The journey of life is to find Purpose

What a massive topic this is. I’m a recent addition to the Congregation unconference, but it has been so thought-provoking for me, and this year’s theme is no exception. It is a bit daunting to take on such a broad subject. Do I write about corporate purposes? The broader meaning of life? About porpoise, through a Monty-Pythonesque misunderstanding? (That would probably constitute a cross-purpose.)

To narrow the scope, I’ve been thinking about the articulated purpose of my life. And how long it has taken me to arrive at what I want to achieve with my time.

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Cloud Security is Simple

Cloud Security principles appear simple, but execution becomes incredibly complex at scale.

If you are working in Cloud Security in any area (or Cloud assurance or Governance), the title of this post probably caught your attention. You may have thought to yourself, “ah, clickbait!”. While this is a somewhat attention-grabbing statement, I don’t intend it to be clickbait. Instead, I hope to spark some discussion about why something simple on its face is simultaneously very difficult to get right.

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Care enough to be constant

Life is a peculiar mix of the constant and inconstant. Our days are filled with variability, and yet, some things seem to remain the same. Our life span is such that the pace of change of certain things seems almost immeasurable. Despite this, as constant as certain things seem, deep down, we know nothing lasts forever.

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Setting expectations

Life is full of interactions with others. We meet new colleagues at work, we build new relationships in our neighbourhoods, and we might be in a personal relationship that results in opportunities to set and meet expectations on a regular basis every day. Each of those interactions is an opportunity to strengthen or weaken the relationship with the other person. In many of the coaching and mentoring conversations that I have, it is clear that the ability to set and manage expectations successfully is a skill that many of us need to work on.

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On Listening to Experts

I recently did something I’ve never done before. I moved a thermostat from one point on my hot water tank to another. I did this based on the advice of a plumber, an “expert” in these matters. Five minutes after I had done the work, my brain started to function, and I wondered why I had done it in the first place.

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Advocating for yourself

I am working with several coachees at the moment, and one area that is a common focus, particularly for women, is self-advocacy. This topic can be problematic for people, especially those of us who prefer our work to speak for itself. When is it appropriate to make our needs, wants and accomplishments known, and what is the best way to do it?

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Habitual badness

Many of my posts concern themselves with people management and leadership, topics I think about a lot. This one is a bit more personal, and I’m not quite sure where it will end up. It has to do with the nature of habit, the difficulty of maintaining good habits, and how easily we slip into negative patterns.

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