This is the year when I get to do what I want to do – or at least most of the time.
At the advanced age of 62, I experienced the benefits of formal coaching for the first time, and saw its benefits. I already knew that I had made the best moves in my life after getting really good advice or mentoring, but until now it had been informal – typically consultants that I worked with telling me (more or less), “you don’t want to do this, you want to do that.”
They were usually right. In the 1980s, it led me into consultancy and into the marketing of IT, and then the use of IT in marketing (AKA database marketing), and I never looked back. You might have thought that at the age of 62, all anyone would want to do would be to retire. My friends already knew me as being full of unfulfilled retirement intentions.
However, Luisa Weinzierl, my coach, helped me realise that I’d been coasting for the last couple of years and that there was life in the old dog yet. So I’m enjoying a period of new research, new teaching – economics at the Open University, brand communication at Exeter University – the latter fitting with spending most of my time in my supposed retirement cottage in West Dorset and, of course, a little consulting.
I’ve now got several research projects on the go, including ones on CRM in the age of social media and the effect of financial regulation on distribution channels and innovation. The one that is the subject of this blog is what it’s like to be in marketing, to be managed and to manage, to deal with non-marketing cultures, and to develop oneself – or not.
The research, which Luisa and I have developed together, will allow us to differentiate between business to business and other marketers. Please do complete the questionnaire, which together with full details of the research are onhttp://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MDJKQH5. Please do log on and complete the questionnaire. In return, you’ll get a free copy of the report and also (if you want) free career advice.
