Redundancy to Abundancy27 min read

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Redundant, rooted from the Latin word, Redundare, meaning ‘surging up’. The adjective means no longer needed or useful; superfluous. 

That last word, Superfluous, is from the Latin words of super – ‘over’ + fluere – ‘flow’. The word inhibits job related inadequacy, and ironically points to the excess of talent, potential and resilience. (As with most words which are b**tardised by English, this one does more superfluous disservice than the purpose it is meant to serve)

When we start reading on this ‘well-guarded’ and ‘less-talked’ about open secret of hard times – trimming the employee hedge for shareholder value. The literature, books and blog posts are usually optimistic timeline stories of how renown influential business leaders such as Steve Jobs (Apple), Jack Bogel (Vanguard), Jack Ma (Ali Baba), Elon Musk (Tesla/Space ‘X’) – they were all at some stage fired, ridiculed and operated from their garage to discover greatness. Like most people, I do get a lot of hope from paperboy to receptionist; dishwasher/toilet cleaner and door-to-door salesman to private yacht holding CEO life-changing stories. I wholeheartedly admire and am moved by the hard work, determination, and the courage to seize opportunities.

Having said that, I personally have always struggled with balancing learning from history, understanding context (against outcome bias or positive story pitch) and how much it applies to our lives today. So, the intention of this piece is to outline ‘a How-to Manual or Guide’ if you’ve found yourself in this unavoidable consequence of modern work, self-worth, purpose-and-life conundrum. If you do not retain anything from this piece, just remember, roles and titles are made redundant, not people.

Like most real life challenges, I remember receiving an MS Team IM from the country head of the firm I was working at for the past 8 months or so. John, an Australian-raised Brit who has worked for a decade or so in the motherland (UK) to return for establishing & leading new operations in this constitutional monarchy. John has that grey bread which shows maturity, minus ageing, and indicates a more aristocratic feel. Which suits him, being a relatively young leader who is perpetually energetic, on-point with knowing people, can party with 20 years old & step into political lobbyist group conversation with the 80-year-old in the same minute.

The note, short, carefully considered and open ended: Are you free for a quick chat around something urgent? 

The message is unsettling, especially when the sales pipeline is limited and converting that into paid work has been challenging due to a slowing down local economy. Consulting is a brutal market, rife with cowboys, wannabe salesman, hyper technical specialists, rubber stampers, insecure overachievers, true innovators – all of them are push into sausage factories (Insert name of favourite solution shop – audit, advisory, legal) to sell knowledge that they do not possess or know they need and charge high fees for it i.e. services-based capitalism. 

I was on my lunch break and before I had the chance to reply with ‘Sure’. I received a Teams call from him; I left the camera off given the semi unannounced nature of the call.

The conversation started with a disclosure that he has had a very difficult conversation with the regional head. As a result of that conversation, ‘Unfortunately, we (the firm) will have to part ways with you in an amicable way.’ 

He said he is genuinely sorry and wanted it to be different as I have just joined the firm & created a new product. The product which hasn’t been tested with clients yet for value test – well I did mention the slowing down market. 

Now, this is where most people will react depending on their life-stage/self-worth fusion with career and responsibilities. Something like, I am speechless (What The Actual F**k), shook, this my feeling of importance, burst in tears due to the worst fear coming alive – in line with how they choose to express their emotions. 

For me, someone who is somewhat privileged, single, has no family support or one to support and has spent existence to chase philosophy, personal growth & wisdom etc etc. My reaction was more non-reactive and numb than someone who is a single mother with three kids or Dad who has 2 private school fees this month.

I composed myself and said, ‘It is alright, John. Unchosen suffering finds us sooner or later in life & everything suffers from the law of impermanence’. I uttered my rational philosophical approach of we do not control what happens to us, we only control our narrative and reactions. He paused and appeared astounded, surprised at my reaction. 

He said, ‘I have told you before that you are wise beyond your years and exceptionally professional in your dealings.’ His constant reiteration of professionalism & integrity tells me that he’s had experiences where people started breaking shit when such news is given to them.

I want to believe he was genuinely saddened and had enjoyed his leadership style and working with him. I would judge his skills to be a worthy leader if I was able to know his real intention behind the mask perfected across decades of consulting around the world.

He added “I wanted to be early on to inform you, so you can start working on alternative plans and the redundancy will keep you afloat for a few months given the bonus for the year has been clubbed into it”.

I requested that I need some time to process this as I could sense unsettling emotions within myself, the ones which are ingrained in our human nature but are the most difficult to communicate i.e., loss of purpose, self-worth and self-confidence due to this unelected suffering. A part of me was glad for feeling them, as it confirms that I am a functional human rather than a lobotomised alien who is around a hyper emotional and dopamine driven society.

As soon as I ended the online call. I rushed to my journal and drew a line with ‘Controllable’ and ‘Uncontrollable’ on either side – my personal conditioning based default response to complicated events. Some context, I have place holders in my home office for self-regulation, sign posts to cure procrastination and keep focus on values – One of them says – “Conquering fear equals Defining fear”.

So, I started frantically writing things in the Uncontrollable section, such as the weather, the firm’s acquisition of another firm, the firm’s change in strategy, my ability to foresee this event and to the extent if this can happen again or so in another firm. Then in the ‘Controllable’ section, I wrote work ethic, professionalism, my effort, soliciting feedback on actual competence gap and financial survivability.

My Actual Controllable/Uncontrollable List. The first thing I did after being told that I am being made redundant.

I messaged my support network of closest friends that I have found myself in this involuntary suffering and I am still processing my emotions, working the necessary details and I will value their support.

We humans, we build our lives like a bookshelf in a library, organised for sections, built with precious time and energy. Once in a while, a tornado comes in and breaks through that meticulously crafted shelf. All the books go off flying here and there. We are so shocked, lost, numbed that we don’t know what to do or say…so we sit down…just to function, feel, absorb the reality and to accept our part in it. That acceptance journey defaults to the origins of the tornado, size, direction..especially if you are a complex or overthinker like me..may be that’s our way of expressing existential guilt we all carry within ourselves.

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Image by Carl Harvie - Life's Bookshelf & Tornados | www.carledwinharvie.com

The consulting industry is generally very cut-throat, demanding and challenging relative to other industries. You have to be the finder, minder and grinder for constant delivery to innovate the solutions which your client’s don’t know about or understand for that matter but they value it because you rubber stamp it with Big 4 logo, professional experience wrapping & legal contestability.  However, the blood on the streets is a different sight during business downturns, recessionary pressures and worsening economic conditions.

Since February 2023, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC have let go of more than 9,000 employees through various rounds of layoffs across the UK, US, Australia and Canada. Locally, ASIC reported that 967 companies filed for insolvency (defaulted) in Feb 2024, recording a 40% jump over last year. Not to mention, this is the highest number since 2015. In my investment industry, I have never seen billions of dollars being returned to investors and investment shops merging or closing because of fee pressure and profitability hampering business viability.

It is a reflection of the slowing down of economies, businesses going through downturn, cost of living pressure (mortgage payments, Avo toast lifestyle and pursuit of happiness tax) and interest rate rises that my generation hasn’t experienced in their lifetime (Since May 2022, interest rate going up 13 times in 15 months). That’s approximately AUD2,200+ more each month (~26.5k per annum) for a AUD850,000 mortgage (personally I don’t know anyone who pretends to be happy with less than a million-dollar mortgage) – which is mind f*cking shattering given people are getting fired and needing 30k on existing salary to maintain the existing lifestyle.

It is quite a challenging time for all workers, in particular for skilled professionals with the added novelty of the most important technological advancement since the invention of the internet i.e., ChatGPT/Practical AI. That’s where the boom-and-bust economic cycle and mean revising history of humans – takes a break – and asks, do I really need to hire humans (skilled professionals) for the roles which are made redundant or backfill the vacant roles, or hire a little fraction of 1/4 roles or just pay for AI? Also since ChatGPT writes emails, scans and provides summaries of documents and prepares everything I have learnt to do over past 15 years – Since I am also insecure, unsure and afraid maybe just wait & see what everyone else does and keep the lights on with bare minimum. This is the mind-boggling reality (tornado) that is largely uncontrollable experienced and influenced by all of us.

After staying curled up for a couple of hours, days, weeks next to our post-tornado life shelf we accidentally hit the book lying next to us, with a bittersweet mood we pick that book and try to put it back. As we do, we hit two more books on our way to the correct section, we hold them up for later and just like that…bit by bit…we start labelling books again..we start placing books back..with reframing, introspection and action..we start building sturdier and higher shelves despite being unsure, afraid and courageous enough to keep rebuilding.

So did I, using this opportunity as a catalyst for growth, curing myself of my own ignorance and becoming better than myself. Also, I have to acknowledge the part that earlier sufferings such as broken bones in childhood, hyper independent living, restarting life in multiple continents, living with one arm for multiple months after surgery alone and personal relationship breakdowns may have played in making this one an abundance story. That’s the true beauty of the human spirit, building belief in yourself by trusting the lessons in this journey of life, and until next unchosen suffering.

Same as me, I want this to be the ‘How to’ manual to make this redundancy the best thing that has happened to you and loved ones around you. These are the steps I encourage you to undertake to unleash you abundancy journey in the first 4-6 weeks of being let go:

1. Defining & Conquering Fear:

Write down your controllables and uncontrollables which are unique to your personal circumstances, life stage and lifestyle management. Make sure to reflect on your controllables for them to be constructive and productive. Also, the more you focus on the uncontrollables, the less control you feel you have over the actual controllables.

2. Financial Survivability:

The core needs of human life are food, shelter and survival which are also inextricable parts of this event. I know this is a complex area, but this manifests as rumination, passive fear and when not catered sucks the joy out of the abundance journey.

    • Financial survivability is defined as the ability to sustain (personal) lifestyle without working/having a job. The best way to do it is by having an open dialogue with yourself and classifying what is a ‘need’ and what is a ‘want’ till you land on your feet. For example, I might buy a stroller to give my godson as a lifestyle/want but for his father is a core need. The classification would be wary for a fair few items every month depending on life stage and values.
    • Our beloved government has a whole website and resources available for us to make all our financial dreams a reality – partly since it is funded by taxpayers money. It is called MONEY SMART.
    • Also, there is an amazing Budget Planner Spreadsheet (At the risk of sounding like a nerd, spreadsheets are people too). Jokes apart, it is a great tool to convert your weekly income & expense into monthly, quarterly and yearly estimates. It is so easy and automatic that it is more of a novelty to see things add up and get subtracted.
    • This will keep the unnecessary pain of second guessing your next cup of coffee or not enjoying the concert tickets you bought a few months ago to losing your sh*t when car registration, council bill and insurance premium increase notice finds you due to this transitory phase.

My Journey: I have a keen interest in Financial IQ and enabling structures which build & support your financial survivability – so that you can live the life you want for yourself. I have distilled several books on this topics in a few thousand words in a series as its a core research and knowledge area for me. Gathering relevant financial IQ knowledge, data points and strategies allowed me to maintain my lifestyle without being constantly driven by my human emotions (fear & desire). You can Listen and/or Read more Here

3. Routine:

There is a quote by Jamie Alexanders’ that “You had a purpose before anyone had an opinion”. Similarly, before your job and us rearranging our existence around economics of modern life we had a natural routine. We used to go to school, university, meet friends, had tuition, met family & friends, had sports circle, cello practice and so and so. Similarly, with this involuntary hard reset to your work life gives a unique opportunity to rethink routine as we do not have to wake up at 7am to dash to work for a couple of weeks. If you’re like me, it would have been ages ago and you can’t remember having more than four weeks of annual leave. Which generally revolves around family, travelling, surgeries, kids, parents and our own search for rest to get back to work.

Therefore, I highly recommend having a routine for waking up, walking to the next door coffee shop, sitting there and looking for job openings, Linkedin research and absorbing the world around you. More importantly, the job loss hits hard at night and in mornings, so make sure you have a healthy sleeping routine as it goes a long way. Hell, if you’re in a regional or beach-going area then take this opportunity to take a book and laptop down with you to absorb the waves, mountains or everyday folks sharing their stories.

My Journey: I felt in the initial days, it was very liberating to not wake up early and have a set routine for the day but then it becomes drudgery where everyone is in their cycle and you’re left out. I made sure that I regularly spent time in the next-door coffee shop, regularly checked job postings, tried to learn a thing or two around social connection and read a lot of books.

4. Mindfulness:

Make sure you are kind to yourself as you acknowledge the event, safe space to vent and honestly feel what you are experiencing to make peace with ‘What Is’ (reality) versus how you want it to be and ought to be. This can be by writing, this can be through distraction or this can be by being by yourself or around loved ones. I highly encourage you to reach out to family, friends and other social groups you have access to leverage on collective empathy and self-emotional budget regulation. I encourage journaling, asking yourself,

    • ” What is going on inside me?’,
    • ‘If money wasn’t a thing, what would I do with my time?’,
    • ‘Am I doing analysis paralysis of the past and looking for salvation in the future?
    • ‘If this was a chapter in my life, what would be the title’?.

Note, you don’t have to journal, if golf, painting, pottery and spending more time with kids allows you to be more present please opt for those activities.

More importantly, I recommend accessing mental health support offered by the place that made you surplus, Medicare or your health insurance. I am big on speaking to a licensed professional counsellor or psychologist for non-conflicted, independent and competent advice to declutter your freighted mind and strained journey. If you’re old school and don’t want to sit with someone in a room, talk to your elders, religious leader, community centre manager who has a trusted altruistic relationship with you. In this way, you can avoid malicious feedback or advice that we unintentionally end up absorbing being in a difficult period in life.

My Journey: I love writing – Writing for me is the deepest form of thinking. It has the dual benefits of removing the cognitive load which consumes your mental capacity, and it allows you to manifest life by converting thoughts into productive actions. So, I did regularly meditations through prayers, breath work, asking myself all the above questions in addition to my personal favourite prompt in most life changing events i.e. ‘How can I make this the best thing for myself and everyone around me? Simultaneously, I reached out to a doctor to get a mental health plan to see my psychologist without breaking the bank. The Medicare rebate makes the service very affordable (~$70-100 per session). I found it enabled me to keep focus on actions instead of getting swept away in the fight & flight mode or reliving the redundancy call and reinforcing the self-judgement, frustration, self-victimising and being jaded cycle.

5. Exercise:

I believe exercise is the strongest form of therapy and evergreen method of generating self-belief. There are very few problems in life that don’t magically disappear after a long walk or a good night’s sleep. I would encourage you when you are struggling to be present, reassessing the redundancy again and again, lack of direction and response on job applications or generally proving everyone wrong who doubted you in every other company, family, school exam etc etc the incessant self-victimisation pull of the ego. The best response is to get mental clarity through exercise.

You don’t have to start prepping for a marathon, being a lean machine at gym or someone who is very energetic – you just need to move as more thinking can’t solve overthinking, you have to go into the body and reset the connection to nature around you. So go for a walk every evening and take a different path. If you have a bike, may be find an air pump and check the tyres, if you have a yoga matt lying somewhere then clean it – all in all keep moving, this will generate evidence which will become self-belief in own ability to become a better version of yourself every day in the most meaningful area of life i.e. health, as you bring other things on track.

My Journey: I have exercised most of my life just to stay sane. During this period, as a bonus I inherited an autoimmune knee problem due to being hyperactive, doing long term runs and planking in excess of 15mins+ everyday – talk about Murphy’s law. I redirected that injury to focus on what I can do, stretching, physio session and mostly doing upper body exercises. The challenge for me was to not double discount myself on being redundant and not living my core value of exercising – so I managed to alter my plans to crunches from planks, chin ups from leg press, walks from running and maintaining active lifestyle as lure of junk food and ice cream as coping mechanism is way too sweet during life challenges which in most cases exacerbates them.

6. Network:

We all have passive connections, LinkedIn requests and people we passed by in seminars that we couldn’t connect more broadly with due to ongoing job demands or personal commitment. This is the best time to reach out to people in your field, sector and line of work for a coffee catch-up. I was gobsmacked at how many people are empathetic & willing to support me through this transition period. The benefits are multifaceted, if you’re lucky to meet leaders/ex-bosses ask them to trace their steps through similar situations. Second, this also educates you in what problems they’re focused on and thirdly, they will be more than happy to refer you for a role that is in their periphery which you might be suitable for as well.

Lastly, I will say go a step further, there are several free meet-up groups where small business owners, business councils and consultants get together to meet new people, get leads, sell their services, get feedback on their products and mostly making it acceptable to walk up to random people and say: ‘Hi, my name is Adnan, I am a management consultant with experience in investment & superannuation. I would really like to know what you do and what are you focusing on nowadays?

My Journey: It took me a very long time to realise that I am an introvert at heart with ambivert tendencies in group dynamics. So social intelligence is something which I have had to work on during this time. Our current comfort zones are future prisons, they need to be questioned & disrupted for a meaningful life. So, I reached out to ex-colleagues, bosses, support network and neighbours to just share the ideas I had or new knowledge for innovation that I gathered during this time period. John (who made me surplus earlier) is a true leader and he ensured that I had unfettered access to my mentor, Shamus (not his real name). Shamus and I had worked very little up to this point, but he stepped into the role of a true mentor and helped my confidence with new opportunities, sharing his life lessons around similar challenges and supported my self-belief. Especially where he said your integrity is not a limiting factor but an asset so lean into it.

7. Knowledge & Skill-set Enhancement:

I love Elon’s Musk simplicity on purpose. He says ‘The world rewards you in proportion to the level of the problems you solve‘.

The world is a product shelf with unimaginable horizons, your purpose is to innovate something that satisfies a need in the marketplace that hasn’t been satisfied. So, you can realise your potential, live an expanded and stimulated life - Adnan Rasool

Whenever we feel we don’t have choices, it also at times points to our own ignorance. It is always a good time to seek knowledge which gives you choices, creates something new, appeals to subliminal curiosity in us which gets overshadowed by conviction as we age. Appeal to your ideas, see them as things to play with and untapped insights from your dreams.

    • Purpose isn’t a linear pathway to contribution through your best work. I read; Einstein attributed most of his biggest discoveries to his intuition. Similarly, this is your time to see: What do you actually like doing? What are you really good at? and something that has a societal function that can pay for your wants and values in life. This is the winning trifacta (Ikigai) for turning intellectual curiosity into real life problem solving.
    • Take this opportunity to get yourself up with new technology, industries, news and methods of landing your next opportunity or perhaps entertain working for yourself, depending on your pain tolerance and clarity of contribution. Tap into the new world of ameliorating resumes to job descriptions by AI. Explore the difference in your own ideation and depth of understanding by summarising 1000 of pages by one simple command to ChatGPT. Note, the AI is a rabbit hole which ends up in hallucinating the machine and the operator by correcting the incorrect output that was intended to save time, so indulge carefully and in line Technology of the times.
    • For my Sydneysiders, the NSW government has a free Start-Up Hub that offers desk space, Wifi and ability to connect with people who are motivated to create the next big thing. I found it very helpful to hear chatter on the floor, reading the job boards, and immediate opportunities to learn new skills by their webinars and offerings.

My Journey: Personally, in hindsight this redundancy was a necessary suffering which allowed me to grow up, helped me rid of my own selfishness, ego. More importantly, it made me pursue something more meaningful in life, which usually is beyond our own selves. So I focused on harnessing all the skills I can which would help me live the stimulated life I want to experience for myself. I developed frameworks to understand how to create strategic thinking into real life problem solving. I learnt how to use AI to my advantage, I reached out to resume builders to access the current knowledge and tax agents on the best way to start my own business/independent consulting. In addition, I connected to an amazing platform for consultants called Expert360 which allowed me to assess market needs and stay in the game while being benched. More importantly, I learnt not having choices means that I am ignorant. I need to seek knowledge which brings me more choices, So I read Lean Start-Up, E-myth, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Zero to One and several other books which allowed me to convert active imagination into plausible logical steps to getting things done. 


8. Focus on Actions:

“You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, not by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it” – Carlos Castaneda

Whatever you do, keep focused on your actions. We don’t control time, we don’t control priorities we simply have them, the only thing we control are actions. I find a lot of value from personal organisation techniques such as ‘Parkinson’s Law’ and ’80/20′ rule – these are the useful ones Tiktok has made every useless one seem like a new hack, but if you like to dance and apply principles this is the best time to do it.

Remember, doing something unimportant quickly does not make it important and allocating more time to something does not make it automatically important. It is the subconscious opportunity cost and self judgement which gives birth to regret of not being aware of above not your wife, neighbour and friends politely asking ‘How’s the jobs each coming along?’. It is easier to not take that question personally and get triggered when you have kept commitments to yourself. If you really want to evolve beyond your imagination…Read more on Values and Finding True North.

 My Journey: I have been a thinker doer for a very long time – the missing link was capturing, clarifying, organising and engaging with actions for productivity. I admit some of this is requires deep self-reflection, that how much do I think and how much real life doing is there in my day, week, month and year. Like most people, I would have been acting on things which were not that important, or kept on thinking of things (instead of about them) which were important – I lacked a coherent structure of getting things out of my head into real life solutions.

I used my Values Framework to track how much time I was spending on each core value, where I saw excess time being spent on rumination, analysis paralysis or numbing exercises through hyper socialisation, voluntary isolation and symptom relief by instant gratification. I made sure that I change something in my daily routine that allow productive actions to flow through for meaningful change. Note, It is easier said than done – personal change is one of the hardest thing to do. I also noticed that being left in the final round of an opportunity or job interview stung a lot more deeply and personally due to no active employment. Even going for interviews had higher levels of anxiety attached to it than a usual conversation. What really helped me is again doing ‘controllables’ and ‘uncontrollables’ for each interview round, pitch and networking conversation to minimise the analysis paralysis & kept going for meaningful engagement.

“A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.”

Malcolm Gladwell

Conclusion

Today, I have my own blogging and personal coaching website which has been read and accessed by more than ten thousand people. I was able to set up my own independent consulting operation and complete a year-long project (with some help from John & Shamus) with one of the biggest fund managers in the world. I innovated new ESG/climate change-based products which solve real life problems, did minimum viable product testing, reached out of my comfort zones by becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Most importantly, I am relatively wiser and abundant in life before my redundancy – until my next unchosen suffering…but this piece is not about me…this is for you to uncover your own myth like a ‘Lotus flower’…A lotus flower, which grows in muddy and murky waters. Despite its challenging environment, the lotus blossoms beautifully, symbolising the potential for growth amid adversity. 

Similarly, I believe in your ability to rise above this challenge, leveraging this experience to cultivate new skills, broaden your horizons, and ultimately bloom in unforeseen ways…and I can’t wait to hear about it..Feel free to drop me a note if you would like to discuss your pre-abundancy journey with me or need someone to listen to what you have been through or share ideas which helped you in your redundancy to abundancy quest!

Disclaimer: This publication or any other content on this website is not affiliated or reflect the views of any past or present employers, clients, entities, or future organizations. The content on this personal website is solely for personal expression and does not reflect any professional views, opinions, or endorsements. Please refer to disclaimer for more information.

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