How I learnt to constantly reinvent myself through Transition Architecture

People say, "hardship makes you resilient"! That's not strictly true. Hardship could also break you, I went to the verge of being completely broken and hit rock bottom several times in life. A skill that helped massively in getting through these difficult times was having the ability to successfully transition from them back to some level of stability. The trick is not to get too comfortable when you finally do gain that stability and to always be prepared for the next challenge and transition. Living in the 21st Century means that the speed of life is increasing, at the same time the web of our lives, our businesses, and even our health have become more interconnected than ever. In this article, I'm going to share a very personal story and my concept of Transition Architecture which I now apply to my business as we help other companies and individuals deal with digital transformation. I hope you find it helpful, especially as we all deal with the challenges brought upon us at this particularly difficult time in history.

Transition Architecture 

Many of you may know that I spent most of the last year writing a book about the Future of Work which is due to be released in 2020. With the advent of Covid-19, I feel everything I said in that book has become applicable much faster. I was predicting a five to ten year transition period, but this virus has greatly accelerated everything, and many of us haven’t been ready for it. 

One of the ideas that I’ve introduced in the book is the concept of “Transition Architecture”. Although the book is not yet released, I decided to share the basic premise of this concept here as I think it will help many people and businesses in light of the recent challenges. 

A New Role For The Future

In the book, I wrote about a new role in society and in the Business and Career Landscape, that I predicted would arise in the coming years - I called it Transition Architecture. Due to the increased pace of Digital Transformation and with the impact of Artificial Intelligence, I argued that the next few decades would see a constant flow of change, not just in companies but also in governments, families and our personal lives. We all need to adapt constantly and rapidly. However, change is painful, and most of us aren’t ready for it. 

Attributes Of Transition Architects 

Transition Architects are people with an immense level of flexibility and speed that will twist and bend under any circumstances. These are people who get back up before they fall, don’t get discouraged by failure, accept the reality as it is, and pivot where needed. Transition Architects are tech-savvy and yet emotionally intelligent. They are present, they don’t complain and have a solution-focused attitude. 

How I Learnt To Be The Architect of My Own Transition

I learnt the attributes of a Transition Architect the hard way, growing up in Tehran during the Iran/Iraq war. I come from one of the most impoverished areas of the South of Tehran; if you saw the environment I grew up in, you would never believe where I’ve gotten to, now. Here is a picture to give you an idea of the level of poverty I grew up in. For me growing up in the middle of war and deprivation, change came fast all the time. From one day to another, we didn’t know whether we would be alive, let alone have our next meal.

I learnt about living in a constant state of transition when I was six years old, and my parents sent me to live with some distant relatives in the North of Iran because the capital was under fire. I remember it as being the most traumatising experience as I felt my parents had abandoned me. After the war, the country’s instability continued and worsened. I taught myself English and started working as a tour guide, by the time I was 17. Mind you, by this time, I was also forced to marry my cousin, and I was fighting my family to let me get divorced. Just as I got divorced and started to enjoy a flow of decent income from working with European tourists, 9-11 happened, and tourists stopped visiting Iran. I was anxious not knowing how to pay for my university or my life for that matter. But I got through it, and a year later I got a job in the Netherlands’ Embassy in Tehran, thanks to the Dutch Ambassador at the time who believed in me, and that changed my life. I then went on to work for the United Nations and eventually came to the UK in 2005 to study. I arrived in the UK with one suitcase and with absolutely no family, friends, or connections. I cried many nights, not knowing how to pay for my education and life. My biggest disappointment came when I was doing a PhD at St Andrew's University but could no longer afford to pay my tuition fees. So, I had to hand in my thesis and graduate with an MPhil instead. I really struggled with accepting this reality and felt my whole world had come down crashing.

I moved to London in 2010, once again with nothing but a suitcase and two masters degrees in Political Theory and Philosophy of Science which at the time felt useless. I worked in a restaurant until I got a job in TV and ended up becoming a filmmaker, which has nothing to do with my education. I had to learn an entirely new skill in a short period and went on to become a multi-award winning senior producer/director, launched a successful business, got invited to give talks around the world, got offered a book deal. It felt like I had it all figured until recently when I returned from a successful trip to Japan where I gave a talk to an audience of 1000 senior industry leaders in the travel industry. 

A Woman with Many Faces

I feel like my personal life and career has been one giant transition after another, and so I’ve become immune to it. Even if life wanted to give me a break at times, I brought new challenges upon myself.

For example, in the midst of struggling to pay for my education when I was a student, I even formed a Death Metal band and took it so seriously we went on to play in front of thousands of people and were featured in all the major hard rock and metal publications. The band itself created so many challenges to my life and caused me a delay in becoming a British citizen by one year. But I loved the contrasts of educating at the highest levels of political theory and philosophy of science and then getting up on stage screaming because it was unexpected and challenged people to view of what an educated woman should be like. Even today I give talks about the future of work, and the impact of technology on the business landscape, sometimes in a leather outfit and sometimes in girlie pink shoes, and if I feel like it, I'll turn up in a suit. This level of flexibility and being comfortable in my skin, regardless of what the world's expectation of me, might be, keeps me sharp in responding to whatever challenges life might throw at me because I've done it all and I've seen it all.

Where Am I Now?

If you think I’m speaking from a warm place today with no problems let me tell you that this is not the case. Just in the space of the last six months, I went through a painful break up of a five-year relationship, I currently live in an Airbnb - I’ve been trying to purchase a flat for the past months, and it’s been one problem after another trying to make that happen. And now thanks to Covid-19 I’ve just lost tens of thousands of pounds on contracted work.

I’ve had to learn to become a Transition Architect. As I’ve been helping our clients with their digital transformation and thought leadership building, I’ve always attempted to provide them with a huge amount of emotional support. I play the role of a mentor, a psychologist, and a business coach in addition to helping people and companies with their content, digital transformation in their marketing and HR, or building their thought leadership. I've also communicated this attitude with my team, and we've made it our company's value. That’s what it means to be a transition architect. Now, let me tell you how I came up with the inspiration to use that term. 

Tents, Houses, and Non-Attachment

Historian Yuval Noah Harari gave an analogy in an interview, saying, ‘If traditionally people built identities like stone houses with very deep foundations, now it makes more sense to build identities like tents that you can fold and move elsewhere. Because we don’t know where you will have to move, but you will have to move.’

Harari's analogy truly spoke to me - as an immigrant who's lived through war and hardship, it inspired me to develop my concept of transition architecture. For most of my life, I felt rootless with no sense of belonging, and this made me sad - until I learnt that being rootless didn't have to be a negative thing. Instead of feeling sad, I decided to embrace it and give it a positive outlook, I saw myself as a master of transition, and I could see that a world of fast-paced technological transformation needed people like me. 

If we think about our identities in terms of building tents, rather than houses, that same analogy applies to individuals and companies in their Digital and AI transformation. It’s another way of saying that we all need to be much more agile and flexible. Covid-19 has now brought this to force faster than many of us expected. 

Speed and Flexibility 

A house and a tent have a few essential things in common. They both have a base, columns, a living space and a roof, but they differ immensely in their architecture. If, in the past, work was like a ‘house’ and in the future it’s like a ‘tent’, then the role of Transition Architects is to help people constantly redesign their ‘tent’. This means that we need to develop robust theories of transition architecture, and frameworks to prepare for the turbulence of constant change while staying flexible and adaptable. 

At the moment, we don’t have a robust model for transition architecture which is why the Covid-19 has hit most companies and individuals so hard. Remember Luddites? With every new transformation, many people got hurt as they did. Many lost their jobs and weren’t able to recover. Technological disruptions and the pain of transition have been a constant state of affairs in business, as far back as the 12th century, when fulling mills put people out of a job. 

Luddites and Transition 

When we look back at the history of technological advancement, it all seems like an upward journey, in general terms. For us, living in the 21st century, washing clothes in the river with hands and feet is unthinkable. The technological advancements of the past centuries have given those of us living in the modern world, washing machines, dishwashers, smartphones and TVs. On the whole, humanity has been far better off. That doesn’t diminish the distress caused to people who lost their livelihood thanks to a new invention in the 12th century, and all the others who have suffered the same fate since then.

The pattern of technological innovations and disruptions repeats itself and its speed is ever increasing. I admit that as someone who prides herself at being ahead of the game, this time even I was taken aback, I hadn’t accounted for Covid-19. I knew that a change of huge magnitude was coming and I was working fast to rebuild our business model to work with the changes ahead, but this took me a little off-guard. However, I’ve learnt to be the Architect of my own Transition for so long, and I’ve helped so many people with their transitions. As we enter this new era of sped-up digital transformation, we all need to learn this new skill to some degree in our daily lives. Companies need to actively hire Transition Architects, these are people whose job is to prepare companies for constant shifts and their psychological and economic impact, not to mention in terms of logistics. We also need coaches, marketers and consultants to help entrepreneurs with their transition architecture.  

The Takeaway 

Just as a house and a tent both provide you with protection, the first goal of transition architecture has to be to protect individuals. We now have all the knowledge, the technology and the ability to ensure transition doesn’t hurt people.

According to a McKinsey report, ‘There is no doubt that significant change is coming. Automation changes the capabilities required to perform jobs, and it changes the nature of the work employees are currently executing. What results is more of a skills challenge than it is the challenge of a job.’ McKinsey estimates that ‘by 2030, 375 million workers globally and more than 30 per cent of the total workforce in the US will need to change jobs or upgrade their skills significantly. Covid-19 has only accelerated this. If you have watched my documentary, "The Millennial Disruption", you will know my views on the subject. Everything that I talked about in that film still applies and it's happening faster than expected. So, we all need to gain the skills to deal with the speed of change.

Somi Arian, 31-March-2020