We Miss The Corporate World!

We Miss the Corporate World?

We are going to be super honest here – there is a big part of corporate life we miss!!

Stay tuned & we will share it; it is a big part of what we are focusing on today.

Working in a corporate environment provides you with so many opportunities for personal learning & development, primarily around people skills, but only if you’re working with the right leader & are part of the right team. We will expand on this a little later.

It’s not all good news – there are downsides.

Not just in corporate business roles, but government organisations

So are some of the things we don’t miss at all after 25 years of corporate life…

Do any sound familiar to you?

The number of meetings you must attend but really didn’t need to.
How boring some of the meetings are & what you could be doing with that time!
How you really are a small pawn in a big chess game – even though you give everything you have to the cause.
How money can seem way more important than people.
The mighty shareholder – once a passive receiver of positive returns, now an aggressive pusher of short-term results that shape internal behaviours.
Your lack of creative freedom.
The number of committees & levels of approval to gain what you need.
Conforming to the top-down push (even if you know it is wrong).
The consequences of speaking your mind & highlighting the shortcomings.
The lack of delegation.
The number of activities pushed onto employees that used to be completed by someone else.
The working hours as you watch your ‘competitive salary’ be diluted constantly.
The ego’s that can get in the way or impacted by what you do.
The rise of technology & expanded demands on your accessibility.
The instantaneous demands of answers & being available 24/7.
The pressure on your time & your ability to focus.
The internal politics & power games.
The internal competition that can impact performers.
The potential stress that comes with all of this.

We know it sounds like a lot & you would ask yourself…why would you ever do it!

We bet we have missed one or two items that you find challenging in corporate life.

It was by no means meant to be a list of problems we can all shake our head about – it’s part of the reality & they are all options we can pursue solutions for!

This list misses the fantastic opportunity that corporate life provides – people & self-development!

It’s the opportunity we miss the most & why we can openly say we miss part of the corporate life.

It’s people.

And we mean people in several different ways.

The first is the diversity.

Working in an organisation which has employees from every country in the world, learning, understanding & mixing with the different cultures from around the globe is a life treasure.

Appreciating what is important for them at home & also abroad provides you with a massive personal perspective that you just can’t get when you’re working in a monocultural society.

We’ve been lucky enough to visit nearly 70 countries, an extraordinary part of my corporate & life experiences embracing cultural diversity & the people development challenge/opportunity that it provides.

The lessons they can teach about what’s important in their country, the challenges that their country faces & what they doing to address the issues is an unmatched learning experience that enhances your people skills.

The second is the intelligence.

When you’re working in an environment that employs a large group of very smart, intelligent people from around the world, who are focused on shifting an organisation forward – it’s powerful.

It’s enriching.

It’s incredibly stimulating to be alongside a broad range of super intelligent people all generally forging ahead in the same direction.

You can’t buy that experience.

It actually can be a bit of a bubble that pops when you step out of it.

You realise that you were working with a lot of smart, challenging, intelligent people who were all aggregated together.

Now society has a lot of smart people as well but when they’re not all aggregated together, pushing towards a common goal, it’s much harder to find the same level of stimulation.

Finally, it’s the incredible leaders!

The incredible leaders that have super inspired you & the not so incredible leadership you experience that have done the opposite.

Like most people who spend 25+ years in corporate life, you experience both.

It’s almost unavoidable, but both types of leaders teach you some incredible lessons.

Not so good leaders can add to your frustration & limit your potential development, but if you’re smart, they can show you things that you shouldn’t do when you lead people yourself.

They provide the opportunity to see how bad the environment is, pitfalls to avoid & what not to do when you re-create opportunities yourself.

Leaders whose egos & personal ambitions become their greater objective vs their team’s development.

None of us can be that sort of leader today – you might have got away with it, 20-30+ years ago but you won’t today.

The workforce demands have changed so dramatically, their needs are so different & they require stimulation that won’t be met under the old style of leadership.

It’s why we want to focus on the brilliant leaders who make a positive difference:

Those that have empathy with their team
Those that empower their team to move forward with freedom & guidance
That harness the energy of those around them
Help point teams in the right direction
Those leaders that you know when you are going out into battle and pushing forward, they’ve got your back covered.
Leaders that are interested in your career & your development
Leaders that establish career links & opportunities for you to grow & succeed
Leaders that recognise you when you do a great job
Leaders that openly reference your achievements to your peers, to your team, to other fellow leaders like themselves.
Leaders that if you make a mistake, they don’t hang you out to dry, they work with you to find a solution, they forgive you & they support you to get on with rectifying the challenge and setting the wrong right.
Leaders that inspire you because they lead by example.
Leaders that don’t just say, they do
Leaders who embrace you as an important member of their team.

That’s why we miss being part of the corporate life.

It is the access to the diversity of the world & its culture.

Access to the intellectual challenge of working with smart, intelligent people.

Working with challenging & fantastic leaders to help you further improve & establish your own personal development opportunities.

It’s those people skills & experiences that inspired us to start Creating Edge.

What we’ve always found people are focused more on the challenges than they are on the opportunities.

But just talking about opportunities all the time ignores the challenges that must be addressed.

Tackle the challenges head on & free up some of the time & flexibility you don’t have today.

Provide the platform to expand and grow in the most important facet of leadership – people skills.

We’re not going to return to corporate life mainly because our impact would be more limited than being able to engage in global work with leaders right around the world.

That’s exactly what we will do with Creating Edge.

We look forward to connecting with you at some point in time & helping you on your journey to better leadership, to shape team culture and to engage your team in the most brilliant way possible.

Let’s get started!!