One of the consultants at McKinsey I worked with, is today leading McKinsey’s digital initiatives. You might say — naturally, an engineer can’t help being an engineer!
But this person was NOT an engineer. He was a hardcore Pharma and Lifesciences specialist. When I worked with him (15 years ago), he had nothing to do with technology – except that, like us, he would use a laptop and email 🙂
Yet, over the years, he would have mastered the subject enough to guide the world’s biggest corporations in adopting digital technology. And all these corporations would have large tech teams of their own!
Even if you are skeptical about the role of consulting firms in technology, it is incredible that one can make such a 180-degree switch so late in their career.
This guy was a wonderful human being and a very successful consultant. He could have kept doing what he was doing. But he must have seen an opportunity to do something more remarkable.
Life is changing faster than ever and it will keep throwing never-ending opportunities at us. But we have to get up and grab it.
You can’t just learn one thing and milk it all your life — if you want to thrive, you will have to keep reinventing yourself.
Reinvent or stagnate — that might be the only real choice before us.
– Rajan