I received this Tweet this morning from one of my WhatsApp group, quoting Astro Awani that, “More than 30,000 companies in Malaysia has been closed since March, 2020 and job loss is expected to reach 90,000 by end October, 2020. I believe that these figures were released by the Statistics Department.
For many and even someone like me who is only starting out doing Consultancy and Training, this is a worrying trend.
I follow Gary Vee and coincidently, I had come across this post where he was asked a question on what someone could do if they lost their jobs in 2020.
His advice was to evaluate in the first place whether you can find an opportunity in this where one can really dig deep and ask what is it that you really want to do. Then he advises to Write Love Letter to Working Future Self, as the ideal working life you had longed for. It’s supposed to be good therapy, so here goes….
Dear My Future Self,
Congratulations on completing and documenting your knowledge to be shared with the world. It has not been an easy task, especially as you had needed to do some soul-searching for some time, digging deep into the recesses of your mind and soul, to uncover your next chapter in life.
Your best traits have always been one of being brave to explore, learn and grow in related fields. Your sense of curiosity, adventure and risk taking, has led you from one path to the next.
Having no choice but to take a degree in Bachelor’s in Education (TESL), you ventured to become a member of AIESEC and learned marketing, advertising and promotions – skills that interests you more. Then you detoured from becoming a teacher, which was the natural conclusion, to becoming a Jr Executive in Media Relations, knowing full well that this was a possible bridge to a future marketing job.
Lacking the skills to be an experienced Public Relations expert, you then crossed over to become an Assistant Producer for Money Matters and hit the ground, learning everything there was to know in 6 months, including becoming a Studio Director and Producer for the ‘live’ show.
This became the footprint of your journey, where you would opt to work in different industries (construction, broadcasting, oil & gas, banking, consultancy, aviation, training), learning from the ground up on any new thing that was tasked to you. Some of these include following the surveyor walk house to house conducting a qualitative survey, attending the focus groups, oil spill practical training, auditors training, even though in some cases, you were the only female to do so or at a senior management level.
Your need to continuously seek knowledge to be an informed leader to your team, is also a key driver to innovate and grow. This was normally done by experimenting with new social media apps, subscribing to the relevant field newsletters, or sites such as Mashable or TechCrunch, to keep yourself informed, relevant and to ensure the organization you are in, is kept abreast of the next new thing.
Your continuous need for growth, looking at what’s next, combined with the love of simplification of processes, had driven innovation and continuous improvement in all the business units that you had managed.
These traits and experience you possess was enough to drive a Director to insist on meeting you, even though you had decided not to pursue the position. He was curious at the many career transitions, the continued growth albeit the many challenges it might have posed.
Your highly skilled people management, soft yet authoritative demeaner also made you an excellent humanitarian advisor as was seen in the handling of crises such as the Caltex station damage, wrong discharge incidents, next-of kin management of aviation disasters for Kudat, MH370 and MH17 crashes. These were experiences that are rare and yet profound mix reflecting your humanitarian, leadership and flexible nature of handling business in peace time and in crisis.
It was then no surprise that you were assigned to handle one of the more complicated family and this case had become a case-study in terms of being an out of the norm in terms of next of kin assignments.
It has not been an easy journey, others looking in would have questioned the change of industries and role profiles, but then again not many would have the same body of varied experiences to share with the youth of today and the reality of today is indeed challenging.
So, thank you for sharing, guiding and documenting these experiences for the next generation and perhaps some of todays’ generation to learn and benefit from.
