Almost exactly one year ago I found myself in a rather unusual situation. After spending more than two decades with the same company, I was suddenly navigating something I had not experienced before: looking for a new professional opportunity. After twenty two years, the whole process felt strange. The job market had changed, recruitment had changed, expectations had changed and, if I am honest, I had changed as well.
I remember spending a significant amount of time trying to understand the mechanics of the modern job market by watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts and reading all sorts of materials that could help, even if only a little. Networking suddenly became much more important. Interviewing was no longer simply about experience and technical knowledge.
That was the moment when I realised that personal branding, storytelling, online presence and confidence seemed to play a much bigger role than I had imagined. It felt exciting at times, but also uncomfortable (and sometimes even depressing). Probably anyone who has spent a very long time in one company and then suddenly stepped back into the market again knows exactly what I mean. I am probably not the only person with this experience.
Somewhere during that period, almost by accident, I came across the McKinsey Forward learning programme. I honestly do not even remember exactly where I saw it first. I clicked, read through it briefly, hesitated for perhaps thirty seconds and enrolled.
Looking back now, I can genuinely say I never regretted that decision.
When you already have twenty plus years of professional experience, programmes like this create an interesting challenge. You enter with a certain amount of skepticism because, naturally, you assume you have already seen many of the concepts before. Leadership, communication, problem solving, resilience, adaptability. None of these topics were completely new territory for me. Over the years I studied them, practiced them, succeeded with some and failed with others.
But I slowly realised that I was approaching it with the wrong expectation: the value was not in discovering revolutionary new knowledge. The value was in revisiting existing knowledge through the lens of experience.
That turned out to be much more useful than I initially expected. It felt less like learning from scratch and more like reorganising things already stored somewhere on the shelves of my own experience.
One topic that particularly stayed with me was mindset reframing and the APR model: Awareness, Pause and Reframe. The concept itself is not complicated. Become aware of your current mindset, pause before reacting and deliberately reframe your thinking. Simple on paper but, as always, significantly harder in real life. It requires a lot of self awareness, self reflection and practice.
I will summarize the basics of the APR model in a separate blob post in case you are interested. You are probably already familiar with concepts like growth mindset. At least I was. Some of the others felt familiar as well, but seeing them together as one complete framework was new to me.
I found myself reflecting on how often experienced professionals, myself included, operate in what the programme described as an “expert mindset.” There is a subtle pressure that comes with experience. You feel you should already know the answer. You should have the solution. You should be the person bringing certainty.
Yet some of the most valuable moments in leadership actually come from stepping back and replacing expertise with curiosity. Asking questions instead of immediately providing answers. I found myself thinking back to some of my project missions where, if I wanted to be fully honest with myself, I probably should have quit much earlier, but my own pride simply did not let me do so.
I also particularly enjoyed the problem solving section. Again, not because problem solving itself was a new topic. I have spent years in projects, transformation programmes and operational environments where solving problems is practically the job description. But I appreciated being reminded how often we rush directly into solutions before spending enough time understanding and defining the actual problem. I have probably done this myself many times over the years. I am quite sure you have as well, together with many others.
Perhaps the programme arrived at exactly the right moment. Career transitions are strange periods. Even when exciting, they naturally come with uncertainty. Confidence fluctuates. There are questions and there is a lot of self reflection.
Looking back, McKinsey Forward Learning gave me something that I probably needed at that time: structure, momentum and a surprisingly useful level of reassurance. Today, one year later, I find myself in a completely different place professionally. I joined Imperial Brands, entered a new industry and started another chapter of my career.
Looking back honestly, I can say Forward played a meaningful role somewhere along that journey. Interestingly, this year when applications reopened, I recommended the programme to several people within my network. As far as I know five or six people eventually enrolled.
Coincidentally, this week I enrolled into another McKinsey learning experience focused on Digital and AI Essentials. Apparently the learning journey continues!
At senior stages of our careers, learning is often less about collecting entirely new knowledge. Sometimes it is simply about revisiting what you already know, seeing it differently, restructuring and reorganising it through accumulated experiences.
Keep signing up and rolling into new challenges. You never know what will become useful and stay with you for a long time and what will quietly disappear.
