Change and me, or me changing (extract)

--> Have you ever heard the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concert? Well, something like that is how I describe my life. And from my living experience change is hard, necessary and most often, painful.

There is me coming to this world with a very dysfunctional family under very unattractive circumstances. But I grew wanting to become a pet doctor, an MD that would cure cancer, a caza pilot, an archeologist and a lawyer. Also, I wanted to be a writer, appear in the news as an anchorman and control a large media emporium with some time to become an actor. I suddenly discovered that I wouldn’t have enough time, so I adapted and prepared myself to be a philosopher. I still don’t know why I did that. But life urged me to change before. The passing of my mother made me confront all my paradigms, I had to change the structure of my life, the strategy I planned to achieve my goals and my competencies in order to survive.

The sense of urgency was all over me, but had no idea of what to become so I started working at 18 to pay for my tuition. After a sabbatical year to discover what I wanted to become, I decided to study communications. Everything in my personal organization had changed. I could no longer rely on my mother paying for everything and in order to pursue my dreams, I had to work a lot harder to get them and keep on adapting. All this was hard and painfully accepted, yet now I see it as learning process.

As communicator I decided to influence the world, to bring them the good, the bad and the interesting information everybody needed. Soon after graduating I was a pink journalist, writing about the local socialites and the events people should assist as a must. Though it wasn’t what I wanted to do as journalist, it was the job I got, and again, the issue was to adapt. However, life again tricked me and because of the world financial crisis in 2008 I was let go. The sense of urgency made me change and got a job in a business magazine, a source that I had not even a clue of how to write about it, but by letting me make awful mistakes and empowering my ideas, my boss made of me a well know business journalist in a year.

After that, the ambitious guy inside me, and some of my stupidities, left me without a job, yet again. But the experience I had gave more chances as an editorial and publishing consultant. Here I discovered the power of involving others in my projects by selling the full idea of how and what to change in order to get their support. Although I did all of the above, I didn’t know what I was exactly doing, just trying to adapt and to make things happen with some good results sometimes, but mostly bad ones.

Finally I got my own project. I was to become chief editor and everything was going to be the way I thought and wanted. Wrong me.

Despite the freedom to make a team and control the news project as I wished, people is the heart of every organization, and to achieve goals, you have to understand them and I didn’t. Of course the editorial director was supporting me, the vision we had of the project was fully understood by the news team, and our little achievements were celebrated, but frustration and top management lack of involvement limited our efforts. I tried to include them in our project, reach their ‘divine hand’ to get things moving, but their usual answer was: ‘you’re just a journalist, leave management for us’. I quit the publishing house after the project was running.

I had to learn how to influence, to make the right questions and to be empowered to learn how to empower others. After 28 year of life, and 6 as a media professional I knew very little, and the need to change was again knocking at my door: I was to study an MBA. I thought this time adaptation was going to be easier and simple, but I was wrong.  Again. Except this time, instead of fighting it, I just embraced it.

The problem with the past year and a half is that I had a humanistic point of view, even an artistic eye for business, and people around me were engineers, marketers, administrators and in order to be heard I had to learn again how to influence. Involve them in my vision, share it and search for teammates willing to prove my ideas to gain some consensus.

And it has been hard, much more than my previous professional efforts. And also painful, for doing an MBA is to challenge ideas with people as smart as one, or even more, and this has taught me humility as well.

There’s still a lot to learn, but when change stares you in the eye, there are two things to do… embrace it or die. If you take change as part of your daily context you’ll grow in capacities and capabilities, which will lead you to a better understanding or your surroundings. If you don’t, well, just sit and wait for something to happen, because it will, and you won’t like it for change is hard, painful, and necessary. Just as Rach’s Third piano concert, first movement, between the sixth and eleventh minute, your life will transform you, and then everything will be calm, until further change is needed.