Onward & Upward

“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.” ~Abraham Lincoln

Changing jobs is difficult. Especially after 18 years. Change is good but it feels like a bungee cord of emotions going up and down the Mood Elevator, a life-changing book that’s guided me.

How well we do it absolutely impacts our personal effectiveness and growth mindset. It’s highly personal, strategic, takes grit and often a very emotional decision that should never be taken lightly with many tradeoffs. 

Whether you’re still challenged in your current role growing professionally or you’re two decades in with a two-year-old son and have recently moved out of the city (as my family did), it always takes courage. 

My wife and especially my father (this summer guiding my son at dusk at our local park) gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person in a transition, they believed in me with faith, trust and confidence. 

There are a few things I recommend that helped me this past year during my transition. 

• Focus on your health and put your family and your passions first during this precious time. For me, I went fly fishing, oil painted landscapes, traveled to Italy and most importantly was present every day with my son as he grew almost 10” in eleven months.
• Build a non-negotiable personal and career checklist. Talk to and really listen to your mentors, close friends; anyone whom you trust and will offer you prescriptive guidance, deep experience, and radical candor. Speaking of candor, I read a ton because today we find ourselves in possession of stupendous know-how articles to help us continuously learn. I especially enjoyed the new and thought-provoking leadership book, Radical Candor?by Kim Scott.
• Find a growth based and collaborative culture to help shape. Especially with leaders, you'll be working with every day focused on digital and emerging technology. As a digital thought leader and my social selling mentor, Jill Rowley writes below “they need to be well-versed in digital and how it’s disrupting their business”. Digital is disrupting sales at an epic pace.

Now with a fresh perspective, I recently joined SiliconANGLE Media; the “ESPN of Tech”. A hard-charging new kind of data-driven digital media firm with innovation and social computing in their DNA. Focused on the future of video and high-fidelity technologies and emerging technologies like; #AI, #IoT, #Big Data, #Machine Learning, #Digital Engagement, #Blockchain, #Cybersecurity and much more.

SiliconANGLE Media has combined the features and services of theCUBE.net, Wikibon.com, and SiliconANGLE.com to help you create and communicate the best ideas in business, through your best people, using the best messaging and micro-content year-round. 

I hope to help and see many of you on @theCUBE at our global events or at our bi-coastal studios in Marlboro, Massachusetts or Palo Alto, California. Here's a recent quick read and 10-minute interview in our Boston studio with us talking about self-driving cars (maybe refrigerators) and the future of sales, social selling, culture and having a growth mindset.

As a motivational and enthusiastic sales leader and old colleague, Chris Kelley always says, "Onward and Upward"!