Seriously. A Has Been?

I've still got my fire and fight! 

I'm a get straight to the point. I've always been and still is all about empowering the younger generation and I still believe that the world today belongs to them. I don't think there's two ways about it. 

So it all started when MOH and I had our first date night out in public after a hundred days (because you know, the whole Covid-19 shenanigan). During our conversation that lovely evening, as we were discussing our lives, he labeled the both of us "has beens". 😑😑😑 Say whaaaat?? For a couple of weeks, I let it stew, silently protesting the label he bestowed upon us. And then something happened at work (more on this later so better read on!) and my alarm bells went ding-ding-ding!! 

We were at the final week of the mysterious what-happened-to-2020, reflecting our deeds, purpose and next course of action when I finally approached MOH again and spoke to him about this "has been" label he tagged us with. I said I didn't agree that we were. I brought him back to our journey from "green-headed" fresh graduates to where we are today. "Don't you remember a time where we first started? The jail time we did? The School of Hard Knocks we attended?" I recalled one particular memory during my early agency days - there was an art director, long-haired, torn jeans, a chain smoker (as was most creative people back then), but let not his exterior demeanor fool you - he was a perfectionist. We had a photo shoot that day for a coffee brand (no names mentioned) for a print ad. Uncle C (I called him Uncle to annoy him 😂😂😂), spent over half a day blowing his cigarette smoke into a cup of black coffee, which by then was totally undrinkable, to get that perfect shot for our print ad. A million shots plus another 2 miserable hours later, he was scrutinizing the negatives with his left eye shut tight (to those youngsters who has no idea what the hell are negatives - remember we never had digital cams back then!) to select the best and only the best shot to be used in said print ad. It was through many, many years of going through arduous processes such as this that our generation learnt the value of quality. We knew that quality was our reputation and was what got us earning clients' money respectfully. Careless mistakes were a no-no. (I remember once I had the negative flipped and had a giant banner printed the other way round. OMFG, when the banner went up the building's walls, my pee nearly came out from fright!!) 

Anyway, MOH said he agreed that we knew the value of quality. But the speed in which things moved these days, unfortunately nobody has half a day to spend perfecting a freaking cup of coffee for a photo shoot. "Are you saying speed supersedes quality?" MOH said quality is still important but he brought home one point -  the traditional channels of TV, Print and Radio didn't go through dramatic changes in over 50 years. The Facebook, YouTube and etc gets an update every other freaking week! "Programmatics isn't new and has been around since the dotcom era. It hasn't even matured and something else has come along! Who has the time to perfect the science or the arts?" he said. I concurred. 

But I still refused to be labeled a "has been". MOH continued on and said everything the youngsters do these days were focused on MVPs, execution, execution and more execution because of the speed of things today. I get the whole speed issue. C'mon, when it comes to working fast, many youngsters in Myanmar still has a long way to catch up with me. Ask anyone. I dare ya to say that I work slow! Anyway, I continued arguing with him. "Our  has-been foundation which was built on rock-solid knowledge and process of strategic thinking surely should count for something???" Apparently yes, thank blady God. So we continued our discussion and we did agree on the fact that working for younger leadership teams would do us better. We felt that the youngsters are less afraid of failure because they have all the time in the world to keep failing. Which means, they are more likely to take risks, to jump higher, to go further, and most importantly - to innovate harder. We can learn from them the disruptive trends of today and they can learn from our experiences and strategic foundations. This synergy can create magic. I then recalled a time where a well-known 80-year-old marketer came to do a seminar and I fell asleep 😅😅😅 (just imagine, I aced the marketing subject of his textbook!). I would rather sit for a session listening to an up-and-coming start-up dynamo kid because, what did I say earlier? The world belongs to these kids! 

Throughout our careers, I believe our generation had been fluid and agile, taking in Bruce Lee's advise : "Be like water" and we've adapted and changed and kept ourselves relevant with the trends in marketing. From 4Ps to 5Ps to the dotcom boom, to the social media explosion, to omni channel, to CX-obsessed and the list goes on. How can he say we are "has beens" ??? We had a strong solid foundation and that helped us keep building ourselves on top of it. How can we be has beens??? 

I was obviously relentless in protesting the label. The discussion continued.  

I brought in examples of when we were needed to explain with our dying breath (sense the sarcasm) to C-levels we worked with on why we shouldn't be spamming people on social media (posting as and when you like is not strategic content scheduling!!), why we need to spend time to adhere to brand guidelines, why we need to be more targeted with our digital media buys (because it's NOT THE SAME as media placements on print or TV!!! 🤦🤦🤦) and this list can go on too. And so I said, "If I am a has been, these folks must be relics!!" (and I can't stand those who keep shoving their status in my face and the fact that I need to respect that status) And he nailed home his point further - so imagine, at our age, if you kept working with them for another 5yrs - where would you be? This caught me off-guard. I was speechless. MOH looked at me winningly. "You ever thought about that?"  Truth was, no, I didn't. My gawd, food for thought indeed 🤔🤔🤔

Something happened at work a couple weeks back that set off alarm bells for me. It had to do with this whole fancy term of "agile" that seemed to be on everyone's lips these days. I'm like please, I've been teaching the 'agile vs waterfall process' in my digital class since 2017. It's just another fancy term for Project Management. Anyway, as per usual, I've had to use my dying breath to explain and explain and get my point through. But this time I literally just ... lost my breath. I died. I didn't care. I told the team I was working with - they could throw my PPT file out the window and it was fine by me. And I actually meant it. I had no feeling whatsoever! I didn't wanna lead and I told the team to just let me know what support would be needed. I could see a million things going wrong but my 'dying breath' literally emptied out so I didn't even bother pointing these out. To those who know me will know that my dying breath never runs out. If I knew something was right I would fight and bulldoze through, no matter what the consequences were and no matter who I was facing. I am emotional at work and coupled with my passion, I'm fiery! When I adopted that "tidak apa" attitude (in Malay it means "whatever") the alarm bells went off. Especially so close in timing after being labeled a "has been" 😖😖😖

You see, for me, I think a "has been" is someone who has lost the fire and the fight. I still have passion in the work that I do. I still love every minute of seeing the planning come to live. While I believe very much in empowering the young people, bringing them to the forefront in leadership positions while I take a backseat, I haven't lost my fire nor my fight! I don't want to lose that indeed. Then I'll really be a "has been" !  

MOH as per usual, kept things in perspective for me. He said, "You can choose to use all of that fire and fight to burn a small hole in the field. OR you can choose to use that same fire and fight to set the damn field ablaze." He said he has reflected upon this and admits that he was tired of burning that small hole. 

Which brought to mind something Jack Ma said in an interview before : 

"When you're 40-50 years old, you have to do all the things you are already good at. Don't try to jump into a new area, it's too late. You may be successful but the rate of dying is too high (Me : 😂😂😂 ) So, at 40-50 years old, think about - How can I focus on things that I am good at?"

"When you are 50-60 years old, work to support young people, because young people can do better than you. Rely on them, invest in them. Make sure they're good to go." 

Well Jack, my friend, thank you. Though, I kinda jumped the gun a bit and have already done the making sure the young people are good to go. But I'm pretty sure that's ok. 😁😁😁 

We're both not "has beens" c'mon. We were not people who refused to change our mindsets. We were not people with humongous egos that listening to young people or letting them give directions were beneath us. We were not people who had a chip on our shoulders and clung on to some status or titles. FINALLLLYYYYY..... MOH relented and admitted that he could've used the wrong label, though sounded more like he didn't want me to go on and on about it. I wanted to slap him! 🙄🙄🙄 

So 2021...... I'm a get in with my tanks, machine guns and grenades and I'm a set the damn field ablaze. Who's with me? 😈😈😈