Advice from and to My 14-Year-Old Self

I can’t remember exactly what I thought I wanted to be at 14, but it definitely wasn’t a management consultant, which I had certainly never heard of. I suspect I was somewhere between the ‘baker’ and ‘architect’ phases of aspiration, heading towards ‘engineer,’ which is where I stayed right up until my final 18 months at university. Even 21-year-old Nick was pretty suspicious of the profession I have now followed for nearly 30 years.

My youngest son is 15, so I have a lot of empathy for the teenage mind – he is much more aware of the variety of opportunities in the world, and while better equipped to make those choices, I do wonder if he has too many confusing options.

I was largely able to follow my nose. We had fewer subjects at school and university, and I didn’t face a lot of hard active choices – I was good at maths, physics and enjoyed design so gravitated to engineering. The real conundrums came firstly with the wrestle over which job and which firm; and then secondly my decision every few years not to leave Oliver Wyman and to keep taking risks here. In being asked for career advice, I've centred on this journey.

I think its important to always acknowledge the role that luck has played in my own career.

But over time I have picked apart what served me well, and its reflected in the ‘following your nose’ comment above.?I see a career like a pathway through the woods – I am aiming for a distant (maybe unreachable) compass point which is my vision, what I want to be for the world. Worth refreshing occasionally. I need to make sure the path is heading roughly in that direction. But I never get to travel there directly and I can’t always see the destination.

What I can do is to prepare as I go along so that I am ready and appropriately skilled at the moments when forks in the path present themselves. And sometimes I may need to step off the path and strike out into the woods to find new paths. (Even so it seems to me that to constantly question whether I’m on the right path is destructive – that’s a box I only open occasionally).

I also lean on Baz Luhrmann and his great song ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen).’ Baz offers two pieces of advice that are pertinent:

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

And also

“The most interesting people I know, didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know, still don't.”

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Back to 14-year-old Nick – he had stamina, so while he hadn’t heard of our profession I am pretty sure he would understand how I ended up here, and he would definitely think the work we get to do, and the great people I get to do it for, and with, have been worth the effort. I did reflect though on 14 year Nick’s extensive extra-curricular activities. He would be a little surprised at how few of those turned into hobbies or pastimes – memo to self!

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If you managed to be on the path of the solar eclipse recently and still have the viewing glasses, you may want to put them on before seeing the outfit I wore around that age. If life is choices, then perhaps another lesson is that some decisions age better than others!