5 Jobs, 6 Lessons
No one is indispensable. I honestly and truly believe so, especially in the corporate world. Yes, it’s difficult to replace specialist skills or value add and contributions brought about by the ‘right personalities.’ But, eventually, everyone can be replaced by someone better. It’s a humbling thought, but what’s more important to an individual is to focus on being your best competitive self, driven by passion, authenticity, and humility. If you’re doing this well, you become a more valuable asset — not just to your current employer, but to anyone who may give you any sort of work in the future. And at a time when work dynamics are being tested like never before, it’s up to you to create that value dictated by the ‘new normal.’
The only way to do this is to be open to change and with persistent learning, continue to develop yourself. This doesn’t need to happen through formal training programs or courses, rather make it a daily ritual to learn something new so you widen your perspective about work and life. To date, I’ve done 5 jobs (including my current one), each quite distinctly different from each other. While all of these involved some form of writing/communication, which is my core, there were some valuable life lessons with each experience.
- Electronic Media and Composure
A job in my late teens that was initially meant to be ‘just for fun’ taught me an important lesson. I had no idea what an enormous responsibility it was going to be when I signed up with a local radio station to work on six-hour shifts as a news presenter. It was the ’90s when Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict between government troops and the LTTE, which was mostly confined to the northeast, was at its peak. Apart from news from the battlefield, there were rampant suicide attacks in the capital, targeting key government offices. This meant there were many instances of ‘breaking news’ — and it was in the form of reading off a hurriedly scribbled script from the studio or providing live updates from bomb sites or hospitals. It was an emotional rollercoaster ride — the adrenaline rush of doing a job like this, and the sadness of the situation itself. What I learnt was that no matter how prepared and rehearsed you were, these sudden incidents can completely throw you off and test your composure because there’s no time to prepare. And the only thing you could do when that microphone switches on was to take a deep breath, leave your own emotions aside, and make sense of the scribbles in front of you and deliver the news to millions with authority and calmness. It may not have been perfect every time, but I believe I mastered that craft quickly and even earned the title ‘the calm news reader’ among my teammates.
2. Print journalism and Balance
From electronic media, I later took on a full-time reporter job at the local bureau of a US-based news agency, writing a variety of news stories and features ranging from the financial sector, politics, industry analysis, human interest pieces, and interviews with political and corporate leaders. Everyone of us has a personal bias, and our own opinions and views about everything. And when you’re writing and presenting the news, these can powerfully influence the way you craft your message or the story angle you choose to tackle. But the stringent guidelines followed by the agency and constant feedback from my editors trained me to always get both sides of the story, even if the angle somewhat reflected my views. The lesson was to produce a story that was balanced, so readers were able to make their own conclusions based on facts, multiple views, and quotes from credible sources.
3. Investment Research and Speed
My passion for writing and experience in financial news took me to another job in editorial & research production in an investment research firm. In this role, I gained tremendous experience working with a multitude of talented research analysts both within the organizations and providing editorial support to a variety of client teams in global investment banks. It was a fairly steep learning curve with every new client we signed up as each had their own style guides and personality quirks we had to navigate through. I thought I was doing fairly well with my obsession with fixing every comma and full stop and rephrasing almost every sentence to have zero grammatical errors during the editing process. I would then move down to the earnings table to verify numbers and fact-check these against the content. I was struggling initially as I could never meet the tight deadlines — and in the world of investment research, a late report is a week’s worth of research gone to waste. I will never forget the words of a client when she told me during an onsite stint — the time to market is more important than a perfectly punctuated report. I immediately changed my strategy to first check the key figures and then do whatever else I can within the stipulated timeframe. It’s the accurate, bigger picture presented quickly that matters, rather than paralysis with analysis and losing the moment.
4. Tech Marketing and Adaptability
The technology space was completely alien to me when I decided to take this job to write content related to not just technology, but ‘enterprise middleware.’ I spent weeks before my first day reading, watching videos, and almost studying the company’s corporate website to familiarize myself with the company and what they do before diving into content creation for marketing. I thought I was ready until I realized that the audience reading this content was technical and I had to cut the fluff, be less creative with words, and present facts in a story form that illustrated technical capabilities. It was unfamiliar and challenging at first, but I realized I had to unlearn and relearn quite a bit and adapt to the specific requirements of this role, instead of trying to fit my old self into what was expected of me. A complete mindset change supported with continuous learning helped me to unlock capabilities I wasn’t sure I even possessed.
5. Manufacturing and Relevance
I had zero knowledge or experience in apparel manufacturing when I embarked on my current role in branding and communication. Having adapted and aligned to the requirements of different functions, I quickly realized there was a lot of groundwork and learning to do before drafting bits of communication. I had to learn and understand the different categories of people and what each of them do that made manufacturing whole. And that meant, you have to work different angles of the same story sometimes to make it appealing and relevant to the various stakeholders, both within the organization and external parties, including customers and government authorities, among others.
Apart from these, during the course of my many years of working for different companies, sometimes demanding or eccentric bosses, and corporates with varying cultures, I always have and continue to build relationships with those I work with directly as well as in indirect ways and across all levels. It certainly is an essential part of a comms role, but it also helps to understand people more deeply, reflect on those learnings and leverage those relationships to do your job better.
In the end it’s not about being fun and popular or the sour puss who believes in all work and no play. It’s about maintaining balance and becoming a better and valuable human being to your employer, society, country, and the world.