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Redundancy!
I know it’s a cliche to say “it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you” and it’s not really what you want to hear when you are in the scary process of being made redundant, but it just might be true…
All we can do is look at the evidence, and certainly for me it was a push that turned out to be beneficial on all three occasions that it happened to me!
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1) Made redundant from Corvus in South Wales (brought in to turn the little loss-making company around, couldn’t, everyone got the push including me) – led to moving to Poole, a really nice place to have ended up. Changed my life, for sure, because amongst other things it led to discovering management training as a career. If they had kept me I would either still be churning out the shock absorbers or I’d be at head office in Northampton doing something to do with car components.
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2) Made redundant from Dolphin Packaging in Poole (endless disagreement with the way Harry Evans ran the company) – led to working at Bournemouth University, and discovering what I was born to do (teaching), and learning how to do it. The lecturing job was on half the money and I would probably not have dared take the pay cut and the uncertainty of a different career without the push. I’d still be running factories for a living – the thought makes me shudder, it’s a tough job, you get no thanks for it and you can never win. Massive respect to those who do it, but I’ll pass, thanks. What was I thinking, doing a job so clearly not right for me, for all those years??
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3) Made redundant from the University Business School (closure of department since it “wasn’t profitable” and “didn’t fit with the strategy”) – led to being self employed on five times the money, and no meetings to go to. I would probably not have dared to risk going self employed without this push. I’d still be ekeing out a living as a uni lecturer, bogged down in petty politics in between loving the lecturing.
If any ONE of these three hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be doing this today. I wouldn’t be running training courses, recording stuff for lynda.com (now Linkedin Learning), and earning a good living doing things I love.
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So – maybe the cliche is really true? Maybe there is the perfect job is out there for you to find? Maybe we just have to keep looking, keep trying stuff, until we find the right place for us? And maybe if there is a pay cut it’ll be worth it for the fun of the new job, or the learning – and maybe it will lead to better pay in the end?
While you are looking at one thing (your current job) you cannot look at anything else (what you could be doing) – which is paraphrased from the tm day i did with you over 10 years ago…”when you choose to do this, you are effectively saying no to anything else”