Career Transitions

Prevailing economic trends have provided motivation to share aspects of my career journey due to some anecdotal observations of the current job market. It appears to be challenging to many and while I have no magic formula, perhaps my thoughts can help someone. Primarily, be open to opportunities positioned outside of your specific and current career Venn diagram intersections.?

I am currently in what is essentially my third professional career. That path will encompass a start in hospitality. My genesis was organic as I grew up in Northern Minnesota on my family’s border resort. After my grandfather passed and we sold our homestead, I transitioned to working at another local resort in my last year of high school. I began washing dishes and was quickly offered the opportunity to apprentice as a chef. I went on to work as a chef, bartender, server, and restaurant manager across different organizations and geographic regions, private enterprises and chain organizations. That lasted until the last half of my undergraduate years as I followed my innate passion to write code, create effective solutions, and work with data by obtaining a Decision and Information Systems degree. This internal drive is an intellectual extension of a lifelong penchant for providing great customer experiences and satisfaction.?

Being open to the winds of change, I found some of my best and most unexpected career explorations. I have worked with IBM, the NFL across 3 franchises, and one of the best SaaS companies ever as a career experience sample. My fun, interesting, challenging, and growth-oriented opportunities enhanced my life and my career. None of these successes are unique to me or my choices and are available to anyone with luck...the intersection of preparation and opportunity.?

In its?latest chapter, my career encompasses an ongoing adult interest in operations management and continuous improvement. In personal learning endeavors I have studied Deming, Juran, Kaizen, and The Goal for example. From there I have extended that with formal learning in an undergraduate and graduate level education while ultimately obtaining my MBA. There are so many aspects of software processes that have been leveraged from the manufacturing disciplines established by Deming and Juran many decades ago. The Kanban boards and Agile processes owe their attribution to the methodologies refined in manufacturing. Due to my life experiences I wanted to try something new and outside software development and software leadership while building on my abilities in project management and continuous improvement. This brings me to Martin Sprocket & Gear.?

As the Assembly Supervisor, I currently project manage a dynamic portfolio of manufacturing job assemblies at approximately $1-2+ million a month. It is generally in a range of approximately a couple dozen assembly runs in our pipeline each month. So very interesting and this keeps me striving to coordinate dozens of internally manufactured or purchased components across multiple jobs simultaneously in a fast-paced environment with strict timelines.?

What is the point? Be open to the road less traveled. Be aware of your value and aware of the false edifice of “do you know these systems and tools?”. Be willing to try something new and look at the unknown with expectation rather than trepidation.?

Your experience and knowledge have great value. Systems and position requirements only have value according to the people who use them while creating extensive and at times, essentially arbitrary job requirements. Lacking experience in a system or platform is irrelevant almost always and in almost all ways. The people, the culture, and the desire to strive and thrive are what matters. You are what really matters in any and every situation. This is a fact. Be willing to see over the horizon and as always, be willing to take the road less traveled by.?