. We may wish for difficult times to pass, but when a easier period of our lives arrives either logistically or financially, it's unlikely that we would seek out something new at the risk of dismantling what we have just for the sake of novelty.
Certainly, having carved out a high quality of living for ourselves here despite not even remotely approaching the 1%, both my spouse and I have focused our efforts in remaining physically put. However, when it was apparent to me that my time as an SEO was going to end, I was willing to embrace a significant change in job role. This separation which I had mentally made between job and life was almost surprisingly simple, considering my culturally inherited trait of inclining to be organizationally loyal.
Nevertheless I expect to always carry some of the habits I developed "marketeering". One sign of this is the chagrin I feel when I see Quora questions that imply that my employer has been failing ever since they stopped producing B2C products. Knowing as deeply as I do the effort and scope of B2B marketing that we do and the diversity of segmented audience we strive to reach, I'm disappointed that even the mainstream stories of interest, be they Watson winning Jeopardy! or the plans to commercialize Quantum Computing, seem to be brushed aside by the mindset of "but they don't do PCs any more, and aren't mainframes irrelevant?" (Answer: no, we now design and manufacture the hardware behind everyone's beloved "Cloud").
So, where did I end up? I intend to - without contravening any guidelines - delineate and present a newbie's view on cyber security incident response in future blog installments. So please stay tuned...
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