It’s one of those questions we ask without really thinking about it.
“What do you do?”
Most people probably have a relatively straightforward answer. They have a title, a company, a profession, a particular expertise.
I’ve never been very good at answering it.
Not because I don’t know what I do, but because I do lots of things, often at the same time, with very different people, across completely different worlds. And I’ve never particularly understood why we’re so keen to put ourselves, or each other, into one box.
I’m the founder of The NY Collective. I’m Innovation Director at Stark Global Events. I work alongside Group Partners, who bring extraordinary rigour to strategy and help make sense of complex problems. I work with an incredible black book of people and businesses who can make things happen. I’m Campaign Convenor for the Lady Mayor Of The City Of London, at Mansion House, working on Unsquaring the Square Mile. I’m involved with Brilliant City and TeamUK. I have other things, too, and by the time you read this, there will probably be something else.
They look like lots of different hats, and they are.
But I’ve increasingly realised they all exist for the same reason.
I’m a connector.
Not in the slightly awful networking sense of collecting people and handing out business cards. I mean that my brain seems to be permanently absorbing information and looking for connections between it.
I meet people. I listen. I read. I go to weird events. Events where there is diverse thinking, not a people speaking to people in their own bubble or industry-only focus. I talk to businesses. I spend time with entrepreneurs, technologists, creatives, strategists, brands, corporates, and people doing things I know absolutely nothing about yet. I’m curious, and I've always been interested in what is happening beyond whatever room I happen to be sitting in.
All of that goes in.
And then, usually when I’m not particularly looking for it, something connects.
A person I met two years ago suddenly makes complete sense for a problem someone has just described. Something happening in one industry could transform something in another. A piece of technology becomes interesting when you put it next to a completely different capability. A conversation over coffee becomes the beginning of a business, an experience, an event, a partnership or an idea nobody walked into the room expecting.
That, I think, is what I actually do.
I absorb what’s happening around me, see what could be connected, bring the right people and capabilities together, and then, importantly, help make something happen.
Because I’m not terribly interested in connecting for connecting’s sake.
The entrepreneur in me wants to know: what can we do with this?
That’s probably why I enjoy working across so many different things. I can be with Group Partners working through the strategic architecture of a complicated challenge, then with Stark thinking about how an idea becomes an extraordinary real-world experience, then at Mansion House working with the Lady Mayor and a completely different collection of people around Unsquaring the Square Mile, then talking to somebody from my black book who has exactly the capability one of those conversations needs. Or as Chair for Creative Conscience to help with their needs or requirements.
To somebody looking from the outside, it might appear completely random.
To me, it isn't random at all.
There is a line running through all of it: absorb, see, activate, create.
Absorb enough of the world to understand what is changing. See the possibilities between people, ideas, businesses, technologies and resources that don't necessarily see each other. Activate the relationships and trust needed to bring them together. Then create something of value from the connection.
I suppose that's also why “What do you do?” has always made me slightly uncomfortable.
The question assumes that there is one answer.
I don't want there to be one.
One of the privileges of building The NY Collective has been giving myself permission not to choose a single lane. I can work with an organisation one day, an entrepreneur the next, a city initiative the day after that, and then bring something from all three worlds into a fourth conversation that none of us knew was going to happen.
I wear lots of hats because I can.
More importantly, I wear lots of hats because the interesting stuff so often happens between the hats.
Perhaps the better question isn't “What do you do?”
It’s “What are you working on?”
Ask me that and we could be talking for a while.
