Hi all!

So a couple of days ago, at the company I work for, we said goodbye to two employees that had been with the company for quite a while. One of them had decided to focus on a new project, so his path had clearly diverted from ours. The second one, on the other hand, was a more interesting story that got me thinking.

Personally, I never had too much interaction with this person, so my team leader filled me in on the details. Apparently, this person was unhappy with his current situation and the lack of prospects within the organization and thus decided to leave. Management made several attempts to convince him to stay but ultimately, their arguments proved unconvincing and both parties went their separate ways.

In and of itself, there isn't anything special or even noteworthy about this story. But what stuck with me was how my team leader described it: "he was looking for something we couldn't give him right now, and so he left. As it turns out, he was unable to play the long game." Especially that last part is significant here: "playing the long game".

This struck a cord with me because of two reasons, first of which (or should I say whom) is Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek is an English-American author and motivational speaker whom I greatly admire. For years now he has written and spoken repeatedly and at great length about leadership, vision and (finding) your purpose in life and I highly recommend his teachings to anyone.

One of his books is titled "The infinite game", where he talks about the mindset people have when they "play the game of life", be it at work, in hobbies or in their relationships. He argues that so many of us are playing a finite game, with focus on short-term battles where we gain an advantage over our competitors in a relatively short period of time.

However in doing so, we either ignore or lose track of our long-term vision that they have set for themselves. Often, we sacrifice many of our principles, our assets and even our relationships to make these gains, but this will only hurt us in the long run when out momentum runs out. Sometimes, the right way to approach a problem is to go the long way around, instead of trying to find the short way through.

The second reason was more personal, as it reminded me a bit of my own history with personal projects and startups. It's not a secret that I've started quite a number of them over the years but sadly, none of them have actually materialized in to anything sustainable. And although it's extremely unlikely that all of those ideas would have been successful if I had continued to work on them, it is equally unlikely that none of them could have been turned into something successful. Deciding which idea is worth further development and knowing how far exactly I should go in this, is an entirely different discussion but it made me realize that it might be worth digging a bit deeper next time, before I decide it's not worth it and focus one something else.

Podcast news

As I mentioned in my previous email, I currently have several recording sessions scheduled in the upcoming weeks and several more in the works. I'm incredibly excited to get started again with all of this and I hope I can bring you some interesting and educational content that you can all use in your business. For now though, I'll just leave you with a bit of a teaser for what's coming next...

That's it for now. Once again, thanks so much for supporting me on this adventure. Please let me know how you liked this content. This is supposed to be a conversation, so don't hesitate to hit reply if you have any questions or remarks. I will read (and respond to) every reply!

Jan