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What's Next : 2007 and AfterWhat’s next for me : 2007 and after? After my 2006 Review, the natural question is: what’s the future? I want to share some thoughts here. Personal goals"Le maître dans l’art de vivre ne fait pas de distinction fondamentale entre le travail et le jeu, l’effort et le plaisir, le corps et l’âme, l’éducation et la récréation, l’amour et la religion. Il poursuit sa quête d’excellence quel que soit ce qu’il fait, laissant aux autres le soin de décider s’il travaille ou s’il joue." This can be somehow translated like this: “The master in the art of living does not make the distinction between the work and the play, the effort and the pleasure, the body and the soul, the education and the recreation, the love and the religion. He continues his search of excellence whatever he does, leaving to the others the care to decide if he works or if he plays.” Ok, fine. But what do I do? Where should I be excellent while working and playing? Next year’s objectives will be:
On the personal point of view, I don’t feel there is anything to improve. My focus is still on quality time. Professional GoalsOn the professional point of view, I don’t feel like 2006 has brought me a total satisfaction. I need to continue to transform myself in order to be able to drive a major change. I feel that, in order to be happy, I need to reach a maturity level which would allow me to show more leadership and build myself an environment with more responsibilities and challenges. Big companies like HP do not really allow this. You need to be there for several years before having responsibilities and decision power. But even for the top management, as everybody is locked into his own role, the responsibilities and the impact of one’s personality remains quiet limited. On one side, it’s a luxury situation: you just do your job and you are well rewarded. The problem is that I’d wish to be more involved, to be in higher control, to move to areas that I will determine more independently. I also wish to deliver value in a more direct and personal way and bypass all the politics that you can find in large companies. To that respect it is for me inevitable that I’ll eventually move to a smaller environment (as a freelance or within a smaller company). To determine my next best move, I’ll need first to determine the values and the area where I want to become excellent. This has been a major question for me since several years: What do I want to do professionally? Sales? IT Architecture? Consulting? Pre-Sales? Software? Services? Or something completely different? None of the possibilities I have envisioned until today have created confidence in me. For none of them I feel I was borne to do it. Those professional questions raise even more philosophic questions in me: what should I do with my life? What should I do with my life?Today my answer to this question is architected on two main pillars:
The main Problem is that I’m not (yet) sure of the second pillar. How can I pretend my role in the humanity and in the universe could have any impact? (Quel sens a ma vie ?) Most people I meet are convinced that they are useful. They think they need to do the job right and they take it very seriously. They have big ideas on how it should be and how it shouldn’t be, what we can and can’t say, what we can and can’t do, what’s possible and what’s impossible… (My favourite quote is “They did it because they didn’t know it was impossible”). They will never think about this question: Am I sure of what I’m sure? Unlike those people, I’m not yet sure that I need to be useful. In fact, I contribute to the society uniquely because
At HP, my management knows why I’m useful: I need to over-achieve my targets. But what will it change globally if I don’t? Is it really useful to over-achieve the target? At the level of humanity, does it really matter? Not at all… When thinking about my usefulness, there is only one topic that I consider as being useful for the humanity: the transfer to the younger generations. What is useful ?If we want Humanity to continue, we need to transfer the good assets to each other and to the next generation: • Transmit & Maintain Life : Medecine • The knowledge to survive on the long term in this universe : Science • The art of writing and counting to report and transmit our knowledge : Education • The best of our music, painting : Culture • The rules of the game to live all together in peace : Politics and Religion • The rules of the game to keep a clean planet : Ecology If I want to be useful, I need to contribute to the transfer of knowledge which will ensure the continuation of the Humanity. Is Money useful ?Our world is today governed by the money. Money certainly contributes to those goals, but we can easily find examples where money clearly misses the objective; it pollutes the nature, it corrupts politics, it advertises on art, it diverts science to productive goals with exclusive rights. Therefore the use of money as the primary rule for determines the human activities should be reduced. (That’s why after all I’m happy to pay taxes if it contributes to humanity’s objectives). ConclusionsThere are clearly two big options for me in the future :
Some examples… For option 1: move to a less stressing and demanding work (or make it less stressing), work closer from home, work part time… For option 2: Change job to Knowledge Sharing and Transfer, ONG, Durable Development… |
