100TWC - Day 10: Opportunities

Opportunity is a master of disguise. Sometimes it is so good that you don't see it at all. At other times you might see it, but believe it to be a threat, to be avoided at all costs. Often its disguise is polarised so that from the present it doesn't look anything like an opportunity but once you've sailed past it and are looking at it from the future (so that the opportunity is in the past) you can see that it really was an opportunity after all.

Many years ago my father was offered a dream job in another city. I was around 9 at the time and I remember my parents going for a long walk to discuss whether or not he should take it. Because I had no alternative child care they took me along with them. I didn't understand much of the conversation and in any case a lot of it was spoken in hushed voices, but I heard enough to know that if the decision went in favour of this new job it would involve moving. At that age, it was an uncomfortable prospect for me. I've never really been one to embrace change wholeheartedly. My instinct is more usually to avoid it in case it turns out badly rather than welcome it on the chance that it will be great. I'm like that now, with all my adult armour and skills. At age 9 I was just a bundle of no.

As the conversation came to a conclusion I remember them asking my opinion. It's only really come home to me now, at this point of writing about it and with both of them now dead, what a wonderful gesture that was. To give a 9-year-old a vote on such a momentous family decision. I do hope my opinion wasn't the only thing that swayed them because I voted no, and the decision in the end was no, so my father continued in his unsatisfying job working for a boss who rarely showed his appreciation for the diamond he had working for him.

For years my recollection of this incident was that the city in question was Birmingham. However in conversation with my Mum many years ago it turned out I had misremembered. The opportunity was to move to Manchester. Thinking about that now still gives me a small tingle. How I - effectively - turned down the chance to move to Manchester at age 9, but that fate had very definitely inked Manchester into my future and was determined to get me here one way or another. I didn't get the grades I needed for my first choice of University course, but the college who had the best offer of an alternative place was in... Manchester. So I moved here anyway when I was 18, and moved back again permanently when I was 44. What would have been different had I come when I first had the chance? Who knows. That's the thing with opportunity: it's often a one-time, one-way offer.

In 1984 or 85, when I was enjoying one of the most successful points of my career - responsible for 19 people all engaged in the world-wide 3rd line support of what was widely regarded as one of the best (if not the best) operating systems in the world - I was offered a job working as a full-time contracted employee for a major government department, doing a similar role but with a much larger team, and on "the other side of the fence" - working for a customer. The job would have entailed moving to Lytham St Annes (or commuting from Staffordshire - not THAT much of a stretch). Once again my aversion to change kicked in. I'd just bought a house that I was very pleased with, felt on top of my game in my job - I knew everyone; how to get the job done quickly and efficiently; I was good at it and yet it still challenged me daily - so as far as I could see the only incentive to move was the offer of more money.

That wasn't enough to persuade me. I turned them down.

A colleague of mine, who ran the support team for a different part of the OS, took up the offer in my stead. Months later it was reported that she had been spotted as a rising star and had quickly been promoted into a much more senior role with an even more advanced salary. Moreover she was working 14 hour days, 6 days a week, and even at that senior level the job still paid overtime. We huddled round our calculators and worked out that she must have been pulling in around a quarter of a million pounds a year - back in 1985!!

I think it would be true to say she made the most of her opportunity. I think it may also be true to say she made the most of MY opportunity. Would I have been able to follow it up to the same degree? Who knows. We had similar skills, but if I'm honest where we differed was in outlook. I've never been driven by money (even though I've been fortunate to only rarely be "short" of it), but I don't think I'd have been prepared to put in those kind of hours no matter what the remuneration.

So in conclusion - opportunities come and go. Sometimes - as in the example of moving to Manchester - they will revisit you at a later date, wearing a different disguise. But in the same way that opportunities can appear to be threats, their dark siblings threats are also able to dress themselves up as opportunities. Knowing how to tell them apart is a clever trick that no-one can pull off 100% of the time. But while you're trying desperately to avoid jumping from the frying pan into the fire, it's worth bearing in mind that what looks like a fire may in fact be the magic alchemist's forge that can transform you from base metal into gold.