What Drives Me

As someone who has not yet truly gotten stuck into their career, I feel somewhat of an impostor putting to paper my thoughts on drive and aspirations. After all, what do I know, standing here on a soap box knowing I've been fortunate to have never worked a 9-5 or struggled with the monotony that so many of my friends go through each day? So I'll preface what I've written by saying that I hope looking back on this post in a few years isn't too cringeworthy. But I'm writing this because I feel like it's important to explain the motivation that gives me purpose and show how I've gotten here. It's why after so long as a rower, I've decided this will be my last season, and what I plan to do with the extra 20-30 hours a week I'll suddenly have back. If anyone reads it, I hope they find it useful or at least interesting. But if not, that's ok too.

The last 11 years of my life have been spent almost single-mindedly in pursuit of a goal. As someone who was never a natural in sport, I desperately wanted to find one I could be good at -- rowing was what I was fortunate to chance upon.

Rowing consumes people. Even at 12 and 13 years old I was already starting to narrow down my activities and my habits so that I could go a little bit faster here and there. I was never a kid who went to parties, I didn't stay up late, and school work was completed as fast as possible so I could have more time to train. Skip forward 10 years and I was still ruthlessly chasing down ways to find that 1%; missing so many life events including funerals, weddings, and time with family and friends, all the while knowing each year I waited to start my career was another that I'd have to work harder to make up for. But for at least a vast majority of the time I loved it -- it gave me purpose.

The brutal thing about that purpose was that it became increasingly more central to who I was. I was "Lenny the Rower" which framed a lot of my interactions and relationships. This wasn't really a bad thing given how proud I was to be good at rowing, but the trouble came when I started to think about what life would be like when I wasn't a rower. What then?

Yale recruits people who tend to have one or two exceptional qualities that set them apart beyond their academic work. I knew that I'd largely gotten into Yale due to my previous results at rowing, or to go up another level, from the lessons I'd learned as a young rower being used to get good grades at Whakatane High. But when the oar was finally hung up for good what could I rely on as my point of difference? I'm aware that needing an identity that I feel I can be the best at is borderline arrogant but having spent a lot of time thinking about this I believe I can justify that by saying I want to be the best for other people. Matthew McConaughey said it best when explained being an "egotistical utilitarian" -- someone whose self-interest is fulfilled by bringing other people up.

Looking deeper at this notion while in my final few years at Yale, I realised that in many ways the privilege that you are born with is entirely out of your control. Your success (or failure) is either due to your environment -- which you're born into and can't change -- or your genetics which is again completely out of your control. In the same way that I was born to be a rower at 6'7" and happened to grow up in a tiny town in NZ where my coach Graham Watt was pretty much coaching national championship medals out of every athlete, the gift of going to an Ivy League University was given to me not because I deserved it more but because I had been lucky in where I was born and the family I was born with. I wasn’t there because I was even the smartest kid at WHS (that was Jonathan Everett or Simonne Stoove by the way, I doubt I made the top 10). But imposter syndrome aside, I knew that what I did with that degree was what could set me apart. That could be the new purpose I could give my life.

The reassuring thing for me was that I felt I knew how to chase down a goal once I clearly knew what it was. For me, this is in no better way explained by the Japanese concept of Ikigai -- the point at which you find what the world needs, what makes you happy, what you can be paid for, and what you can be good at.

Like many other people my age, when I look at the world I'm worried about climate change and environmental degradation as well as poverty and human suffering. So that ticked box #1 -- what I think the world needs. From the get-go in college and through my work at the Gap I realised environmental sustainability is what makes me happy. Working out new ways to do things in a way that's more socially and environmentally sustainable is a reason to get out of bed in the morning and one that isn't motivated by the need to pull on an oar for 2 hours at 6am. So I knew box #2. Where I feel especially fortunate is that throughout the business world, it seems everyone is excited to involve sustainability in their businesses and ESG roles are becoming more and more prevalent. It's still probably not going to rival how much I could make if I went and worked for a fossil fuel investments company but that's beside the point -- box #3, tick.

Box #4 is a tricky one and the key reason I'm doing my masters at Oxford. While I got an amazing education in my undergrad, I lack the practical skills that are required for the true business side of things when it comes to sustainability. I want to understand the underlying economics, how venture capital and private equity work, how to build a sustainable business and scale it up: I want to know how to get the most out of my career. I don’t yet know if I'll be able to become a leader in sustainability, be that a leader in the world or even in whichever company I work for. So I don't yet know if I'll be able to tick Box #4.

But I have as much motivation as I had when I first started in rowing. I'm looking at ways to shave off the margins and get better at what I do. I'm fortunate that I'm in an environment where I'm able to learn from the best of the best. I feel driven and purposeful. I'm excited to see where things go from here.

#sustainability #oxford #business #development #purpose #values