One Year On – From Pregnant CEO to Ready to Roll

It's been one year since I put my hand up at work and said “can I please have a go at running the company?" At five months pregnant it was the most logical thing for me to do. But I couldn’t do enough to save the company; and four months later it closed. People lost their livelihoods, and others were burned.

Now I finally feel like I've summoned the inner strength to move forward and take back my career and my passions. 

Losing the company you have worked for for eight years is devastating. I can only imagine the disappointment of losing a company you have spent fifteen years of your life building and shaping. But c’est la vis.

As I've watched companies fall this past year, (and have an inordinate number fallen or is it just because I've been more aware?), I've thought about the employees that saw their downfall coming. Like an ocean liner about to hit an iceberg, it's there, you're hopeful, we can miss, we can't miss, and then, it's a hit, oh *expletive*...

No one thinks they will hit the iceberg. But it's amazing how damn easy they are to hit, their size is deceptive and you only see the pointy bit at the top clearly.

In the morning of the day I put my hand up to take the company over I had been wearing a tin foil hat; it should have been a sign. But isn't there also something endearing about tin foil hat people? That they believe in something magical and the role of simple solutions to complex problems?

If you were sitting next to me the day I put my hand up the tin foil hat probably wouldn't even have been the thing that stuck in your mind. Burned in your mind would have been the location (why the *expletive* do you live in this town?), or the two geese and three chickens sitting at my office door trying to get in (because geese are scary yo!), or the fact that I was pregnant. So when I turn to you and say "look, this is awkward but can you go inside because I'm about to Skype my boss who is over the other side of the country and tell her I think I need to be CEO". You would look at me like I was *expletive* crazy. And then you'd question your own sanity because there was also a part of you that I had convinced that made you think it was also a highly logical strategy.

How do you tell your boss of eight years that you believe the most logical solution for the survival of the company is for her to step aside and make you CEO, immediately? You do it nicely. And with integrity.

I'll save all my awesome insight and wisdom and business lessons for when you want to pay me to come and speak at your breakfast luncheon thing. But that conversation was the hardest conversation I have ever had in my life. 

When you can see the iceberg looming and you feel like you've tried so many strategies yet the damn thing still won't turn, and then some pregnant chick in a tin foil hat (and I like to think a spark in her eyes (? short circuit)) living in country South Australia says, I think I have a plan so crazy it might just work. What would you do? The choice becomes very clear.

So three weeks later when we announced to the team that I was CEO there was a bit of shock. Little bit.

Now it’s one year on, and at 35 I need to try and find the next path in my career. I am so ready, I am so bored (no offence baby). I am also so driven and focused on what we could do to turn this ship we are all on around.  

I'm a person that believes in the power of people and collaboration and action to save the world. Surprisingly it's less lucrative than you may think and my pool of employers seems limited.

I realised in high school that one person couldn't save the world; I decided you needed eight people. I realised early the benefit of collaboration and working to their strengths early. To me having eight highly proficient, passionate experts, connected, collaborating and mobilizing their networks could achieve exponentially more than one person alone. This premise still stands, and we can do this with web technology. I can show you how. 

For me, having a baby was the best thing that could happen for my career (I hope). I'm not saying that getting pregnant is the best strategy to define the career path you want; but I’m going to believe it will be for me. See I work hard, damn hard. But when you are someone that works hard you only get pockets of thinking and down time. Having a baby made me stop, and prioritise, and recollaborate. Don’t get me wrong, it is incredibly mentally draining, and it’s the hardest time you will ever have. But in between the mental drain, and the emotional stress, and the sleep deprivations I had moments of lucidness, and contemplation, and strategizing and it’s been enough to reshape my thinking and reconnect with my passions and what I can bring to the table.

So this article is a story, but it’s also a job ad of sorts. I need to find my next opportunity (opportunities?), and I’m very open to what that might look like.

So what could I bring to your organisation? Well actually a whole bunch of stuff. I have amazing qualities and experiences that are useful for most organisations. My CV is on my LinkedIn profile. 

But I do also have these crazy ideas, and if you are a fellow tin foil hat believer like myself, that believes we could change the world, then please connect with me. I'm building a virtual mini army of excellence and if I can tweet you when the time is neigh that would make things heaps easier. 

Thanks for reading this. It's probably left you a bit bewildered; my enthusiasm has that effect on people. I'm honestly not like that all the time.

If you ask me questions about tech, work or community I will absolutely respond. If you know an organisation that might be ready for someone like me please share this with them.

Of course I do have some ideas already on the go and at various stages:

These are ready to be put into action at any time.

I believe in learning by doing and the best strategy is giving people the opportunity for participation- the web lends itself to projects like this perfectly. Think about how open source software is built and the many jobs and companies that have flowed on from there. That movement created real, sustainable change. We can transfer that approach to communities. Trust me!

A lot of my projects below are partially developed for a reason – they need collaboration and people learning and using technology; and they are designed open the doors and windows required to make that happen.

I have projects ready on:
 

• Rural community building - this one has a grant application in, summary, community survey and data, and a local community organisation partner. This is an asset based community project aimed at connecting young people to the community by having them engage with local organisations, create content and develop and teach web skills. This is designed to be replicated at a low cost in other communities and each community is connected and networked to each other to learn and share.
  
   
• Rural small business collaboration- this one has a fancy five page document outlining the idea and the design; it has local chamber support and input from a number of organisations and potential funders. This is a bit more complex in that it is about connecting high level rural small business strategies and support networks. It can have a localised regional approach, but I think its real potential is connection regional areas across Australia (or States and/or regions) together and having a level of collaboration at a range of levels.
   
• School programs using digital. I've got quite a bit of experience with offline school programs so it's a particular passion. One I have people working on is around youth development, using web and pop culture to get young people create and share content; but also critically analyse decisions that people make that will affect their lives. Plus teaching young people how to use so many web tools - technology is the future y'all.

• Online harassment of women – because, stop it.

• WCAG accessibility for beginners – equality of access and inclusion to the web is an fundamental we must all understand.

• Workplace flexibility – I have a site and strategy I’m developing to encourage workplaces to dip their toe in the water by allowing employees to work from home one day per week. It could be full of tips, resources, reviews and info on how to maintain collaboration and connectivity for disparate teams – it is surprisingly easy. The project is creatively titled “One Day From Home”

Other projects that excite me and that I’m thinking about currently:

Co-ops – I’ve just found a self-confessed co-op nerd – who should prove useful. The potential for online co-ops and using online strategies to support and replicate offline co-ops is blindingly obvious to me.

Anything Aboriginal – I just love Aboriginal culture. My one and only career regret is that I couldn’t take an opportunity to work with amazing people on a project in Perth. They were like family to me, but I was just too young, too busy and too ill equip to mobilise a team to help. I will be back. Technology is such a logical tool to empower Indigenous communities and individuals with, if you don’t agree you don’t understand the potential and you need someone like me to help you open that potential.

Social inclusion, young people, people from diverse backgrounds – all the people really (see above). If we lock young people out of using, understanding and being able to discern good technology from bad now, we will be setting them up for a lifetime of missed potential and opportunity. Mark my words.

And the environment. Gads if there is one sector that needs a project that actionates people it has to be one about the environment right? I have a degree in sustainable development and I still couldn't come up with a relevant, up to date list of the top ten actions people could do right now that would make a difference to global warming.

And your ideas. I think you see where I'm going here re passion and tech is the way to connect but it's also a super important skill we need to be practically exposing young people (and all the people) right now so they can save the world. There are so many ideas, projects with proven success, programs that are working that should be replicated and rolled out to any group or community that can use them. Do you know how timely that approach is??

If you are still with me now wow! And thank you, that is so nice of you. We should connect just on the basis that there must be some similar spark that we share. You can hit me up on Twitter or email me at hi@lyndseyjackson.com.au. If you want to have cyber coffee or cyber lunch or just say hi – do it!

Thanks again