Staying open, as advised

Years ago, a leader I admired told me something deceptively simple: careers aren’t managed by organisations, they’re managed by the people inside them. The most important thing you can do is stay open.

Not restless. Not opportunistic. Just open.

That advice stuck because it turns out to be truer than most tidy career narratives allow. Roles end. Organisations shift. Entire industries redraw themselves while you’re still in meetings. The most interesting chapters rarely arrive on schedule and almost never arrive fully formed. They tend to begin with a conversation, often an unplanned one.

Staying open isn’t a lack of commitment. It’s professional hygiene.

Most careers don’t unfold in straight lines. They zig, they stall, they surprise you. Mine certainly has. Agencies, consulting, global corporates. Executive communications, brand storytelling, live environments where ideas are tested in front of real people rather than slides. That mix wasn’t engineered, but it has proved useful. It’s given me a broad, practical command of communications, design and brand experience that travels well across sectors and situations.

That breadth comes with responsibility. No one else keeps you relevant. Titles expire quickly and reputation only carries you so far. If you want to stay useful, you have to keep learning, noticing where the work is moving and updating your own thinking accordingly. Staying open also means staying current.

That’s where technology comes in. Not as novelty or theatre, but as part of the job. GenAI now sits naturally in how I work, not because it’s fashionable, but because ignoring it would be irresponsible. Used well, it sharpens thinking, removes friction and frees people to focus on judgement and craft. Used badly, it produces volume without value. Taste still matters. Calm still matters. Knowing when to stop still matters.

I’m drawn to work where clarity has consequences and where design, narrative and experience meet the real world. Trade shows, exhibitions and brand experiences still fascinate me precisely because they’re honest. You can’t fake them. People either feel something or they don’t. I tend to move quickly, but I’m not interested in noise. I like ideas that are well judged, properly made and capable of standing up when the doors open and people walk in.

Being open doesn’t mean broadcasting availability. It means being willing to talk, to listen, to explore whether something feels ambitious, meaningful or simply interesting. Sometimes those conversations lead nowhere. Sometimes they lead to collaboration. Occasionally, they lead to something more substantial. All of it is useful.

I first recognised that feeling long before I had language for it. At eighteen, at the end of a gap year and with university beckoning, I remember standing on a shoreline in the south of France, listening to David Coverdale sing Sailing Ships - “Do you remember standing on the shore, your head in the clouds and your pockets full of dreams.” The lyric caught me off guard because it named exactly what I was feeling. Not ready to move, but certain that something existed beyond the horizon. Even now, hearing that song takes me straight back to that moment. The same sense of possibility returns, quieter and more measured perhaps, but still present.

Careers aren’t for life anymore, if they ever were. The constants are the craft, the judgement and the way you work with people. This is simply me staying open, as advised.