Ambidexterity for growth
The problem that we’re trying to solve is how do we both grow through our professional and personal life through this digital transformation?
What makes this problem interesting; is finding different ways to analyze and research ways to solve it. To do this, we found a strategy that firms apply for innovation called, ambidexterity.
It’s a constant orchestration and balance of what we can exploit: based on who are, and explore: what we want to know (innovate). This allows us to both explore and continue to generate an income on what we’ve already built.
The goal is to achieve ambidexterity; which is the ability for firms, in this case for us to balance both exploitation and exploration. Less than 11% of firms achieve this.
Here is what I learned so far in our exploration space:
Exploration Questions:
What are the types of remote jobs available today for design?
Remote Women - Great community with lots of remote jobs and a very supportive Slack channel
Ladies Get Paid - Also has a remote channel to search for remote jobs
Who are the leaders in disrupting the traditional way of conducting business and learning about design?
Chris Do - The Futur - Business and Design Education, Revolutionized. Chris offers tons of free tutorials that support designers into implementing strategy and solutions to their clients on YouTube.
Learn more about digital transformation and how does it affects us and what we want to know in this journey?
Took classes on Coursera - I did this because I wanted to layer on knowledge to my actual experience, which are two different things. It’s helping so far as I feel have through it picked up new topics to explore further.
What are the local creative communities in Kelowna?
OKColab - Coworking space in Downtown Kelowna
How does it feel to be close with family and spending our time together?
So far, I noticed myself feeling much happier and supported. I never knew this is really whatI needed. I’m so grateful.
What does retirement look like for us? What do we need and when do we want to retire?
For this we contacted someone from the community who helped us create several different routes towards our retirement. If you want the name of this person, please contact me directly. We learned how much we needed to save everyday and decided on when we wanted to retire. This helped us tremendously in deciding the type of work that we needed and where we want to live.
What really matters to us?
For this we are both getting support for life coaching and therapy with Megan Lipsett at Copia Health. Megan supports both of us in our mental, spiritual and professional growth by encouraging us to continue to challenge ourselves and to go through the challenge.
What is it like to be self-employed again?
Working with clients directly is something that I really enjoy and have enjoyed in the past when I was freelancing. I think that having the autonomy to apply process and try new methods with clients is something that makes me feel excited. I also feel really free when I get to just decided to take on new clients and always glad to be part of the process to help them with their business needs.
So, the orchestration continues. I hope this was helpful and talk again soon!
- Wynne