Starting a text means being aware of everything that's going on around you. Inspiration can come from anywhere: the workplace, a discussion in a WhatsApp group or a particular interest, but this is just the starting point for a good text. Over the months I've been a columnist for makers, I've noted down several kicks that could have been more.
This, for example, could be a piece about working from home, about the good and bad sides of being cooped up (and privileged to be so) at home for more than a year. It would be easy, I have a lot of stories to tell and I thought I'd start on a more serious note, talking about an article that caught my eye about changes in consumer behavior.
The Economist published an article on the growth of cosmetic procedures during the pandemic, with significant growth figures (+10% in the US, +20% in France) and the main reason cited for this: video meetings! Yes, people weren't prepared to see themselves and compare themselves with other people all day on video, most of the time with poor camera quality and lighting. Men were the ones who resorted to the procedures the most.
But no, inspiration ran out after that first paragraph. For weeks, I lived with this single paragraph in an open .doc word.
It could also be about the growth of a person as a metaphor for our professional growth. I lived with my two-year-old nephew for a few months during the pandemic, the closest experience to parenthood I've ever had, and for the first time, I saw a human being wanting to do everything, wanting to learn everything and be pure energy, but at the same time, not having the appropriate knowledge to do his activities safely, always looking for an 'older' person to accompany his discoveries and being clumsy in his small achievements. You have vitality and the desire to do things, but you don't have the freedom. You have to learn. Very similar to my first experiences in a company, when I was willing to do anything, when I would give anything to take part in important meetings with the 'elders', when new project ideas were bubbling up and all I wanted was to have someone to share and build with.
This would be a good text, I would then talk about the adolescent phase, the phase of proving yourself and winning a place in the group, of wanting to test your abilities and I would compare it to the period when we understand the gears of a company and start to expose ourselves with more confidence, the first relevant project delivered, the first team and the feeling of status achieved within the corporate environment. I could bring up personal examples here before evolving into adulthood, the phase of security, of having found the right place, the company with the right culture (comparing it to the security of a family), the right tone of leadership after having learned from various managers and absorbed a little of each to mix with my way of being.
And finally, the elderly phase, when you again depend on other people to understand the world, to adapt to new realities (they will always exist, won't they?), I would draw a parallel with the film 'The Father', an extreme case, but one that portrays the desperation of not recognizing yourself in your own home and how we need to be willing to trust people again to guide us. I'd finish by saying that these phases aren't just related to the length of time you've been working, a new area can put you back into 'childhood' or a few comfortable years in the same role can accelerate you into the 'elderly phase'.
Finally, this text could be about the power of a purpose. I felt very inspired by a phrase said by film director James Cameron in his talk during SXSW 2021, when he presented his new documentary Secret of the Whales: "We made this series so that people would fall in love with whales, because we only protect what we love". This has everything I like, branding, purpose and my passion for the ocean. It would be a great place to start and it could also intersect with the recent controversy involving an American startup that wanted to deprive its employees of any socio-political positioning, in other words, become a company without a purpose, without a defined role in society.
Its founders, Jason Fried and David Hansson, sent out a statement saying that the company Basecamp is responsible for managing projects and developing email software, and that its employees should focus solely on these activities. From then on, the company would eliminate any effort to create value for stakeholders. stakeholders beyond the bottom line. In his words: 'We are responsible for ourselves and that is more than enough. Going against the grain of what the business world has built up in recent years, Basecamp lost 1/3 of its employees shortly after the publication of this press release. This is the strength of purpose on the rise among employees, but with an unexpected setback coming from previously admired CEOs.
All good ideas to be shared, but which didn't go any further. How many good ideas do we have in our day-to-day lives, which we write down in a .doc word file, but which die without ever becoming a real project? What really inspires us, motivates us to act and makes us go beyond the surface? The text ended up being a question that remains open.
