Ajani O
4 min readOct 10, 2021

Quick 8a(was a draft)-> Seeking out Best on Best

I just wrote a few tweets on how my manager has been motivating for me in a new role. Their support and ability to appreciate our collective ability to foster growth focused opportunities has really enhanced my work.

Well my feeling of my work. I’m still my own toughest critic and I don’t think I’m doing everything at “100%” yet…. But those feelings are noise. I have to appreciate that in many ways I am learning and…. In many ways the gains I’ve developed haven’t been observable by a product.

That lack of tangible production isn’t a failure. I’ve gained critical soft skills… well actually awareness of critical soft skills that I must improve. Those lessons and the level of improvement over such a short time are invaluable to my life and the people that are going to be in my life.

I’ve written (or story boarded… can’t remember if I posted it)… often about being too “hyper self aware”… which is a altruistic crux… how can I be hyper self aware while lacking the ability to scale that knowledge to the “world" outside of my head (aka my “experiences”)?

I’ve been a bit too tired to actually review my “current state" to set up goals and objectives (a “motivated plan") accomplish my desired “future state".

I’ve recognized that I need to slow myself down to enable this type of thought development because being too self aware…. Isn’t a positive if you’re aware people are feeling needlessly awkward by a statement… it’s still your responsibility for that awkwardness to take care of the other participants in the conversations by not making them feel confused.

I’ve written about covid being an overall positive experience for me and…. The biggest positive for me has been my ability to enhance my relationships with my Sister and Mother. I’ve also grown in more understanding for my Father beyond seeing his incredible fighting spirit and ability to focus on his insane goals while experiencing hardship. To contrast these separate appreciations what I’d have to say is…. My Dad’s become more “human" in many ways than being “big strong Dad"…. That’s a huge gain for me. In contrast, my Mom (and Brother when I was younger) has always been my favourite human being on Earth!

Nowadays with my Sister being such an incredible human being in my eyes… She’s definitely become another of those “favourite human beings on Earth” (maybe more on this later but I’m so thankful that “this kid" is in my life haha).

Anyway to get this quick piece back on track…. I think over the last 3 years by working with my performance team…. I’ve been able to foster such incredible relationships that have become beacons that act as representations of my own desires/goals/life focuses. These relationships enable me to see myself within everything I’m doing. That’s been the “super power" that likely has enabled me to be so motivated by my new Manager.

This is what I’m gonna be calling “seeking out Best on Best" as into forward. It’s heavily related to my sports background and I’ve geared so many aspects of my life from my sporting experiences (IE: coaching and being coachable).

I’m pretty excited to have a “label" for this (which is a great ironic contrast to what I used to be writing about at the start of this blogging adventure :-)!!). I’m hopeful this enables me to continually scale my life goals to developing and fostering more motivating relationships…. And to enhance the existing ones that mean so much to me!

I mentioned to my Sister the other day “the best job you will ever have is the one you have"…. Please note, I have purposefully excluded “you do have"…. The reason being is that it is always up to you to make the most out of whatever opportunities you have been able to foster in your life and we should never lose sight on that. We all have the ability to scale and maximize just a little bit more from whatever situation we’re in to eventually arrive to the “ultimate goal" we’d initially scaled to in the first place. We just may not be able to be credited as much as we’d like or… to be as vulnerable as we’d like in certain moments.

Those are just experiences in the “memory bank" to enhance the next result/opportunity/time.

Hopefully I’ll be able to enhance this “best on best" appreciation in future pieces. Until then…. Enjoy everything you can and focus on seeing yourself in everything you’re doing! That’s been my “cheat code" to know when I am in a best on best environment… and that appears to be what makes me thrive.

It’s going to be the focus of my career mapping going forward… where, for example, I listened to a podcast on this walk about A-A, B-B and B-C companies and their potential vertical integration opportunities (IE: scaling between the different categories). There was a mention of being with companies that are 10–60 people and maybe that’s what would give me my personal “best on best" environment as I grow further in my life goals.

Who knows! I’m definitely excited to find out though. I could very well stay seated where I’m at since I’ve had many enjoyable experiences working in public service but it can be quite tiring when you get to certain levels of decision making because of how risky “doing something new" can appear to be at face value. Those moments are more difficult for me than I’d realised before… because I like to collect observations and “sample data"…. Basically I’ll over analyze but… I must make a decision on that analysis to test the waters and then I will adjust/scale the results after. That’s sometimes dangerous depending on the larger desires of the team/organization when there’s more at stake than your personal feelings and “trial and error” decisions. These areas are where my Manager’s support has been invaluable and I don’t think I’ll ever forget these experiences… they will likely form a key role in my abilities to identify my “best on best" desires as I go forward!

Ajani O
Ajani O

Written by Ajani O

U of T Grad... Project Management Career Seeking Extraordinary Human Being...

No responses yet