Notes on Accountability, Career Regrets and Writing A Manifesto

The last meeting I had before I closed 2024 was a 1:1 that veered into a career conversation. At some point, I got up, went to the board in the room and wrote the word ‘Impact’. This is where I am trying to get to, I said.

As time is prone to do, it ran out. And I was assigned the task of writing it all down, which I started on as soon as I got home. The first words I wrote were:

There are somethings I know to be true. One is that: I do not want to live a small life.

By this I mean a life where I do not dare venture out, To try what thrills and scares me in equal measure. To dream big and chase after my dreams. A small life for me would be one where I stay where feels safe and comfortable. A bondage to the idea of ‘security’.

What does this have to do with work and career?

Work and career is the area of life I think I am most ambitious in and so for me, it is the vehicle towards ‘not a small life’.

Knowing these were words I planned to share, I felt the need to explain, to justify myself to the person who would be reading the note. ?

When it comes to career goals and desires, what feelings are evoked when we share with others?

I wanted to be very open about not only how I see my journey to impact when it comes my career, but the values and desires that sit behind my thinking. I found myself asking:

Can I trust this person?

_________

I am an accountability partner to another colleague who is a peer. She has a career goal she wants to achieve this year and I am there to both spur her on and challenge her towards taking action towards its realisation.

Our conversations are very often a reminder that the idea that there is a hard line between work (goals) and personal is perhaps less true for many of us, as professionals.

We spoke once about career goals and the feelings it can sometimes evoke, particularly when we have to share with others.

A near embarrassment to admit that this or that matters to you. A need to explain, maybe even justify..

During this conversation, I told my colleague a story of regret which I will also tell you. But before I do that, let me tell you another story. A story of desire and shame.

I moved from Nigeria to the UK as a teenager for studies. Up until then, I had spent most of my life in a society and culture where people openly aspired to success, positions of status and even great wealth. It is not surprising this is so, because these things in the Nigerian society, I posit have a strong correlation to one’s quality of life. ?

Suddenly, I found myself in an environment slash society where there was something akin to a sense of ?‘uprightness’ (for lack of a better word) in not desiring these things. I found myself in an environment that lauded different values.

This was even more noticeable when I moved to the Netherlands. When money was discussed, it was merely about earning enough to live a ‘comfortable’ life. It was not overtly said, but to want more than this, was perhaps not the most positive trait. For the first time, I found myself hearing about aspirations to ‘freedom’.

‘Freedom? How strange!’ I would think to myself.

Long story short, as a result of moving to an ‘opposite value’ culture and being an ‘only’, I ended up struggling with a sense of shame because I thought I was a materialistic person who only cared about superficial things like title, money and status. What I did not grasp, was that my reality, by virtue of being a green passport holder, was different to those in the society around me, even though I lived and worked in the same society.

I live with very few regrets - many learnings but few regrets. One of the regrets I have is a career choice I made while in Business School. It was a time when I had two offers for an opportunity that were largely on a par. Unsure of which to go for, I turned to a few friends for advice. My regret lies not in asking for their advice but in making a decision for myself based on their own value sets and what they thought should really matter when it came to career choices. I regret that I did not make my decision based on what I knew mattered to me.

I have matured over the years and have largely let go of this feeling of shame when it comes to my desires and values with regard to work and career. This is partly due to the realisation that I am ‘just’ Nigerian. Reading the Culture Map by Erin Meyer, was second to none in helping me on my journey. That said, I am aware that there are many ways in which my desires and values have changed as a result of living and working in four ‘opposite value’ countries since I left Nigeria.

At the moment, I would tell you that I have come to a place where I would say that ‘when it comes to work and career, what we find value in, is what we find value in’

I would even go as far as adding that I don’t think there is a need to justify it to others. Be it a desire, say for a particular title or a lack of interest in titles. Today, I don’t believe that one is inherently more upright/noble or shameful than the other.

What I do believe, is that we might need to do the work of reflecting on our own to understand our why, i.e. why does this matter to me? Then it is for us to decide whether we are fine to accept our (honest) answers or whether we want to change something about our perspective and thinking.

How my thinking on this matter will evolve further in the next few years, who knows?

________

There are somethings I know to be true. One is that:

I do not want to live a small life….

As I wrestled with how much to share of my ‘why’ and ‘values’ with regards to how I see my career journey to impact, I was confronted with the fact that the line between work and personal is perhaps softer than hard.

In my ‘career manifesto’, I wrote about how the environment I grew up in shaped how I see the world.

I suppose part of this is rooted in what I see as unfairness and wanting to solve for it. In order to do that I need to deeply understand the business models that sit the centre of decision making. What are they solving for and how do they get the results?

I wrote about how it important it is to my sense of fulfilment to be in an environment that aligns with and affirms my value set.

I wrote about the appeal for me in products, people use every day and in particular industries.

In doing (...), I get close to the varied challenges close to the heart of decision makers, key influencers and those in power across the CPG industry. Through this exposure, I imagine some of my idealism will fall away and will be replaced by what I hope is a realistic view of the kind of impact it is possible to make.

I wrote about people.

I want to change (...), so that when people in (...) look at their leaders, they see something of what they look like and something of their own value sets, cultures and beliefs reflected back to them. This matters to me. What I want to do is to drive change in existing systems and organisational structures, This is where (…) comes in. I want to be the person the organisation sees and know that they represents their interests. The appeal is also in practising leading the organisation to create business value. Without this, I don’t think impact in the way I want to make is feasible.

Work and career is the means through which I build the skills, experience and network to solve for impact. This strong sense of career purpose is one I feel both lucky and burdened to have. On my career journey towards impact, I aspire to earn lots of money and build wealth. I want the title and status. I even want freedom (of mobility)! *insert gasp* Reader, am I European now?

In typing these aspirations out, I feel the need to explain rising in me. The need to clarify that saying this does not mean that and saying that does not mean this. But I won’t. An exercise in unlearning the last vestiges of shame?

When it comes to work and career, what I find value in, is what I find value in. It is inherently no more noble or more shameful than *fill in the gap*

When I was done with my career manifesto, I sent it off with a note that said, ‘This feels incredibly personal, I hope and think I can trust you with my thoughts. I look forward to sparring.’

In the moments that followed, I thought about how openness is often misconstrued for ‘trusting’ and how that is not necessarily the case. For me, openness is a gift freely offered, trust is earned based on what is done with the openness. I thought about how to be open with ending up feeling over-exposed. But Reader, those thoughts are a post for another day.

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