February 2022 marked an important milestone for our NSW based consultant Ian Crothers. After an outstanding 10 + year tenure with Human Synergistics in which his passion to enable individuals to reach their potential and make a remarkable difference to many peoples lives, it has also highlighted a need to enjoy some well-deserved 'me' time.
Ian has decided to step-back from some of his duties with us, and while he'll still be involved in consulting for HSA, it will be in a refined and scaled-back capacity from April 2022.
In this article Ian looks back at his 10 plus years with Human Synergistics.
I first joined HS in 2008 in the role of ‘Practice Leader, Professional Development’. I first held this role for around 3 years before taking up an opportunity as Learning & Development Manager at one of the Banks, however, only after a few months I was caught up in a restructure and my new role became redundant, so found myself out of work. I called Shaun McCarthy for a reference and he very kindly offered me my old job back, so like a boomerang, back I was! This was in Feb 2012, so although my employment record says I have just hit the 10 year milestone, I’ve actually been at HS for 13 years, in total.
I continued on in the role of Practice Leader PD for about 3 more years before moving into the Consulting Team, about 7 years ago. Because of my history in overseeing the Accreditation Calendar, my main focus since joining the Consulting Team has been in Accreditation Program delivery, combined with assisting other Human Synergistics consultants with their client work. Over this time, I would guess I have delivered, on average, about 12 x LSI Accreditation Programs every year, so around 80 or so Programs over the last 7 years. This would probably mean I have accredited in the range of around 1000 people in LSI during my time in the Consulting Team. In more recent years I have also been facilitating the Impact Accreditation Programs, but I have not taken on the OD Accreditation (OCI/OEI/CSS) as I’ve always had a strong preference for working with the ‘Individual’ diagnostics.
Over the years I have worked on a few projects that have taken me to some interesting places. A couple that spring to mind are, firstly, the 2 x LSI Accreditation Programs I ran in Singapore. This was a great experience for me (I had never been overseas for work before) and both groups were so keen to learn and so appreciative that we had travelled there to Accredit them. My co-facilitator for both programs was Mike Gourley from our NZ Business and we had great fun, inside and outside of the training room.
Secondly, I recall the project I worked on in about 2009 where a whole team of us went to Central North Queensland to collect OCI data, manually. We had won a very large Culture Project with a Mining Company. They wanted the input of the folks working on the mine sites, but these people, in the main, did not have access to PC’s, and in some cases, their literacy skills were not great, so the solution was to hold a countless number of 2 hour workshops where each induvial OCI question was captured on a slide. We read the question out and people responded via a palm pilot. There was a team of 3 of us on this project. We were up there for around 3 weeks, running 3 or 4 of these sessions every day. It was hard work, and not particularly exciting. (To be honest, at the time I found it gruelling!) But over the years I’ve looked back on those 3 weeks and realised it was very meaningful work – and I got to see parts of Queensland I would never have seen otherwise. Also, again like the Singapore experience, being away on assignment with other team members made for good fun – many a good story of the day’s events was swapped over an evening over a meal and beer or two.
My wife and I have recently made the ‘sea change’ to the Mid North Coast of NSW and so it’s time also for a restructure of my working life. I leave Human Synergistics at the end of April as an employee, but I’ll still be around a little in the background helping out from time to time where needed. I think what I will miss most about my time at HS is the great people I have worked with.
Over the last 13 years there have been some exceptional humans I’ve had the pleasure of working with – some have come and gone and others have been around longer than I have. Working with these people has been such a wonderful experience for me and I will miss them all.
We wish Ian all the very best in his new semi-retirement and look forward to a continued partnership with him in the future.