11 Game-Changing Lessons from 2023: The Year that went from disasterously bleak to bring it on 2024.

So, here's the thing: it's been ages since I've written a LinkedIn article (the last one I wrote one was in 2018 talking about the job market in Singapore, which I still cringe at to this day due to its very corporate/bland nature). Usually, when it comes to writing something personal and creative, I'm either found accompanied by a bottle of wine or smoking (going to get a red flag notice from the marcom and HR team for declaring in public on this). But hey, I'm writing this in a sober and smokeless state while waiting patiently for my delayed flight. Just so you know, there might or might not be a full-blown confession happening here. . To my readers, hold your seats tight here and grab some desserts.

This shit just got real, and here comes lesson number 1.

1.) Opportunities can be given, but trust and a seat at the high table have to be earned through consistency in deliverables.

In 2023, when the tech market experiences a correction of what has been 2 years’ worth of over-hire, I have the opportunity to experience what it means to really manage quality relationships with both new and long-standing clients. It dawned on me that many of us couldn't survive the cold winter of layoffs and conservative hiring because we never truly build our relationships with clients based on a value-based partnership but rather an immediate monetisation of service. You may get into a commercial SLA easily if you gamify your BD efforts well enough to cover a number of key stakeholders in a firm. But to be in a position where the client listens to my perspective, provides exclusivity in partnership, or even gives me a chance to voice my opinion is to present a consistent output of my efforts coupled with empathetic listening skills. Also, do not push a solution that makes zero value sense to the client. That consistency of output mentioned earlier meant being in Nazi mode on milestone deliverables, which leads to point 2.

2.) There is no work-life balance unless you inherit a company that runs on its own deep pockets and without VC funding or public funds. You can do work-life blending if you truly want to succeed in a sales- or P&L-driven role, but it has its consequences. I experimented with work-life blending in 2023, which meant close to 90% of my activities have three common themes that tie to my life's purpose. Those themes are: I learned something from that engagement; I helped someone along the way; I expanded or strengthened my network intentionally. I went from doing minimal networking to intentionally setting up most of my meals and holidays to a work-focused lifestyle. As I'm introverted by nature, my introspection and solitude recharging time were drastically reduced to a tee. What came out of this experiment was is some what consistent year of sales output and a wider network of friends and affiliates. The cons, though, were the frequent space-out situations when someone was talking to me and the feeling of mental fatigue. In 2024, there'll be tweaks to how this work-life blending is done.

3.) There are no problems that cannot be solved. Instead, it is just a set of biases, conservatism, and blind spots you either choose to ignore or cannot let go of. Much of the time, we don't really know how our problem framing was THE PROBLEM until we try to articulate it to someone, and they give us a refreshing perspective on it. I cracked some of my hardest search assignments in tech recruitment or leadership-related problems by either choosing to spend a day away doing something creative or speaking to someone who sees the blind spots I don't. Being receptive to change and correction of my actions was fundamental in coming to the right solution because doing what I did best until 2022 does not work all the time in 2023. Some case in point are:

• Saying yes to all my clients requests without understanding why and really giving a reality check on the situation has to go.
• Giving the client 100% control over the timeline to reach you is a major red flag.
• Staff that plays the victim card game more tha three?times is as good as a lost cause to any leaders.

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4.) If it is the thing that you fear the most, then it is also the thing that you should work on in order to push yourself from Level 1 to Level 5. Guess this one is inspired by Tim Ferriss. When ChatGPT became commercially viable, most of the network I worked with had two vastly distinctive schools of thought.? They were either overly worried that it will displace them or engaged in negative commentary about the technology.Or, they learn the mechanism behind it and see the opportunity to be more effective in dealing with more complex problems. If you pride yourself on spending 60% of your work time doing data entry or administrative work, then you are lightly to be ousted by the advancement of technology, but if you learn to leverage it for bigger and more effective outreach, then you are seeing a change tool as a leverage tool. I reap double the time vs. output investment. I used AI and productivity tools to annotate meetings, create presentations, and paraphrase my otherwise lengthy LinkedIn post. . Because of that, I am now able to consistently post more frequently on LinkedIn and complete more projects than my colleagues. The fact that these tools were available for less than a 3 figure digits?on a subscription basis is an additional perk.

5.) Taking on a people leadership route meant putting most of our individual career interests in the backseat and investing in the future leaders of our profession. It is also a slow-reward, high risk, and high-input role that would require a complete mindset shift. That mindset shift involves giving opportunities and resources for my team to shine, to take charge of projects and clients, and the platform to not just do things as they have always been taught but to reinvent themselves. While it also meant I don't usually earn as much in performance incentives compared to my role as a principal, The spillover joy was knowing that those I was responsible for were on a process/mindset change journey in 2023. You can check in with Audrey Teo , Syahirah A J , and Darren Ou to validate this statement.

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6.) You will know the type of leader or person you are when you are at a position to make a tough call.? Managerial responsibilities provide a sobering look at the values you formerly felt were important in life. I once thought we should always give everyone ample opportunities to make mistakes and be patient with the return on investment process until I am forced to make a call, as the ARR or ROI does not make sense. Then it came to my realisation that I should always give three strikes rules and be objective on failure to deliver. A hiring manager told me that we should hire slow but fire fast because the wrong hire does not just affect you. It affects the people you work with, which is essentially the building block of culture for your organisation. That piece of advice helps me look into my own hiring mistakes and present errors in my management style. One of which is that giving too many free passes is equivalent to bending reality on staff that should be rewarded for consistency vs. staff that should be corrected for their inconsistency or low accountability. Needless to say, being an achiever in my role as a single contributor vs. translating that to grooming a high-performing team is clearly a very different strategy game to play altogether. There have been phases where I still tried to bring what was taught in my MBA to the workplace, so I'm still a work in progress on this.

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7.) You do need to publicise your success and amplify it one way or another in order to remain competitive in your industry. There's a saying that "Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise" which isn't entirely wrong, but I do realise that if my work is kept confidential most of the time, my market outreach is pretty much limited to those who benefited from the project closure, and that limits my ability to penetrate deeper into the industry. I learn this lesson mostly when engaging with freelance PR strategist, successful vlogger and KOL in the industry. Sharing my challenges through case studies, LinkedIn posts, and recommendations are good ways to attain new relationships. I used this as a post-mortem review process on what has worked and what hasn't. To a certain point, when my work is being endorsed by someone senior in the field, the value of my contribution becomes much higher, and that gives me an upper hand in commercial negotiations. (P.S. This helps you in your next pay raise as well.). Also, sharing from personal experience, I've been asked the question "name me your price" thrice based on the recognition of my work. The power of personal branding is way more potent than any paid award campaigns.

8.) The Martyr complex in your role is equivalent to kamikaze in your other potentials in life.

I've learned that with increasing responsibilities as a leader and my lifelong pursuit of knowledge development, I have to be selective about the battles I am willing to invest my time and energy in. Quality over quantity helps to retain sanity towards oneself. Communication is key here, and aligning expectations does not make me less outstanding in my role, as I found out that most leaders are empathetic. As for which battle to embark on, I've learned this well from our usual catch-up chat with Deniece Tan ?? ; it's called a triage decision-making process, similar to what Agile practitioners do in the Agile framework. The triage component of inventory-based decision-making involves time spent to make a change, quality of work produced or to compromise on, and energy to affect the change. Everyone has a different level of priority on this triage, but you should make decisions based on the top two that matter to you. In 2023, I've mainly said yes to a lot of projects and roadmaps that were decided for me until it became clear that this is not working in the long run.

9.) Failure is a necessary process for success; however, we should not get into the project with the intention of failing but rather with the intention of increasing the odds of success in the shortest amount of time. Let's just face reality as it is: unless we are born with a natural talent for the role we are hired for, there's bound to be failures along the way. In 2023, we Aw H. Kher Xin T. Audrey Teo and Syahirah A J ) started the public committee tender team despite having little to no experience managing this. We went from failure submit on time on our first tender, getting rejected on our second tender due to overpricing to now.. which is to work collectively on two public tenders in the same month. Apart from learning from mistakes, it is also largely based on the fact that each of us has unique capabilities, and it takes a team with mutual objectives to reach the desired outcome. I hope that this committee will reap the rewards in 2024.

10.) If you have the intention to change your future, then walk, breathe, speak, manifest, and take action upon that change for a consistent period of time until the stars are aligned.

What has reaped tremendous rewards for me this year is the ability to clearly share my objectives with my management, clients, and candidates about where I want to be professionally. I work twice as hard to make sure that my part-time studies do not flop, deliverables at work at mostly met, even if everything in 2023 equates to higher risks and higher stakes in the game. I am currently excited for the opportunities that 2024 has in place.

11.) Learning comes in many forms, and being the smartest in the room all year round isn't necessarily a good thing for the company. Before 2023, my main learning channels were the leaders I reported and the work colleagues I spent most time with, until the realisation that we share the same blind spots as everyone else in the company hit me. I've learned to have diplomatic and market-driven conversations without divulging company information to fellow competitors or HR experts of our client's firm. That gives me individual insights into ways we can stay competitive in the current market. Being the smartest person in the room all year round doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing, as it can be a sign that, at one stage, the ability to innovate and share knowledge amongst our work colleagues has stopped. We either fail at hiring the ones who are better than us or we fail at the culture of continuous improvement for our team. So in 2023, I mandated my team to do a biweekly innovation workshop to inculcate learning from each other. Personally, apart from learning through professional studies, I've taken an interest in learning from the experiences shared by candidates and clients by asking mostly questions that perplex me in human behaviour and technical competency. That comes from removing the title of subject matter expert in tech recruitment to being a project consultant who is willing to be trained by the experts in the field. Listening to podcasts on the go like Chris Williamson's The Modern Wisdom (sharing the link to you here:https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisWillx ) helps shape some of my framework mindsets.

There you have it guys.. hope you find this article amusing.. maybe borderline controversial for some.. but these are my lessons that I have learned and will continously tweak along the way. Farewell 2023, hello 2024! Comment below on how 2023 has changed you?

#CareerLessons #WorkLifeBlending #LeadershipGrowth #AdaptingToChange #EmbracingFailure #SuccessMindset #Welcome2024