02-25-2010, 01:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-25-2010, 01:28 PM by Questioner.)
Thank you for coming to share your story with us, Stan. I'm so glad you did!
I would like to learn more about the concepts and habits that helped turn around your health.
Your business situation resonates very much with me!
What made you a success at business development? It looks to me that in this role, you found people around the world who could benefit from the company's engineering works. You created relationships with these people. These were relationships based a solid foundation of respectful equality and service. With you, they truly had a friend for the business.
You helped your customers to select and use the right products and services for them. Perhaps you also provided the company's product developers with insights into which features would be most helpful to include in their next designs.
You were a bridge between the engineering skills inside the company, and the results obtained by the customers outside the company. You might have spent as many days each year outside the company as within it. You enjoyed the similarities of human nature amid the diversity of the world's cultures.
Sounds like you loved it, and were great at it.
What did the company eventually desire from internal operational management? The purpose of this role was to focus inside the company on building or supporting what other people defined & sold. To find people who could perform a predefined process. To enforce the rules of process on them. To focus inside the company and let other people handle the connection with the external world.
And probably, though not allowed to be said, there was a hidden agenda as well: to have relationships downward based on hierarchical control regardless of employees' unique talents or personalities. And to have relationships upward based on making bosses look good no matter what. To pretend that nothing but the self-centered "corporate culture" existed or had any value.
People below got put into a box, people above got put on pedestals. Neither box nor pedestal has much to do with the loving heart of service that made customers appreciate you so much.
Somewhere at the top of the company, the priorities had changed. Instead of finding new mountains to scale, they wanted to turn base camp into a walled city. They stopped respecting the importance of their mountain guide who helped them find new paths to the summit.
They tried to turn their mountain guide into a local cop. Why should it have surprised anyone that the same person might not be brilliant in both roles?
Today as you take care of your health, you might not be able to work full time for one company, or to travel very much. But there is still hope for your career. The same skills and love you used in your business development role are very important to many other companies.
The good news about all of this is that you could probably be a business development consultant to other companies, on a part-time basis.
For other companies that are run with a positive, service-oriented attitude, you could help them to define their market position, to train their account reps, or to develop the product roadmap. These are all ways you could serve through short-term projects. If you can find companies who are just learning how to climb the next hill, your mountain guide experience could be so valuable to them.
To use your previous knowledge, this could be engineering companies, or could be companies involved in outdoor adventures (such as paraglider manufacturers). Or it could be any company that already knows their specialty, but that needs your transferable skills of empathy and insight. If you had a modest fee plus a commission on the company's growth from your work, you might even end up getting better paid than ever before. Perhaps you could work with angel investors and be their designated board member on the companies they fund, helping to set their strategic direction. If you could travel some, perhaps you could go with clients to trade shows and help them develop business relationships with many other companies in a short time.
In my own life, I have some excellent skills that were well received when I got to work in an environment of innovation and harmony. Those skills eventually got me into other jobs where the real agendas were to build empires, pass blame, and pretend that this was the only way to deal with technology. Guess what, I didn't fit in very well there!
Because of some major health issues, I'm now studying how to make just the kind of transition I described to you. I'm not there yet, but I have found some very promising ways to think about all this and I'm confident I will get there! If there is anything I can do to pass along what I'm learning, or to inspire and cheer you on, I'd be honored to do so!
I would like to learn more about the concepts and habits that helped turn around your health.
Your business situation resonates very much with me!
What made you a success at business development? It looks to me that in this role, you found people around the world who could benefit from the company's engineering works. You created relationships with these people. These were relationships based a solid foundation of respectful equality and service. With you, they truly had a friend for the business.
You helped your customers to select and use the right products and services for them. Perhaps you also provided the company's product developers with insights into which features would be most helpful to include in their next designs.
You were a bridge between the engineering skills inside the company, and the results obtained by the customers outside the company. You might have spent as many days each year outside the company as within it. You enjoyed the similarities of human nature amid the diversity of the world's cultures.
Sounds like you loved it, and were great at it.
What did the company eventually desire from internal operational management? The purpose of this role was to focus inside the company on building or supporting what other people defined & sold. To find people who could perform a predefined process. To enforce the rules of process on them. To focus inside the company and let other people handle the connection with the external world.
And probably, though not allowed to be said, there was a hidden agenda as well: to have relationships downward based on hierarchical control regardless of employees' unique talents or personalities. And to have relationships upward based on making bosses look good no matter what. To pretend that nothing but the self-centered "corporate culture" existed or had any value.
People below got put into a box, people above got put on pedestals. Neither box nor pedestal has much to do with the loving heart of service that made customers appreciate you so much.
Somewhere at the top of the company, the priorities had changed. Instead of finding new mountains to scale, they wanted to turn base camp into a walled city. They stopped respecting the importance of their mountain guide who helped them find new paths to the summit.
They tried to turn their mountain guide into a local cop. Why should it have surprised anyone that the same person might not be brilliant in both roles?
Today as you take care of your health, you might not be able to work full time for one company, or to travel very much. But there is still hope for your career. The same skills and love you used in your business development role are very important to many other companies.
The good news about all of this is that you could probably be a business development consultant to other companies, on a part-time basis.
For other companies that are run with a positive, service-oriented attitude, you could help them to define their market position, to train their account reps, or to develop the product roadmap. These are all ways you could serve through short-term projects. If you can find companies who are just learning how to climb the next hill, your mountain guide experience could be so valuable to them.
To use your previous knowledge, this could be engineering companies, or could be companies involved in outdoor adventures (such as paraglider manufacturers). Or it could be any company that already knows their specialty, but that needs your transferable skills of empathy and insight. If you had a modest fee plus a commission on the company's growth from your work, you might even end up getting better paid than ever before. Perhaps you could work with angel investors and be their designated board member on the companies they fund, helping to set their strategic direction. If you could travel some, perhaps you could go with clients to trade shows and help them develop business relationships with many other companies in a short time.
In my own life, I have some excellent skills that were well received when I got to work in an environment of innovation and harmony. Those skills eventually got me into other jobs where the real agendas were to build empires, pass blame, and pretend that this was the only way to deal with technology. Guess what, I didn't fit in very well there!
Because of some major health issues, I'm now studying how to make just the kind of transition I described to you. I'm not there yet, but I have found some very promising ways to think about all this and I'm confident I will get there! If there is anything I can do to pass along what I'm learning, or to inspire and cheer you on, I'd be honored to do so!