Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
Finding an optimal place in 2022
Adaptability
Who is completely sure what’s going to happen in 2022 and, how whatever it is, it will impact you? This fact alone is a big reason why so many strategists are freelancing, waiting to see how things play out in the business. For reasons of potential mental or physical stress (they often go together) caused by work factors beyond your control, or perhaps because you realise you need a complete professional pivot, be prepared to learn anew, to re-tool both your skills and your mindset. One way to do this is to constantly test yourself/get out of your comfort zone so that you’re better able to cope and adapt when change comes. Another way to be able to more easily pivot. Plan ahead.
Envisioning (your ideal work scenario)
From my experience, what most of strategists routinely do for clients, they don’t do so well for themselves. ‘Ideal’ work scenarios might not be envisaged because of a lack of belief in attainability; Perhaps it takes too much time to go through a process? (SPARKIN has a simple methodology we can share) The challenge for you is that if you don’t have a clear outline of the optimal working/non working setup, you are very unlikely to achieve it, exception being if you have someone that knows you very well, that is constantly looking out for you.
Purposeful
“He did that on purpose!!” How often did you hear that as a kid. Point being, the accusation your brother or sister was making, you did what you did intentionally. Doing things with purpose is not only more satisfying in the moment, but you’re more likely to achieve what you set out to achieve. Obvious? So, be lucid with yourself (and so with others) about the impact you wish to have, be it focused on impacting people, business results, your growth, whatever. Clarity of purpose might make a poor working situation tolerable, but that’s because you are completely aware of what you need. Key, clarity of purpose is about ‘optimal use of your valuable time.’.
Finally, adapting, envisioning and purpose ought to be about ensuring as much as possible, that you have fun/gain pleasure from your work as well as an income. If any of the above is of interest, feel free to contact me. My promise is always to ensure you are heard.
Cheers, Stuart
Articles
- Adaptability: The must have skillset for Normal 2.0
- Adaptability: Your most essential workplace skill
- Creating a career vision for your life
- Why it’s important to have a career plan
- How a purpose-driven workplace impacts the employee experience
- Finding a job with purpose amid the COVID-19 crisis
Job Opportunities 08/16
If you know of anyone looking for full time or part time work, some of the below opportunities are full time and some temp to perm.
- SVP Research – NY based healthcare agency.
- EVP Strategy – NY based creative agency
- VP Strategy – NY based PR agency
Past Newsletters
Your Dream Job – How To Find It
Dream job? With all the change happening who has a chance of finding it? Or, because of all the change, my view is, most of us have had time to think and recognize what it looks like. Meanwhile, the agency and client world recognize the virtual and flexible working has arrived to stay.
YOUR Dream Job – What you need to consider
‘What do you want to experience? In which environment do you best thrive? And, what impact do you wish to have. All underpinned by, how do you see your continued growth?
YOUR Dream Job – Organisational considerations
Avoid short termism – Where culture struggles to develop, investment in training and development is less likely, new business pitching is over the top, job security is tenuous because the focus is on short term profit.
Pursue a people focus – People are not simply talked about in cred’s as the most important part of the business, they are! There’s a flexible approach to working, diversity, mat/paternity leave, training, and a focus on building clients versus massive new business pitching.
YOUR Dream Job – Go off-piste
Don’t look simply to shiny oft talked about names but broaden your chances of finding the dream by understanding the following:
– Focus on agencies where there are established/great client relationships;These are where trust is established and where great work is/has/or is ready to happen.
– Most if not all businesses, if they’ve been around for a while, have one if not more great client relationships. Identify them, not necessarily the agencies. chances of finding your dream job.
– Your success requires a handful of people – Focus your search on knowing you need possibly 4 or 5 great people around you to excel. Many agencies/brands that you’ve never heard of have these 4 or 5 people. Have this mindset and you’ll broaden your dream job.
Finally, we have plenty of other ideas but most important, we pomise to be good listeners for you.
Cheers, SPARKIN
Articles
- What do you want in your career?
- 11 indications of a good company culture
- Are you strategic with planning your career?
- How do you want to grow?
- 9 great jobs for people wanting to save the planet
- What do employees want when returing to the office?
Job Opportunities 08/16
If you know of anyone looking for full time or part time work, some of the below opportunities are full time and some temp to perm.
- Â Chicago – Director Strategy/BtoB – virtual – creative
- Â San Francisco – Director Strategy/BtoB – >180 – creative
- Â London – Joint Head Strategy – <160k(stg) – creative
- Â U.S/Virtual – VP Strategy – <200k – research
- Â U.S/Virtual – VP Strategy – <200k – consulting
Past Newsletters
The biggest Threat to Agencies and Your Jobs
Planners and strategists, “Agencies are scrambling to attract talent amid shortage.” The article summarizes that talent shortages exist because:Â https://bit.ly/37gVRkn
– Skills shortage – A lack of the right skills,
– Greater flexibility/virtual – ‘Talent’ wanting greater flexibility
– Burn out – employees wanting to get out of the business.
What the article doesn’t mention is the core reason for this talent shortage, a breakdown of the psychological contract,
a phrase coined decades past highlighting, ‘to maintain a positive employee-employer relationship employers pay particular attention to the ‘human side’ of a working relationship, rather than the purely commercial or transactional side.’
Yes, the problem for the business is short termism, which is why agencies increasingly use freelancers, treating people like commodities; Even when they are full time, (again due to short termism) there has been a chronic lack of willingness to train/invest in the next generation of strategists.
The good news – For any planner seeking their next career challenge, there are many great people in this business and some basic rules for identifying a great next career move for you, beyond that is, simply looking at the obvious names, this I’ll cover in my next newsletter.
$64,000 dollar question ‘You Need’ to be able to answer
Your daily sanity depends on it. Your reputation will be maintained and enhanced by it. And without it, you will surely fall behind your peers. What am I referring to? Your continued GROWTH.
Your growth/your progression, can take you in many different directions. It can be a different type of strategic approach. It can be more quantitative understanding or more focused on engagement versus big picture brand development. It can be to experience more of a business environment, to scale what you’ve already been doing or simply but critically, to work with a great manager/mentor or team. Whatever growth is for you, knowing what it looks like for you reveals a few things:
– An understanding of where you are and where you want to be in your career as well as having a sense of what is needed to get you there.
– A conscious focused desire to develop your ability versus being fatalistic/simply open to anything without focus?’
– An appreciation of which environments and career opportunities might deliver for you. This will allow anyone tryng to help you to better identify a great career move, tailored to your growth.
Looking forward to talking.
Cheers, Stuart
Articles
- Managing yourself
- Do you have a career growth strategy?
- Taking charge of your career growth
- Career development 101
- Career growth v career development
Job Opportunities 05/21
If you know of anyone looking for full time or part time work, some of the below opportunities are full time and some temp to perm.
1. NY/Associate Director Strategy – >130k – creative
2. San Francisco – Head Strategy – >250k – creative
3. London – Head Strategy – >170k(stg) – creative
4. NY EVP Strategy – >250-300k – pr
Past Newsletters