It’s been a while since I have posted here. Back in late February of this year, my family and I took a look at what we wanted in life. My wife, who has family out in New Brunswick, proposed that we relocate out to that area of Canada. This is an area of the country that she has always loved and had an affinity for and quite frankly it “ticks many of the boxes” for me in terms of location.

The planner in me kicked into high gear. A number of things would have to “click” for us to be able to make the move financially viable for us. Chief among them was that my wife would be able to transfer to a local division of her company which happened to have an office in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Thankfully that was easily accomplished; the second major obstacle was that we needed to wait for my son to graduate high school, and out daughter to finish out the school year.

We would also need to sell our house and pack up all our belongings.

Fast forward to now, it’s almost August, and we have been in Moncton now for just over two weeks.
The difference in environment is beyond comprehension. Gone is the now concrete jungle of the place that I grew up in. Instead it’s an area that is filled with open spaces and green space. On the weekend we checked out a local park, Centennial Park. It was a fantastic place and one that I expect my family and I will be frequenting on a more regular basis.

My goal now is to find employment in the area where I can be a positive contribution to a company again. It’s amazing how motivating people and actively driving performance in a company becomes part of who you are as a person when you have done it daily for two decades. It’s amazing to me how much I miss leading teams, and working towards solving problems that on their face, seem insurmountable. I miss the daily challenge of coming across a roadblock in a project, and collaborating with peers, direct reports, and others to overcome the challenge.

My more immediate challenge is the job application process. Finding the right balance of customizing ones resume and cover letter to a job, vs. keeping the resume short enough that someone actually reads it is, quite frankly one of the skills that I will need to brush up on.

The biggest opportunity for me is the fact that I can look at sectors here that I wouldn’t have considered applying a number of years ago. Instead of looking for jobs in strictly telecommunications, I am branching out to jobs that not only fit my skill sets, but also are in areas that I enjoy.

I love helping people out, teaching and developing people, always have. It started early in my life and has been re-enforced through both my career and personal life. I enjoy not only solving problems, but teaching others how to solve problems.

Now the type of problem has never really mattered to me. It can be anything from complex multifaceted problems like take a framework for an existing job, and adapt that to a remote model that is non-site specific like I did with Rogers creating their Remote Agent program, or working through a customer problem where the customer is upset and frustrated and simply wants a person to take responsibility and fix their issue.

There have also been many situations where peers have come to me with complex inter employee conflict issues and are looking for examples of how to solve them.

For me it’s never been the problem itself that has held my interest and enjoyment, it’s more the solution. It’s the process of taking something that has stumped someone, and either directly, or indirectly through support, breaking down that problem into component parts and solving it.

That’s something that I really miss, and hopefully will be able to get back into the swing of it again soon.

Now if only I can get past the automated and computerized candidate selection algorithms and have an actual person read my resume and cover letter, so I can start getting back to what I love to do most, and that’s work and make a difference. I am going with the model of customizing my resume and cover letter for each individual position, we shall see if the extra effort pays any dividends.

The plan is also to continue to write and blog about management topics and other points that interest me. If you happen to be reading this and want me to touch on a subject or answer a question, please feel free to send me an email, I welcome the challenge to solve any problem, big or small!

Plus, if you are looking for someone with a wide spectrum of people / process / technical / and operations Management experience in the Moncton area; I would really like to hear from you!