It was 7:00am BST on a cold Sunday morning and I had left my home for the Sunday market which was approximately 4 miles away. Being a Sunday morning, public transport have a routine quite different from the usual business working days. On a normal working day, the bus leading to the Sunday market area would pass through my area six (6) times in every single hour.
However, on a Sunday, the bus schedules are limited and sometimes you’ve only got two buses taking off every 1 hour. Getting to the terminal, I realized a bus had just taken off less than five minutes prior to my arrival. What a huge miss! “Would I have to wait for another 20-30 minutes?”, I asked myself in rhetorics. Left with no other option, I stood at the terminal with almost 20 other commuters who were also on their way to the Sunday market all of whom were waiting for the next bus.
After a long-waiting period, I couldn’t help but engage myself with a task on my mobile phone. In less than 2 minutes, I became buried in my phone to the extent that if the bus were to arrive, I might not notice it. It was at that point that I was awakened from my digital reverie.
Then, I asked myself: Did you not consider the risk of missing another bus before burying yourself in your phone? How would you know if the bus approaches when you were no longer fully alert and conscious of your surrounding? Did you think the other commuters were going to alert you upon the arrival of the bus? As this thought ran through my mind, I began to search for an answer within. I knew I was not a person who would take an action (however subtle) except that there is a rationale behind it.
As I browsed through my subconscious self for a reason, I got the deal within a few milliseconds. This is the deal: I was simply surrounded by people 80% of whom were heading to the same destination that I was heading to. This bus-stop was the major take-off point leading to the market and as a result, majority of those who surrounded me (left and right) were heading to my intended destination (we shared the same mission).
Secondly, I came to the reality that my standing point at the terminal (although unplanned) was a strategic one. Strategic in the sense that as I was standing close to the point where any arriving bus would stop to pick up passengers. Thus, my subconscious self knew that there was no way a bus would arrive except that I would be alerted through hustle and bustle of the other commuters as they hasten toward the bus.
If you have read this far, you might be asking how relevant is this to career and personal live endeavours. The more I ponder over this experience, the more I realized how deeply connected it is to our careers. For a person to be successful in their career, it is very important that they surround themselves with people whose goal and directions align with theirs. This allows you to be strategically positioned and alert to opportunities that would help you achieve your dream.
You cannot aim to become the top 10% within your profession while your closest associates are those colleagues who hate their jobs or those who are complacent with their current achievements with no aim to achieve anything further. When you are seeking an opportunity, you may need to strategically position yourself and surround yourselves with some personalities who also have that vision and direction on their radar.
This reflection further reminds me of the common saying that your network determines your net worth. Talking about being in the pool with the right people, take a quick look at all the top roles within the best multinational corporations that you know of. How many times have you seen them repeatedly advertised the role of the CFO, COO and other top roles within the organisations? You hardly see them do this.
The reality is that there is a network of people sharing similar vision. They know the best guys across various industries. Once a role becomes available, they have a way of reaching out to one another and asking around to know who might be looking to make a move. That is a distinct network which you may not know about.
The point of this article is that while you strive to become a better person and succeed, it is very important to pay attention to those you’ve surrounded yourself with. Are they those whose presence would bring you closer to your opportunities or are they those who are just there to fill the vacuum?