Run an accelerator, me?
This week has been a full-on week for me, a two day event with the startups on the accelerator programme I run and then three days back to back 30 min calls with founders in deeptech, AI/web3 and agritech on customer discovery. I feel exhausted.
But I also think what an incredible opportunity. I was going to say privilege which sounds a bit you know what. Opportunity is better because I really feel the lucky one. To be part of the journey of these early stage startups, to listen to their back stories, their missions, their passions and their desires to make the world a better place.
When I was at BP, there was a job going to run its new startup incubator. I really wanted the job but I kept quiet. I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously if I expressed interest. I didn’t take myself very seriously. I’m not sure which was bigger: the fear of rejection or the fear of getting the job and not being able to do it.
In the end a hot shot from YouTube or somewhere, who had zero experience of corporate innovation or energy, was handed the job. Decision taken out of my hands. Phew. I left soon after anyway,
But now I’m running something similar for Shell I reflect on how small my sense of self had become, how fearful I was to take a risk, how incapable and disempowered I felt.
Thank goodness I left, because I don’t think that would have changed – I don’t think it could have changed. It was a one-way track to oblivion (is that too dramatic?).
And it’s the opposite of how I feel today.
Partly because I get regular feedback from a lot of pretty impartial people who don’t have to be nice because they’re my boss and don’t like confrontation. Partly it’s because the client can get rid of me and chooses not to. But I think it’s mostly because leaving BP sparked a reversal of those feelings.
The further I got away, the more objective I became.
Maybe the reason I didn’t feel right about that incubator job was because I knew what it would entail, the politics, the pain, the early enthusiasm followed by the impatience with inevitable teething troubles. And then the blame would start.
But also maybe I knew that the people around me had a view of me and my perceived limits.
That’s what happens in a corporate career if you stay too long – you get put in a box, some of which is your own construction, but most is not. I was the marketing guy, Mr Technology Showcase, good as an exec assistant to get things done…but probably (whisper behind my back “definitely”) couldn’t run an incubator (or accelerator).
Leaving liberates you.
I often remember hearing about people who left BP and being surprised by what they were now doing – much bigger jobs. They’d left a finance analyst role to become a CFO or a commercial manager role and were now CEO of a mid-size company.
Because those corporates keep us small; they suppress our talent and potential. In the words of my book they say ‘Here’s your sliver of power (don’t colour outside the lines)’.
It’s not just them of course; we let it happen. Slowly, insidiously, we stop backing ourselves. And then we find ourselves not even considered for a role we almost definitely could grow into if not do better than anyone else.
We lose our fight.
As I look at myself this week – standing in front of Shell execs, a bunch of supremo startups, as a leader, an innovator, an expert, I feel so much more like the person I expected to be.
In so many ways, the place that helped me grow and develop ultimately kept me trapped and limited. A bit like if I’d stayed at school and never pushed myself on to college or university.
Who’s fault was that?
Mine of course. But I don’t think I could see it so clearly until I’d left.
The first part of the Escape Method in Corporate Escapology is called Detach.
My publisher gave me the word and I’ll be forever grateful because it exactly describes what we’re all doing as we question the inevitability of our corporate careers, as we dream of alternative futures, as we challenge the myths that hold us back.
I’m still detaching, four years later – because I had more than 20 years attaching and getting too attached.
But that detachment can accelerate when you look back every so often and see how far you’ve come without those comfy slippers and the less comfortable straitjacket that held you back from becoming your potential.
Is it time for you to back yourself?
New Corporate Escapology podcast out today with
, the founder of Maverick Motherhood - on a mission to transform the way that women see themselves so that society can change the way that it sees and treats women. But before this Wilma slogged away in a banking career at RBS, Tesco Bank, Sainsbury’s Bank etc in various programme management and transformation roles.Powerful stories that will resonate with many of us about over-working, burnout, being a mother, perimenopause…well worth a listen:
Listen on Spotify:
Watch on YouTube: