I remember as if today I was the phone call received at home to present me the same day at the offices in an insurance brokerage, sort of a birthday gift that would be fulfilled two days later.
It was not so much the salary that interested was the sense of autonomy and independence that would follow, despite the full future uncertainty that a one-year contract, successively renewed for another 2 of the same period, naturally implied.
From that moment on, it would be far more than any other responsibility for me to give it in professional terms. At that moment, dreams do not fit into the rational dimension of our thinking. The sky is the limit is usually said, but the ground is also the place where the feet, preferably in balance.
We are inundated with new challenges, whether the progressive assimilation but little given to waiting for the new functions and the reality of an act of which nothing previously knew,
- "It is an intermediary between the Insured and the Insurer," I said in the short job interview, a response that had been decorated the day before as if all this was enough to take over the world.
Pure deception certainly but at least enough at that time to convince the new boss.
But this is also the key to a journey that continues to this day, based on some key principles: humility, seeking and sharing knowledge and fighting complacency.
The truth is that we really do not know nor can we all know. You have to be humble to recognize it. Not an overwhelmed humility of those who see in each new challenge an insurmountable barrier or in each colleague a threat.
It is about recognizing our permanent limitations as a tool to overcome them through the second principle, that of seeking and sharing knowledge.
It is easy, too easy, to keep to ourselves what we have learned or someone has taught us and to assume that what has been won for us by our own merit and with the collaboration of others cannot be replicated in a kind of endless chain of all benefit and by dragging the company itself.
- "Lift up your head and look around you. Ask yourself who is better than you," I was told one day.
Knowledge is not unique to the context of the activity that develops. It is also and perhaps even more complex to know the personalities of those around us and, deep down, with whom we can count.
For this, my "trick" was, first of all, they know how to listen. There is a great deal of learning to hear, to interpret words, in a kind of permanent psychological evaluation, not ignoring that this principle would also be valid for others in relation to myself.
That is why nothing better than not giving "tools" (arguments) to others so that our position is questioned.
- "Let others be uncomfortable," heard more recently.
Competence is not always easy to distinguish but incompetence has a life of its own that makes it fully visible even if it does not move or is overlooked.
The world of work is very complex. The relations that are established are almost always tenuous, and often an atmosphere of pretense friendship which tends to collapse like a house of cards at the first blow, revealing all the splendor of cynicism and hypocrisy which competition normally generates.
We must live with this reality by not letting ourselves be influenced by it (or by influencing as little as possible). Time will take care of separating "the wheat from the chaff".
Those who truly care for us are not those we call our friends, they are those who know how to be colleagues, who help us on a day-to-day basis, who make us progress, become better professionals. Do not mix the oil with the water because the chemistry soon imposes itself, determining that the very same is that being able to live in the same dish will never be mixed.
- And yet, I recognize it isn't always easy...
But time passes. Pass quickly on all levels. It makes us different, sometimes indifferent. Initial naivete is just the first chapter of a book that may still go halfway.
In the middle of the time stamp seems to act as an alarm clock that has stopped playing and because of this even sleep tends to linger. It is called complacency, that state of soul that seems to tell us and still more convince us that what is there is enough for us and nothing remains for us to let time pass inexorably.
- What has been achieved is enough to guarantee the future!
Nothing more wrong. The original sin in stable companies. The tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, from which many feed themselves, and thus condemn themselves.
- "Whoever thinks he has won everything and nothing else to fight will be the first to lose.
Fighting complacency, the sense of false stability is the badly guarded secret of continued business success. I fought against her always. A struggle at times unequal and with a permanent temptation to conform to a kind of inevitability.
The right way to deal with this permanent threat is to think strategically about the company for the future. The past does not guarantee the future. The present is the reflection of the moment. The future is the uncertainty that we must become reality by looking at it with realism and optimism. Especially planning it so the surprise effect is the smallest.
- "The future cannot be guessed, but you can prepare yourself.
However, the summary of the person I am and the professional I became is an immense respect for the Client. He who has reason always moves us every day. For which I celebrate whenever a new contract is celebrated or wept when lost.
There are no large or small customers. There are Customers! People who trust in us an expectation of safety that any insurance must convey will materialize if and when it is needed. The Client was the key to the past, the reason for the present and the guarantee of the future.
- "This is a People business!" I heard from the first moment.
Day-to-day has to materialize and shape this way of being in a company.
I am very grateful to those who have always supported me.
I am in debt to those who taught me.
I am in a clear conscience before anyone who has stepped back from me or even came near.
The marathon is in the middle. Another half will be missing for the goal. It tells me the experience of the races that the most difficult is to come. Problems? No!
- Challenges!
Best wishes!
Would you do the whole thing all over again,
Knowing what you know now, knowing what you knew then?
And I smiled like the old Pumpkin King that I knew,
Then turned and asked softly of me ... "Would not you?"
(The Nightmare Before Christmas)
