When opportunity knocks
Making the most of opportunity…
It happened relatively recently, when I was feeling quite settled in my job; I had led the turnaround of a hugely loss-making business unit into a profitable one in three years and was about to go on a sabbatical to sail across the Caribbean and onto the Galapagos Islands thinking "I'm looking forward to coming back to enjoy the fruits of the last few years of hard work, after some well-earned down time". I think I was looking forward to finally feeling comfortable in my role.
Then pretty much out of the blue…"WHAT? You want to offer ME the job?".
That was my reaction to John Walters when he asked me to run his New Zealand enterprise software distribution business. "But I'm going on a seven week sabbatical next week!". #PANIC. All these thoughts ran through my mind about can I do this? Do I want to do this? Am I prepared for yet another change in my career when I’m getting ready for a bit of stability?
When I spoke to my boss at the time “…you know how I'm going on sabbatical? Well, I've been offered a role to run a company (to start after I get back and after I've worked out my notice of course…)”, I have to say he was incredibly supportive and told me to think only about me and to choose what felt right for me and my career.
And oh my, how the world changed when I was sailing across the high seas in March 2020. As I was bobbing about outside Panama on a yacht trying to get evacuated back to New Zealand before all the borders shut, I had plenty of time to reflect on my decision.
And here I am, Managing Director for NEXTGEN Distribution NZ. I'm incredibly proud to be leading a company that helps create and share new value within the enterprise software and cloud solutions ecosystem of vendors, partners, and end customers. It’s funny though, because I never thought I’d be leading a company, but then again, I've never really seen myself as being a salesperson, yet for most of my working life I've been in sales roles.
I have always been interested in people and naturally like to help people, so I believe it's probably this, along with my passion for technology, that has enabled me to sell solutions that help and benefit organisations. Delivering on what I say I'm going to deliver on, which includes being up front when things have gone awry, has helped me build trusted and respected relationships with people across my network.
So, maybe I can do this.
Looking back, I guess I have made the most of opportunities all my life. Even when bad things happened to me, I have got up, dusted myself off and thought "How can I turn this into a positive, what opportunity is this change bringing me?". (A bit like Michael Caine and his ‘Use the Difficulty’ interview with Parky).
I also didn’t let the fact I was female impact my life choices. Since I was young (which I like to think I still am LOL!) I’ve been encouraged to take opportunities whenever they present themselves, either by my parents, my sports coaches, or maybe it’s just instinct. I went to an all-girls’ school in Wellington and early on I wanted to be a police officer, then a pilot. Looking back those were pretty male dominated industries, but that never occurred to me. At some point I decided to give this thing called ‘computers’ a go. Equally at the time a male dominated industry. Graduating from Uni I could count the number of females graduating with a computer science degree on one hand. In my first role out of university I worked with a guy who, when faced with situations or decisions to be made, was always like “Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?”. We became firm friends and that saying has stuck with me ever since. When it boils down to it, the worst is normally not so bad, and it has given me confidence to give things a go and, you know, if it didn’t work out then I just put it down to experience.
When on my OE in London for “Two, maybe 4 years…” (yeah right - I ended up staying there 13 years) I was initially being put forward for highly paid IT roles that would involve a long commute from London each way, every day. It wasn’t something I really relished the idea of, so I was intrigued by an opportunity that presented itself one evening when out with friends. What started as an offhand comment led to me being offered a role at an emerging telco, but at much less pay. It was still utilising my system design and development experience but was based in central London with Covent Garden on my doorstep.
"Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?". At least I wouldn’t be spending most of my spare time on a train.
The role ended up being much more fun than I had ever anticipated it would be. Working in a marketing team started me thinking that I didn't have to be a developer to be in the technology industry and subsequently launched my career into the business side of ICT. I’ve honestly never looked back.
Having worked for large companies here in NZ and in the UK, organisational change was always happening at least once a year. Re-structures could mean redundancy – but that may be a good thing if it gives you the opportunity to stand back and think about what you really want to do next. I believe it’s about looking at how you can turn a situation you may not be able to influence into an opportunity and making the most out of it. A start-up company I worked for in Auckland a few years ago, being part of the crazy ride that took us to IPO, was the darling of the NZX for a while but then crashed into administration. Such a hard thing to deal with when you put in all that effort over the years for it to then feel wasted.
But was it?
I initially focused on making sure the solutions my customers had purchased from me continued, and once the grieving period passed, my colleagues and I all went onto bigger and better things.
Making the most of opportunity isn't always easy though, it can be accompanied with fear and self-doubt – like me now in fact – can I really do this? Fear of failure (particularly with the high standards and expectations we often set for ourselves) is always there for me. I don't remember fearing failure when I was younger, maybe I didn’t think too much about it then, or maybe the consequence now is greater.
I gave a short presentation a few months back to about 100 people and didn't really think too much about it in the lead up to the event. But I forgot that I hadn't done that in a while, years even, and with the added pressure of talking about a company I'd recently joined. Right before going up on stage I felt really nervous. Seeing all those people staring back absolutely threw me. I got through it but I can’t say it was my best performance ever. I put that one down to experience and it made me realise I’m pretty rusty on the whole public speaking front; that “practice makes perfect”. But regardless of perfection, some people must have heard some of what I’d said, or at least got the gist of what I was talking about.
So what then is my message?
Quite simply, when opportunity knocks, I encourage you to embrace it. After all, what’s the worst that can happen?
Guest blog thank you to Lynne Jeffery, Managing Director, NZ at NEXTGEN Distribution.
Main image credit: Kae Anderson on Unsplash