How I Got Here and Where We Can Take You
Now that I am starting a new chapter in my professional life, I want to share what I have learned by successfully navigating career challenges for more than four decades. I have worked for large, global corporations both locally and on four continents, progressively moving from shop floor to general management positions.
How did I get here? There is always a short and a long answer to the question of how one takes control of one’s career. The short answer is simple. I took calculated and informed risks to reinvent myself, always something easier said than done.
I learned to nurture important hard and soft skills throughout my journey. I learned early that it’s not a big enough idea to trust your future to the career plans offered by most corporations. Looking back, none of the corporate plans offered to me in their original form worked well.
Taking Control of Your Destiny
I took control of my destiny, exercised flexibility and decided what to do next by myself. Most of the road was bumpy and visibility on the way ahead was very limited. I faced different and perplexing changes over time. In the span of the last forty years a lot has happened, from dramatic technological evolution to the emergence of adaptive AI. I have seen the effects of several global financial crises. I have witnessed different epidemics such as AIDS and the emergence of various flu strains, and Covid-19, which brought considerable transformation to my life and work styles, as it did for everyone else.
Interplay between Events and Business
Decades before, I was introduced to the concept of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) during a management workshop. I was skeptical about the concept. I considered it to be just another fashionable acronym created by clever business gurus. When experience showed me that the interplay between events and ways of doing business turned out to be complex and fast-moving, then VUCA became overwhelmingly real to me.
There was no predictable path for my career. I made several attempts to plan and predict, but in the end, I learned that the most important skill I had to develop was the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. In hindsight, both my early biology classes and my business training were key to helping me deal with unpredictable obstacles. At times our professional lives mimic the dynamic evolutionary processes of natural selection; adapt or disappear.
Adaptability is the Key
My choice was to adapt; and I did it as I worked in different countries, faced cultural challenges, learned languages, lived under inclement weather, just to mention a few of the obstacles I had to overcome along the way. I have worked under good and bad management styles, peer pressure and competition. My background and training in medicine, pharmaceutical sciences, and business served me well. But I believe that my effort to develop and finetune soft skills and my willingness to pursue opportunities that took me out of my comfort zone were key.
As a result, perspective and adaptability informed by science and business acumen are the guiding principles NFJ Consulting offers its clients. Intelligent risk taking and the recognition that learning is a continuous process remain guideposts on the path to success for individuals and companies alike.
Straightforward In-Depth Answers to Complex Questions
For expert guidance on issues that impact business in the medical, pharmaceutical, and biotech worlds, visit NFJ Consulting at nfjconsultor.com.
Contact us at +1-973-615-2162 (US); +55 1198112 2020 (Brazil). Or contact Nelson de Franco online here.
