“The human mind once stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I’ve always been fascinated by technology and improving processes. Not so much by the ‘what’, but more of the ‘how’.
I’ve been taking things apart for as long as I can remember. As a child growing up, I’d be taking apart any gadget or gizmo within reach, to see if I could make it work better and relying on my memory and gut feel to figure out putting them back together as I went along. The more complicated devices were the hardest to deal with, especially when I’d be staring at a pile of parts with no clue as to where the smaller parts fitted back in again. And each time I got one right, it opened up this whole new euphoric journey of discovery and I couldn’t be stopped afterwards. Basically, the more I learned, the more I wanted to get stuck in.
Looking back now, I can say I probably got lucky more times than I probably deserved, especially with managing to put things back together without breaking them. These ‘experiments’ didn’t always translate into enthusiasm with the adults around me at the time. I remember being pulled into many a tense conversation about what constituted a ‘good use’ of household electronics.
I must’ve been about seven or eight when I was first introduced to the world of computers back in the nineties. At the time, this was a rare experience for kids my age anywhere in the world. I know that sounds wild today, when we’ve got toddlers literally swiping away at their own tablets even before they can talk. Things did change fast indeed.
By the time I was ten, I had memorised some 100 DOS commands which was just about enough to be quite efficient working an IBM computer – those are the ones that had green text (sometimes white) over a dark background. I’m probably giving away my age with these revelations but this small feat of DOS-commands memorisation quickly became redundant the moment Bill Gates’ Microsoft graced the world with the much friendlier Windows Operating System (Thanks Bill, for making my hard-earned skills obsolete overnight.) On a personal visit to Palo Alto (California) later on in life, I learned that there was a bit of ugly politics at the time between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, that led to the rush with the new Windows Operating System announcement, but I digress. That’s a story, or trivia if you like, for a dinner conversation.
Fast forward a few years, and I found myself at university (that’s College, if you’re American reading this) reading for a course that specialised in the science (and ‘dark arts’, some might say) of talking to computers and getting them to do what you want them to, shall we say. That’s where I really found my stride, digging into software design, coding, digital forensics, cybersecurity, robotics, and ethical hacking. The emphasis being on ethical.
Now while I was at uni, I had this odd habit where I’d regularly drop into lectures that had absolutely nothing to do with my own field of study. I did this out of nothing but pure curiosity. I felt there was always something new for me to learn and I often found those little side quests very useful in revealing new things that I could apply to my own technology application. Looking back now, I realise it wasn’t just curiosity but a form of pushing boundaries and refusing to let myself be defined by just one thing.
When I graduated, I immediately stepped into the world of business and technology and it’s there that my creative problem-solving skills began to really stretch their legs. But strangely to me, the people in this new world also had their own fixed ideas of what they wanted a young Tech graduate to do or be known for. Let’s just say, I’ve never been great at fitting neatly into anyone’s box. Being more square peg, round hole, I naturally kept pushing the boundaries, even at work: learning a little bit of everything around me and refusing to stay in just one lane.
The more I stuck my head outside the boxes that people tried to define me by, the more I realised how really vast the technology landscape was, especially in the world of global business operations. What really fascinated me though, were the people and the processes behind the scenes: the gears that really made things run smoothly (or not).
I soon realised that what began as childhood fascination in dismantling remote-controlled cars to understand their inner workings, had then evolved into something far more sophisticated. It was now a solid art of deconstructing billion-dollar enterprise processes layer by layer, finding the inefficiencies and then rebuilding them back more efficiently, and with the precision of a Swiss watch-maker wherever possible. The irony wasn’t lost on me that I was now participating in the same ‘surgeries’ I did as a child, except this time the patient on the table were large corporate systems, processes, cultures, and the stakes were also infinitely higher, and “missing screws” could easily cost millions here.
I’ve skipped over a few bits in this story, mostly for privacy reasons and ongoing NDAs, but suffice it to say, my hobby quietly transformed into a niche area of expertise and my life’s work, crafting solutions that don’t just meet the moment, but define it. So there you have it, I went from having my bedroom floors littered with circuit boards to dealing with corporate boardrooms filled with balance sheets and exponentially more expensive ‘toys’. Thankfully, the other positive change is that with a bit more age and experience on my side, one could say that they are also a lot wiser now and so when I try to take the bigger things apart, this time I typically have a fairly good idea about how to rebuild them better than I did as a child growing up. Let’s call it ‘corporate acceleration, without the carnage‘.
And as much as each day brings with it complex puzzles that demand inventive solutions, challenges that would have stumped my younger self armed only with a screwdriver and boundless curiosity, the tools today have also evolved from tiny screwdrivers to more sophisticated computer systems and infrastructure. The core mission remains unchanged, however: taking apart what’s broken, understanding why it failed and then rebuilding it to run better than it did before. Some obsessions are worth growing up with.
