Chief Change Officer - Mastering Career Change in Action: Join Vince Chan’s 40-Minute Journey with Twelve Global Career Change Leaders

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Let’s travel around the world in 40 minutes, shall we? In this special episode, Vince Chan takes you on a global journey, meeting twelve incredible career change leaders. Their stories are packed with learnable insights and actionable lessons to help you master your own career transitions with resilience and intelligence. Episode Breakdown: • 2:30 — Tin Pei Ling (Singapore): From Psychology Major to Elected Parliamentarian: Facing Ageism, Sexism, and Social Media Attacks. • 6:02 — Mary Shea (US and Mediafly): Oboe Musician to Revenue Enablement Expert: Sales as a Career Growth Equalizer. • 9:31 — Katie Curry (US and Bulgaria): Small-Town Girl to Wall Street Professional: Determining Risk Tolerance in Career Changes. • 13:31 — Irina Filippova (US and Russia): Russian Polyglot Diplomat to Energy Innovator in Cincinnati: I’m Not Wedded to a Specific Structure of Career. • 17:27 — Fatou Sagna Sow (France and Senegal): From Parisian Glamour to Segenal Innovator: Is Career Change Just About Money? • 21:23 — Juliana Schroeder (US and UC Berkeley): From Chicago Booth to Berkeley Haas: Enhancing Human Communication in the AI Era. • 27:39 — Greg Morley (US and France): Complaint Handler Turned Moët Hennessy’s Change Leader: Everyone Should Be a Chief Change Officer. • 30:11 — Josh Geballe (US and Yale): Yale Student Turned Yale Ventures Leader: Innovating at Yale is the Greatest Career. • 33:05 — Ryota Tanozaki (Japan): Salesperson-Turned-Travel Tech CEO: How I Build an E-commerce Company in Japan. • 35:17 — Steve Monaghan (Japan and Australia): Pilot-Turned-AI Investor and Banking Innovator: Why I Like and How I Thrive in Career Change. • 39:03 — Michael Levitt (US): Heart Attack Survivor Turned Chief Burnout Officer: Buy an Alarm Clock, Ditch Your Smartphone. • 42:18 — César Couto Ferreira (Portugal): Media and Entertainment Mogul Turned Legacy Architect: I Build People, not Products. Join us for this enlightening 40-minute world tour and become your own Chief Change Officer. Dive deeper into each story with specific episodes, all available for free and uninterrupted by commercials. Connect with Us: Host: Vince Chan Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. A Modernist Community for Growth Progressives World's Number One Career Podcast Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI Top 10: GB, FR, SE, DE, TR, IT, ES Top 10: IN, JP, SG, AU  1.3 Million+ Streams 50+ Countries

Welcome to the Chief Change Officer podcast. I'm your host and the Chief Change Officer, Vince Chen. If you are 30, 40, 50, or even 60 and ready to shake things up, you are in the right place. We're here to navigate the exciting and sometimes daunting world of career changes together. Join me as we break away from traditional career paths and master our futures. Why me? The fact is, starting this podcast is my 18th career change. Seriously, 18? You might wonder. Yup, since age 50.

That's 36 years, 6 economic crises, over 10 cities, and 3 battles with mental illness. Every single time I hit the wall hard, I felt the pain alone. Yet, I fought back and took charge. From all these experiences, I've mastered art and science of career change. This episode is a special 40-minute program. I'll take you on a journey around the world, from the U.S. to Europe, Africa, and Asia, meeting 12 incredible real-life career change masters. With their learnable insights

and time-tested lessons, I'll help you get unstuck from risks and fears so that you can reshape your career on your own terms. With clarity, resilience, and intelligence, you become your own chief chain officer. Feel free to dive deeper into individual stories with specific episodes, or available to you for free and uninterrupted by commercials. Let's start our 40-minute world tour now. Episode 1 and 2. Tin Pei Ling from Singapore. As she moved from a private individual,

a psychology major, a management consultant into politics as the youngest elected parliamentarian in the election 2011 in Singapore. She had to face the issues of ageism, sexism and social media attacks. Managing certain preconceived notions or stereotypes that people may have of certain gender and age. So to me, the big challenge that I faced was age. I was only in my 20s and even though I already had seven years of grassroots experience by then, I guess track record wise, people still do not have a clear grasp of what I have to offer.

I'm young, I'm new. And I think a lot of people will be thinking, who are you? Do you really understand my problems? Are you able to solve it, even if you do understand? And some also felt that I was riding on the coattail of a former prime minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong, his emeritus. So there were all these criticisms. And I think this was the main doubt about me.

So online, anything that I post on my own social media, I get thousands of responses. Not so nice comments. And then on other platforms, other online forums, etc. response not so nice comments and then on other platforms other online forums etc

and there are people who fabricate stories about me for example they said that I have this boyfriend

and I dumped him because it was fair all sorts of things you were actually married at that point

yeah and all these things were like so untrue and various things it was very overwhelming

absolutely overwhelming I remember every day I go home and cry All these things were like so untrue and various things, right? It was very overwhelming. Absolutely overwhelming. I remember every day I'll go home and cry at the end of the day. The next morning, I have to like, okay, I have to focus again, go down to the constituency, go listen to the residents, constituents, understand their problems, try to help them, so on and so forth. And this every day, and this just repeat for quite some time. I was under quite a lot of stress. Then in terms of gender, actually less so.

But I did have a handful, a very small number of more mature men. We call them uncles. And then they actually asked me, you're a woman, what do you know of the problems we men face? So I got those comments before, but I don't think they were meant to be mean, but it was genuinely like, do you really understand me? Fast forward, I would say that in the end, there's no shortcut to addressing these concerns that constituents have or that people have of me back then. It was really through constant engagement, listening, understanding, working alongside them, trying to help them over time,

building up trust, building up chemistry, showing my sincerity and my work through real actions. I think it's the main critical success factor in that sense that helped to convince them that, hey, you can trust me. I'm here for you. And I think that's also the main reason why we have managed to forge bonds over the years. Episode 3 and 4, Mary Shea from Mediafly in the United States Mary has experienced and navigated successfully

in multiple career transitions. One critical change happened many years ago when she transitioned from classical music into frontline sales. Since then, she never looked back. Today, she is the co-CEO of Mediafly,

a well-regarded, highly promising, well-funded revenue enablement tech company. There are a couple of different themes or threads that were big motivators for me. When you think about sales, sales is a great equalizer because if you're really, really good at it and you work really hard at it, you can make a lot of money. And so making money wasn't a primary focus for me in sort of my career decisions. It was my passion and what I loved in life. But once I started making a lot of money because of my sales success, I realized that I had the power to really change things, to do wonderful things for my family, to be generous with extended networks of friends, to funnel my money into charities that align with my values as a person.

And I don't even want to go down this path because we're so politically fractured here in this country right now, but even funnel money to political candidates. And I'm quite involved in national politics here as a fundraiser. Once I got a sense of the impact that I could have by having financial independence, that was a big motivator for me. And also remember, I got a PhD. So I started very late my professional business career. If I wasn't moving really quickly and taking advantage of every opportunity, that I was going to fall behind because I was about probably 10 years behind my peers in terms of to fall behind because I was about probably 10 years behind my peers in terms of my earning potential because I had taken an academic path, which I wouldn't

change for the world. But when I came out to the business world and saw what was possible, my hair was on fire in a good way and I really wanted to move. And so I moved quickly. The other thing that is really important to me is that I just need the intellectual stimulation. I can't just manage to the playbook. Part of me is that I have to create the playbook, work with teams and what those right plays are, and then roll it out. The creative process is really important to me

in the business world. The other theme is I just love working with people. I'm competitive. I like to see people who I work with, who may work for me at this point, be super successful. I want to be an enabler for those folks. So those are some of the common themes that I think you could find against any role

that I've had over the last 20 years. Yep, enabler. I really like this word. Some of the best leaders I've had over the last 20 years. Yep, enabler. I really like this word. Some of the best leaders I've worked with and for over years, they really try to enable my success even before I believe in it. They will say, just do it. I have confidence in you. I'll help you with that. I'll make you a success. That's what I call enablement leadership. Episode five and six, Katie Curry, one of my oldest friends from Yale. Like me, she's highly analytical and logical in managing, assessing, monitoring financial risks. But when it comes to pursuing career goals and career changes, how analytical should we be?

How much risk can we tolerate? A lot of people are risk-averse. You know, they have fear of failure. They're afraid that they will fail. That's also another fear, fear of judgment. They don't like to be judged. They don't like to be questioned. What's your personal definition of failure and success after so many years on the Wall Street? I've had many failures in my career and my life. And I look back and I think that

people who have not had failures in their life or their career, they're playing it too safe. So there is a level of expectation that you want to approach your life, your choices, your career. That some things, you know, maybe six or seven out of your ten decisions will be correct and the other ones will, you know, you will fail. And, you know, so what? You will learn. If you have that kind of ability to shake it off and have a little resilience and know yourself and trust yourself, then you can recover from most mistakes. So to come back to this question of success and the way I think about it, I have my personal KPIs that I look at. And I look at success much more broadly. It's not, you know, reaching a certain title, although that's important for me, or a certain, you know, financial remuneration, although that's also important for me,

but I'm looking at it much more broadly. I look at the different areas of my life, health and relationship, and am I surrounded by people from whom I can learn? Am I in a place where I can have impact? Is there value that I can actually deliver, drive and bring to my current situation? And as I think on those kind of personal KPIs, whether things turn out exactly the way I planned them or not, I mean, that's outside of my control, right? All I know is that I can do my best and every day I can ask myself, what can I do?

How can I 10x what I'm doing? How can I drive and deliver value and growth? And that's kind of the only thing I can do. So I have to say I am less focused on a conventional definition of success. I'm very focused on the different areas of my life. And do I have energy? Am I healthy? Do I have the friends that, you know, I like to have? Do I have enough time to enjoy my hobbies? I like hiking. I like salsa dancing. I like spending time with my family. Do I have time to do these?

And at the same time, am I driving hard with my team? Am I teaching them things that they don't know? Am I helping them to grow and progress? And there are many paths to success. And we've seen it in our accelerated society. But you can be successful through growing your community and being an influencer. You can be successful in a more traditional path. You can be successful in being an entrepreneur and a founder. There are many paths. So I think it's time for us to maybe put away the definitions of success that are preconceived and be a little more open to the journey and have fun with it.

Episode 7. Irina Filippov from Cincinnati. Originally from Russia as a formally trained diplomat who speaks five languages. Home I met at Yale once again in the MBA program. Irina has impressed me since day one with her guts and energy, highly articulate, a thoughtful astrologist, very deep thinker, but at the same time, a very hands-on action person. What are her drivers? I think the common path that I'm observing here is that I was always

a self-starter. So even when I was working for a major energy company, I tended to work on projects that I was originating. At no point in time did I actually take over someone else's role. So every role on every project that I worked on was essentially starting from scratch. So if you will, it was being an entrepreneur within a very established company and within a very established kind of culture and way of doing things. So that is definitely a common theme. The second common theme was simply curiosity. My career path is completely non-linear and that was okay by me. I think for me, when I reached kind of the age of 35 or so, the idea of following an established career path was not at all appealing. I wanted to learn about different aspects of energy. I wanted to try myself in different roles.

I actually joined a early stage startup out of the UK upon leaving BP. And that involved building the U.S. presence really from scratch, from the ground up, and really creating relevance in a new market for that particular company. So in that sense, the transition from a big established organization to being more or less independent or being an entrepreneurial advisor was not hard for me because I already thought like an entrepreneur, even within, again, an established company. The other component, again, is curiosity. In order to be successful in being independent or running a small business, you do have to be very curious about industry trends. You have to be open to building partnerships, relationships, collaborations with others. You have to continuously find ways in which you can create value, not just for yourself, but for others in the ecosystem. So those components really lead, I believe, successful entrepreneurs to more success.

I've also observed, I've observed a lot being in these different environments and these different spaces. And unfortunately, we don't see a lot of great examples of leadership on either side. I believe in the U.S. culture, there is a bit of a glorification of the entrepreneur. We hear all these great stories about unicorns becoming successful overnight. And therefore, there is this mystery and mystique of what it takes to build a successful enterprise. And I believe that unfortunately gives rise to tendencies that are not necessarily healthy and don't lead to long-term sustained success for entrepreneurs

because again folks think that if they if they kind of somehow outsmart the market and become very popular that somehow is going to get them from point A to point B and of course we've seen a lot of unfortunate consequences of that kind of thinking. Episode 8. Fatou Senna-Soul. From Paris and Senegal, Africa. Fatou is a trained lawyer working at one of the biggest banks in France. Yet, she has given up all the glamour, beauty, money in

Paris and moved back to her origin in Africa. Why did she do that? I was wondering what one thing, what that one thing is that motivate you if I have to ask you to come up with one word. Would you say identity? I sense that for you, born and raised in the developed economy, France, Paris, legal profession, stability, that is part of your identity. But you have the other piece of you which lies in your root, in your origin. You identify with it. You resonate with it. You see a lot of things going on.

You really want to do something about it. I think identity is your calling. Would you agree? Yeah. The reason I make those changes, these big changes, I mean, there are three main reasons. First of all, yeah, I wanted to challenge myself and to see the full expression of myself.

What does it mean being tattooed in Senegal? This Paris-born girl, how can she handle this identity of her in Senegal? What will she become? I was curious about that. And of course, it was a question of identity. Who am I? I'm also Senegalese, and it was a question of embracing this second citizenship as well.

My roots, my home country. I did not want to just experience France. I love France, of course. Most of my life I've lived, this is the French experience. So I really want to give a different sense to my life. Being successful might not be the ultimate goal for people. We need to seek for happiness. You need to think that what you're doing is helping others and you need to believe that your life makes sense matters so working in a in a bank making good money being very successful handling a like I did a team of 51 per people a global team great but at the end of the day what are you doing for people really just making money

transaction, billion dollar transaction but so what I knew I had this occasion in Senegal to start working on economic development project and to see very simple project and to see

how I can have a huge impact. So I felt like I had to make this move for myself to feel like my life did matter. And of course, as I mentioned, I'm a mother. So I wanted my kids to experience, to fully experience the second country over there. And they can always go to France where they were born, where their grandma is and so on.

And I think this will develop something for them that I could not experience myself. The world is a global thing. Yeah. There's no barrier, actually. Understanding that the world is huge. Episode 9, Juliana Schroeder from UC Berkeley. A business PhD, a psychologist who studies human interaction, communication, decision-making, and psychology of technology.

How can we, managers and executives, make better use of our human communication machine, this human and machine interaction will become more and more common. For younger kids, they are going to grow up in this era. So they just would be more immersed in this space. Adults being trained and grow up in an era where it's just human to human. And now we are in this human machine era. So what advice would you give to MBA students, executives, managers, how we could make better use of our human communication skills? Or if you have to highlight a couple of premium human qualities, human skills that we should hold on to. That's a great question. I think that people need to learn how to use technology to their advantage in communication settings.

That they shouldn't just be thinking about what, what are the like uniquely human elements of communication, because those are always going to be changing. I think that our world is constantly changing. So it's more about how do you engage with new technology in order to improve your abilities to communicate? And let me give you a bunch of examples here that come from my research. So one is that we now have all these different platforms at our fingertips that we can use to more effectively communicate with those around us. It's amazing that you and I are getting to have this.

You're all the way across the world from me and we're still having this great conversation and we're doing it through an audio only platform here. We could also be seeing each other via video and so i think there are both like technologies that have more or less synchronicity that's like speed between when i say something and you respond and then there's also platforms that have more or less what we call like paralinguistic cues, which are the cues beyond the words, which include the nonverbals, like being able to see facial expression, being able to hear the tone of my voice, those are all paralinguistics. And so what we typically find in our research is that the more of these paralinguistic cues, but particularly voice, that are present in an interaction, and the more synchronous it is,

the more humanizing a conversation is and the more human like a communicator will appear. And so if you care about trying to reduce misunderstandings and have clear mind reading and being seen as more human like and making the best possible first impression, we would suggest that you start with the medium, a modality, a communication platform, whether it's like in-person or video chat, that is going to be able to maximize those things, as opposed to starting with text, which a lot of people actually do think that they should start with their text, like their cover letter, when they're trying to make a good impression on recruiters, for instance. And we actually find that the elevator pitch is much more effective, even controlling for the words that people use. I would suggest that people should be quick to switch modalities

and platforms as it is more or less effective for them. So sometimes people get caught in this meeting culture where they're stuck in these video conversations and they don't need to work out a lot of detail and they don't need the synchronous conversation. They can do some of it asynchronously. So it's like time to get off the meeting and just go into email instead and work on your to-do list independently. And then you can meet again later. All right. And so you can jump off once you've kind of worked through some of the detail. Or if you start out in email and you start realizing that things are more complicated than you expect and there's some conflict, then should jump into zoom and so i think people should just be quicker to move into a different modality or platform that serves their purposes in terms of communication all right so that's just one is

like the medium by which we're engaging and then another thing that we can think about is how we use communication tools to service our interactions. Like there are all these cool tools now, like we can transcribe automatically as we're speaking so that we have a searchable log of everything that we're saying. Or there are certain new startups that are developing tools that will give you sentiment analysis. So after I send an email, I can get information about compared to most of the users in your organization that was on the angrier side, like your anger sentiment was high in that email. Oh, I should have toned that down

or maybe I should tone it down in the next iteration. And so I can take that feedback and I can use that. Now, I do think there's a potential. So you might just be tempted to say, oh, all of these tools sound great. Why not just employ all of them? Let's transcribe everything we're saying and let's use the sentiment analyses that exist. But there might be a cost on the back end to distraction because humans are only capable of engaging in so much at once. And I've talked to a couple of startups now that are building these new communication platforms

that are basically everything. So there's words that are scrolling because everything's being transcribed as we speak. We can see each other. We can hear each other. It's like all the modalities are happening at once. And again, on the one hand, that sounds kind of great. But on the other hand, I think there might be a cost

in terms of distraction. And as a teacher and an educator, I'm very, very aware of this. It's very salient to me, that trade-off. And so I do think people need to be wise in thinking about which communication tools they want to utilize and really pay attention to the new research coming out on this. Episode 10.

Greg Morley. episode 10 greg morley an american who used to work in hong kong shanghai and now in paris with monet tennessee the world's largest wine and spirits conglomerate greg has been a people and change leader for many years he's now heading up the global efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion. He's also in the process of publishing a new book called Born, helping individuals build stronger bonds at work and in life in an increasingly disconnected workplace. The world of work is changing. Building bonds, building bridges, building spaces across individuals is not limited within the walls of organization. It's simply the basic need of human beings. I can see that your book applies to a lot of real scenarios. I hope so.

I hope that the inspiration people take from the book is that connection and belonging happen in many, many different ways. And again, it's not a discussion of sort of woke or anti-woke as one would be led to believe by reading social media these days that again, people want to generally feel included. I want to, wherever I live or work, I want to feel like I belong there. And when I have that sense of belonging, I'm willing to do more. I'm willing to give more. If in my neighborhood, I feel like I belong in my neighborhood,

maybe I'm more willing to pick up trash on the street when I see it. If I feel like I belong in my neighborhood. Maybe I'm more willing to pick up trash on the street when I see it. If I feel like I belong in my organization, I may be willing to do a little bit more a buzzword. It's really a business driver, an organization driver, and a mental helper. And I think that this is the right time to have this discussion. I think actually the role of chief change officer is imperative to the success of anybody in a company now because where the best ideas come are certainly not always from managers. So the best ideas come from anybody. Episode 11, George Chabot from Yale. I call him a Yale loyalist. From Yale College to Yale School of Management, where we met as classmates.

And now as Yale leader, in particular at Yale Ventures, building the innovation ecosystem, nurturing the innovation talent at the university. But in and out of Yale, he got his own share of adventures, including joining a startup in Connecticut as the 16th employee and took it to acquisition. He also helped the governor of Connecticut to deal with COVID-19 health response. He's now offering advice to those who are in the early stage of their career. Considering the challenges, career challenges in particular particular that MBA students face today whether they are exploring corporate roles or interested in entrepreneurship

and with the tough funding market for new founders what career advice would you offer them it was a few bits of advice I find myself sharing rather commonly. I think first and probably most importantly is try to work, especially early in your career, for people who you're really inspired by, who you think you can learn a ton from. I think often people chase a specific job rather than the opportunity to work with individuals who are really spectacular, who can really help get them going in their careers and really help build their base of knowledge and experiences of the best possible ways to lead organizations or to solve problems. I have definitely been fortunate to work with a lot of incredible people during my career.

There's so much you can do as one person. You have the opportunity to work with a lot of incredible people during my career. There's so much you can do as one person. If you have the opportunity to work with a lot of great people, obviously you get a lot more done. So that's one. I think a second is we all, when we were young and early in our career, were often very impatient, right? And wanted to do as quickly as possible, get that next promotion or get that next raise or whatever it might be. And I think it's very important for people to try to keep that instinct in check, but really just focus more than anything else on doing the best possible job that you can in the role that you're in today and have confidence that if you're part of an organization that's well-managed, that good things will naturally flow from that. And just

rather than being overly focused on those next steps and milestones, just being really focused on working hard, doing a great job at your current set of responsibilities, seeking out new challenges and in that role and having confidence that as a result of that, the great work that you'll do, that new challenges and opportunities will present themselves. Episode 12, Ryota Tanasaki from Tokyo, Japan. Crisis is not always bad. The awareness of crisis, the sense of crisis, could be a very strong motivator for career growth and transformation.

That's what happened to Ryota. I spent two years with you at Chicago Booth as classmate, yet I've never asked you the next question. I'm going to ask you now, and you give me your honest answer. What actually triggered you to get an MBA at Chicago Booth at that point in time? Frankly speaking, exactly at the moment when I was engaged with that project at the frontier management and at the department store, I felt concerned that all my career could last in a rural city and my entire career ends. So that was my concern at the moment.

I started thinking, why don't I leverage what I experienced so far globally? Gradually thinking, I want to challenge more. I want to challenge not just in domestic cities in Japan, but also globally. And then I consulted with my boss, the president of Frontier Management Inc., about the opportunity to work globally. At some moment, my boss was considering to develop the office in Singapore. They provided me with the opportunity to start developing the global office in Singapore. Of course, I grabbed that kind of opportunity. At the same time, I wanted to pursue MBA concurrently because I wanted to up the corporate ladder and I wanted to acquire business network outside Japan. Episode 13, Steve Monaghan, originally from Australia, originally a commercial pilot, who is now an investor and entrepreneur in AI technology, banking, payment solutions, and insurance.

He lived and traveled globally, from Australia to Singapore, to Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Middle East, and now in Japan, Tokyo. He's always been an outsider, so to speak, but he sees this as his advantage. He uses this outsider perspective to help him move forward through every single career change and transformation. He said, I like change. I thrive in change. You've really lived and worked all over the globe. Singapore, India, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, and now Japan, everywhere you've been, you've been the outsider. How do you think this foreigner identity has shaped your approach as a leader driving change? Part of that learning process was always I was the outsider.

I was the outsider from a company perspective, from an industry perspective. I was the outsider from a cultural perspective because I was from a different country. I've been an immigrant in most of the countries since my 20s, right? So I've lived as an immigrant. So I've always been the outsider, which gives me an advantage and a disadvantage. And the advantage is I have a view, an external view. I'm not tainted. I'm learning from the other side of the equation. It's really insightful to hear how you've managed change and overcome resistance in your roles. Could you elaborate on how you've tackled the challenge of people's natural fear of change in your work? In particular, when introducing new technologies or business models,

how have you transformed a simple no into no knowledge and acceptance? And what role did learning play in this process? meals every day. But if you're going to place a minefield in the middle of that journey and place everyone at risk, no one's going to go and make that journey to do that new thing. And that learning helped me distill into the reason that you get the most no's is because people don't know. They don't understand. They haven't learned. They don't really see what that new thing is. My full role has been to turn a no into a K-N-O-W, so a no to a no, and then into now. And that's really the role of any business person and any innovation officer or any digital officer, is to actually go and make that happen. So how do you take learning so people are no longer fearful that they know that they can take advantage of that technology and transformation and transform, you know, that learning into venturing, experiential learning, which is the

most powerful form of learning, and then into capital for acceleration. How do you really start scaling things? And when you bring that approach to bear, it works from the board to the branch. You really that focus on learning, making sure people understand, getting enthusiastic about change. Episode 14, Michael Livid in the United States. He was once a heart attack survivor because of burnout. Now, he turned his own experience and learning into a burnout therapy practice to help people deal with the ever-changing workplace. Burnout is part of this change process, before, during, or even after the change. If I were one of those people in transition with a burnout situation. I came to you, I asked for advice. So what advice would you give to me? What insights can you share with me?

Usually what I'll do, and this is again, leveraging a lot of therapy work, is have you talk about your current career or the one you're leaving. One of the things we'll talk about is having you go back in time when you first applied for that role and what your feelings were when you were selected and hired. And that first day, go back and think about that. Typically, in most cases, those are some happy memories. Those are some happy thoughts. And then we flush out, okay, what changed? From your perspective, what changed? What was going on? out some of the causes could be external. Maybe there was a new manager and that manager was not easy to work with or wasn't clearly communicating or who knows. There could be all kinds of different things or could be internal. You might have been going through something else during that time. Maybe a relationship challenge is a loss of a loved one or a pet which is a loved one too so

i don't need to separate those but both are traumatic for people and there's all kinds of other things that could be going on it might be the economy it might be upset your team hasn't won in a while or they traded away your favorite player is i don't want to say simple or silly because it's not some people are very passionate about a lot of things in life. It's just getting to the bottom of, okay, where are some of the ingredients that are adding to this? Then from there, we can see, are there opportunities to maybe look at things differently or change your perspective on a particular matter to identify that jerk manager that left from the organization because people leave their managers they don't necessarily leave their companies they leave their managers putting yourself kind of in their shoes okay what do you think their motivation is it'll

go from oh they're just evil and mean it's like to do you think they may have some self-confidence issues do you think they don't feel prepared as a manager so they are defaulting to being this quote-unquote bossy person to do these things to try to cover up for their own self inadequacies episode 15 cecil katu the header from portugal he was born into a very creative and artistic family yet he was trained in science and biotech but later he joined the music industry as a DJ, and eventually as a marketing executive at MTV Networks. When it comes to making career decisions, how does he balance between logic and psychology, the art and the science? Each decision, each transition, I believe, is a delicate balance between logic and psychology. You mentioned earlier that while you are trained in science with a very logical mind, you're also very into art, into creative work, into philosophy.

So back then, how did you navigate this balance when making career decisions? Now, that's a really good question. And this is what politics say when they want to think about that question. I'm going to just think about that question. Definitely transformation never ends. We know that. Transformation never ends. What was the X factor?

What was the moment that really made me change? I knew that I was a creative person. I always suffer from imposter syndrome. It's normal. I need to change. And the industry was a little bit sick at the time. And that's an episode in my life. A lot of people don't know about this,

but obviously when I moved to London, I was living in Camden Town. Camden Town is surrounded by artists. It's where everyone is. From Ricky Gervais to Amy Winehouse, everyone is there. And I was immersed by them. And I met them. And when I saw, and I was one of the first people to introduce Amy Winehouse to 10 people in London, in the networks.

Before she recorded Frank, I was listening to her songs. I was hanging around. I knew a lot of her people. We were going to the same pub, you know, Camden. We were almost neighbors. I lived in the same street as Coldplay. And I was like, damn, this is wrong. This is definitely wrong.

We're not doing the best we can for the people and we're not helping really creative and intelligent people like Kanye White. Mm. She was one of the most beautiful people I know. She was such a creative and talented singer. And I saw what the industry was doing to her. Mm. Cause she was in the wrong place with the wrong people.

A lot of people, obviously, if you go and read about Amy, you're going to see the documentaries and you're going to see their bio, you're going to find out she had suffered from anorexia when she was quite young. Hmm. And that's the thing is we don't care about people. We just want to do the profitable way. And another time was her dad. And I was in the beach when someone called me.

I was still working for MTV, obviously. And someone calls me. Same feeling that I felt when they called me saying, look, Amy just died. I felt like when I was woke up at 5 a.m. with Michael Jackson saying, Michael Jackson just died. What we're going to do? Because this is what happens, you know,

when we prepare ourselves for them. When you work in the networks, you prepare yourself. You discuss your obituary in the beginning of the year. And this is really bad, but this is the truth. This is newsflash. So we prepare the obituary and we think, okay, who's going to die this year? Who are the ones that are going to mentally go down the drain?

And when Amy died, because I was close by and I knew her and everything, that was something that I said, no, enough is enough. I don't want to be more. I don't want to be part of this. I want to change that. It was quite decisive to say,

look, we need to change things. And I just wanted to change things, basically. That's all for season one. Thanks to all the incredible guests. This season has taken me five months from thinking to preparation, from planning to execution. But this is just the beginning.

We'll have more guests to interview, more countries to travel to, more career challenges to deal with, my pain and my gain, my logic and my psychology, my art and my science. The mission here is simple. Make your laws of change. Regardless of your age, your gender, your generation, your culture, whatever career directions, whatever career goals you have in mind. I'll help you to pursue them fearlessly, risk-free, with so much conviction, so that you will achieve your legacy on your own terms. You become the chief change officer in your life and career.

Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Vince Chan. Follow us if you like our show. Subscribe, Inspired, and Thrive. See you next time. © transcript Emily Beynon