Wouter talks about the weak ties across the years that in hindsight turn out to be key in making a next step, changing course or enter new fields. Never burn bridges he concludes.

I never applied for any of my jobs or roles. At one point I have written some application letters but that never yielded anything, and I learned not to bother with them. Most of the roles I have had didn’t exist before I filled them. My first job I got because my employer saw my volunteer work on a side interest of mine in a different context and asked if he could pay me to do that elsewhere. Then one of their clients hired me to continue some other work inside their own organisation. Another company made a cold sales call to me in that role, but ended up hiring me instead. When I quit my last job, some clients left with me although that wasn’t my doing. I also brought that former employer along to a new client of mine where they then stayed on when I was done. The past two decades of being self employed and then later also an employer myself have been similar. I’ve done high trust complex change projects for people I already knew for years before and had never approached commercially until they reached out. I’ve come to trust that side interests, side activities, conversations and going to fringe events to see who I might meet and what gets discussed there, over time will yield interesting work.

A few years ago I was asked to talk about my ‘career path’ at my old university. Often such talks by others present a linear path created out of clear ambition and goals. Instead I shared that I probably have had half a dozen of conversations in my life that in hindsight turned out to be pivotal in my work. Such as an off-hand remark in a conversation over coffee in Austria that has turned into what is now well over 15 years of work in open data, digital ethics, and data governance. I titled that talk What is it you do again?, as the question pops up regularly. I think the answer has been and is ‘interesting things that happen to cross my path’, and ‘going various places so that more things might cross my path’. Burning bridges is indeed not part of that approach.

Never blow up your bridges. If you manage to build a couple, you can always cross them—and if needed, retrace your steps.

Wouter Groeneveld