Do you like the sound you are making? Are you striking the right note?
As part of Women’s Entrepreneurship Day we asked Corinne Gee-Turner, business development lead at start-up company SPARKL, to tell us a bit more about herself and her career within the IT industry:
Striking the right note? That’s a difficult one!
Rather like trying to compose a piece of music; should you focus on the melody or the harmony first? Or playing a game of golf; should you work on your short game or your long game? Can you work on both at the same time? Will your short game suffer if you place too much attention on your long game? How is it possible to make it all work together to achieve the result you desire?
A challenging conundrum indeed and the answer I believe lies in having a clear idea and acceptance of who you are; not just playing the same familiar ‘chords’ you see others playing because you haven’t done the hard work required to truly understand your own parameters and myriad opportunities.
Corrine working on her short game
In today’s amazingly connected world there has never been more opportunity to ‘compose your own tune’. Ask yourself if ‘you like the sound you are making’? Is there something that doesn’t quite ‘strike the right note’? And what can you do to change that? It may be that ambitions need re-examining to identify what it is that really satisfies. Would being able to buy another gadget or ‘toy’, another handbag or shoes, fill that ‘need’ space or would it be more satisfying to just spend time with real people? Technology allows us the freedom to write our own tune but we should strive to remain in control and determine our pace and rhythm.
The key to striking my own ‘right’ notes has come from working in an industry that makes very good and effective use of the latest technology in combination with a well-established network of professional relationships. SPARKL is an IT start-up sponsored by Cisco and working out of the IDEALondon innovation centre in the heart of Tech City.
SPARKL’s experience of the support and technical input into our development at IDEAL has been a very positive one. We make extensive use of the Cisco WebEx tool to work in an highly connected and yet totally independent fashion. Being based out of town and using the WebEx VoIP with screen share and remote control is very useful and so convenient; it’s also much cheaper than a train ticket for me to go to all the meetings!
Increasingly more people will use tools like Cisco’s WebEx with the introduction of the Government’s new flexible working initiative. And if you want to attract the best talent organisations will have to ‘strike the right note’ with the level of IT tools available; the need for collaboration anytime, anywhere at a time that suits is a given amongst younger folk today.
And for my part, I have greatly enjoyed adjusting the ‘pitch’ and ‘tone’ of my IT skills to create a new ‘melody’ and work on the greater ‘harmony’ of life!
And yes, that does include time on the golf course… 🙂
