Where to from here - life by design

How did I get here?

I went to art school. Upon graduation I entered into the actual business of art, and I abruptly realised I absolutely hated it. So I started to poke around to find where I could get to from where I was stranded. When faced with multiple options, my intuition told me to always choose the door in front of me that looked more interesting (IBM retailer training > teaching speed-reading > preparing Japanese salarymen to oversee factories in the US > working in television and film > not-so-successful turns at screenplays and comedy writing > choosing not to be a producer on the kids version of American Gladiators) that would take me someplace I hadn't been before, both metaphorically and geographically. 

Through a series of logical – and some very illogical – chances and choices, I migrated to consulting: instructional media, digital branding, new product development, innovation, consumer insights, organisational transformation. I was always coming from the outside of a client’s business, hopefully providing a new perspective on a challenge or opportunity, or helping to make sense of the next alien landscape. Early on it was all about physical products, then moved onto digital, services, touch-points, customer experiences, employee experiences, credible business futures, and engaging the next generation of the workforce. The greatest hits of the last 20 years, more or less.

Over time, the problem spaces moved from the classic ‘five cool ideas for a consumer device’ to ‘evolve our company mission to stay relevant in changing marketplace' or ‘help us to attract and retain the best talent.’ I could see that continuing to put a corporation and its broad objectives at the centre of solution-finding for these more intangible and experiential areas made no sense; I needed to primarily work with individuals to enable solutions for their own realities, needs, and potential paths, not those of manufacturers. 

It’s a personal problem, not an organisational one

In parallel, this realisation was reinforced through my client relationships over the past 15 years. Once a level of confidence and intimacy is created with a client, the nature of my work (mapping the essence of experiences, imagining ‘what if,’ identifying credible strategies) has led many of my direct clients to privately share a sense of being lost, insecure, or deeply unhappy in their jobs. Informally, over drinks, dinners, in 1:1 work sessions, they would open up and ask for help to apply my innovation, human-centered design, and foresight approaches, not just to their company goals, but also to their personal work circumstances. I was starting to provide them with blueprints for how to pivot their work lives, and in more than a few cases, the projects we collaborated on together paved the way for their decisions to leave their jobs.

While I never wanted to be a career coach or personal development guru, I have always wanted to solve the big problems of the day, and some of the biggest problems facing people today are related to their work lives. Obviously, I'm not going to be able to fix what's wrong with the employment ecosystem, but I can be of service to individuals by applying my problem-solving toolkit to help them assess where they are, how they’ve gotten there, and answer the question ‘where to from here’?

Which is why we have developed the Life By Design program. At its core, this is an individual journey to find balance in your work life: to reduce negative impacts and increases positive impacts from the what, why, how, and where of your work. It is not a political movement, a moral reworking of the world, performance politics, or virtue signalling, but a simple personal expression of need for a re-set that provides you with greater economic agency. It is a personal navigation towards greater meaning and purpose that is also economically sustainable. This course will make you feel better. It may change your life.

What makes our approach unique is that my co-conspirator, Neil, and I have 20+ years of proven methods from design thinking, HCD, lean startup, innovation, and organisational transformation that we now apply to the individual experience of making a living. Our goal is to enable each participant to create their own preferred definitions of economic security and peace of mind on one side, and personal satisfaction and work/life balance on the other. It’s about reimagining your potential to provide what you are good at (and what you like to do) and connecting this to the right audience.

Life By Design v10, or something like that

We have been developing the foundations of this program informally for the past decade. Life By Design is the latest iteration, structured and customised to meet the needs of people who want to make significant changes in their work lives right now. The world’s at an inflection point; so much is in flux - the world of work, the world of everything is changing rapidly. The gap between people’s fundamental desires and the external pressures of work is changing faster than our abilities to recalibrate on the fly. It can be overwhelming, so our program is designed to help those caught up in all this, who have that yearning to make a change, to create a clear pathway to creating a work life that fulfills them - financially, emotionally and spiritually. 

Some of what you’ll achieve in this program:

1. Identify the essence of what’s really wrong with how you currently make your living and (re)set your personal goals and boundaries around work.
2. Reflect on the career path that led to your current state to identify patterns to break, and see what the future holds if you continue on the current predictable path.
3. Conduct your personal inventory – what are your hard and soft skills, even those long dormant? Your domain expertise? What are you good at, and what do you truly enjoy?
4. Define the workplace dynamics you need to achieve a state of flow, a sense of purpose, and enable you to easily contribute recognisable value in ways that are natural to you.
5. Frame your minimum viable lifestyle – what do you really need to unlock joy in your life? Does your monthly burn rate bring more anxiety than contentment?
6. Envision your better future – what activities and interactions do you want to fill your days with, and how do you want to feel while at work and outside of it?
7. Generate opportunity spaces to explore credible new directions, design your personal product/market fit & value proposition, and find your addressable audience.
8. Draft a plan and start right now down your path of meaningful change.

A simple story with a lot of impact

The following is an anecdote that Neil shared with me. It led to the joint realisation that this is a real human need that the two of us have the opportunity to serve in a unique manner:

‘Ian' had been in a leadership workshop that Neil had given to a tech company a couple of years previous to Neil running into him at an airport. Neil didn't remember him. The reason for this was that Ian had been very unhappy in his work at the time, and instead of applying the models and thinking Neil had been implementing for his employer, Ian applied them to his own life. By the end of the program, Ian knew exactly what to do: leave and start his own business. Neil talked to Ian and his wife for about half an hour over a coffee, and Ian's wife went on about how much happier he was, and therefore how much happier they were. 

Here’s some pseudonymous examples of the variety of people we work with

• ‘Lars’ - a consultant working for a startup that was drafted to act as bridge CEO after the founder was forced out. This startup is not likely to survive the next six months; he is learning a lot in his current role, but his worries are when is the right time to get out, what’s next, what’s his story, and what does a credible trajectory look like?
• ‘Dee’ - in her late 50s, left with little savings after a divorce so finds herself hustling 5 different revenue streams now. This is neither sustainable nor desirable. How can she focus on one of these streams and build it into something that can generate substantial savings over the next 10 years? It’s not about what she loves; this is an acute financial necessity for her.
• ‘Victor’ - desperately wants out of his VP level job at a global bank to go back to his earlier design career and apply it to an NGO or public policy lab. As a single dad of 2 problematic teens in London, he needs a path that provides enough engagement to find meaning, but can also meet the considerable monthly burn rate of his family obligations.
• ‘Jorge' - ex-musician, now doing production art for an advertising giant. Not sure how he got here, or how to get out. All he knows is that he won’t be able to retire in NYC if he stays the current path, so needs to figure out whether to switch careers, cities or both. He’s stubborn and nostalgic for his younger years, so requires high-frequency reminders that he must make some hard choices very soon, and to continually counter his general pessimism with credible visions of what he is truly capable of.

Everyone deserves a strong third act 

Everyone's journey is different. Everyone’s ‘right answer’ is different. That is what our program helps you get crystal clear. Life hinges on moments - of insight, clarity, or surprise. But turning these moments of epiphany into real change requires a structured plan to make progress step-by-step, a support system to help break old habits and ways of thinking, and a clear vision to maintain strength of conviction and achieve ambitious goals.

Contact us if you would like to know more and discuss how it might connect to your situation. You can also jump over to Neil's article here about his own journey that has led him to where we are now.

rich@wtfh.cc