Decoded - Career Paths Translated: This season of Decoded is brought to you by Morgan Walsh Consulting, supporting businesses and their leaders at moments of transformation or scale. For more information and services, head over to MorganWalshConsulting.ie. Because it's so easy just to get buried in work and it just becomes all consuming and everything else outside of that just kind of falls by the wayside. But I feel like I do better work. I do better if I know I'm there and I know that... Everything around me is supporting this and I'm supporting everything around me. It feels more complete. I'm Laura Morgan-Walch and you're listening to Decoded, the podcast where we translate our guests' career path. What were their CAO choices? What part of their career journey would they go back and change? What's the good, the bad, the perks and the boring parts of their role? And how will their role be influenced by AI in the future? My guest this week on Decoded is Patrick O'Donnell. We translate how we went from initial thoughts of becoming a psychologist to almost carving a path in hospitality to co-founding a business consultancy. has gone through a career plan A, B, C and D. Let's have a listen. Enjoy. Pat, you're very welcome to Decoded. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Laura. And I appreciate the invite and any opportunity to talk about myself is something I truly love, right? not true. Your specialist subject. Specialist subject. I know most about this. I'll gradually write over the years. No, it's a hard thing to talk about yourself, though, so I appreciate it. And maybe to kick us off, can you in purpose translate your job title? It's a good question like they and ⁓ it's one I struggle with, right, because sometimes I ⁓ it hard to explain to our clients. Essentially, we're like a counselor for businesses. So we basically try to understand what their problems are and then try to help them solve their problems. So we advise them based on our experience, based on our expertise, ⁓ and we basically try to fix their problems. We work with really complex organizations. ⁓ And the bigger the organization, the more complexity there is and the bigger challenges that they have. So we work a lot with them, just really trying to understand what are their problems? How can we solve those? How can we make sure they're running their business smarter, faster, better outcomes? That's kind of it. Brilliant. Yeah. And like I suppose to dig into that expertise a little bit. If we take you back to the start, if I was to ask you about 17 or 18 year old Pat staring at a CAO form. Because it was a form maybe when you were doing it as supposed to be no more than myself. And you were trying to make a plan for the future. What did what did that look like? So I didn't know what I I wanted to do. And I think I was kind of half lucky because I knew what I liked. I knew what I was interested in. so I basically, like I had an okay leaving search enough to get me into college. When I was looking at the CEO points I had in my head that maybe I wanted to do psychology. And that maybe I wanted to be a psychologist. And was that based off knowing anyone that was a psychologist or did you just take a note? Where did it come from? It must have been from TV, right? It's the only way that I could... Because I was trying to think about why that was in the first place. my parents always thought I was going to be a celestial because I just argued about everything. I was particularly in history and I was particularly good at maths. ⁓ So I have ⁓ three brothers ⁓ and ⁓ the three brothers all do the engineering. So you can imagine me setting that day. ⁓ like dinner or table and them looking across at me and I kind of saying like, well, what are you going to do, Patrick? was going to psychology maybe. So they're looking at it going like, what are you thinking? ⁓ started to investigate what what courses were available. It was one in Colerain ⁓ that I was particularly interested in. ended up getting into UCD ⁓ and then ⁓ after year one, went, ⁓ is not for me. And ⁓ that was a interesting. A tough moment, isn't it? Because ⁓ You can kind of think that the hard bit is picking the course that you want to do and picking the right course. But so many people get into a course and then learn about it and go, absolutely not. Like, this is this is not for me. And how what was what was that moment like where, you know, that realization hits you that this is not for me. The three brothers that are looking at you across the dinner table are right. did you how did you deal with that? I was very lucky because that choice that I made. So I did arts. And like they I think brothers had described it as you're definitely going to get a job in McDonald's. And I was kind of looking at it saying, well, actually, I have a degree. So for me, it was important that I just got the degree because I picked the subjects that I liked maths and history. I could do stuff that I was interested in and then get a degree at the end of it. And of course, I wasn't qualified for anything. The only thing that was qualified was I could learn. And that became apparent to me really, really quickly so when I left college, worked in ⁓ bar for about ⁓ six years through school and into college. And then I heard of a job coming up in a hotel locally. So I started working in the hotel. And I had a degree. and I was happy out like I was ⁓ really enjoyed the work, enjoyed what I doing. But then ⁓ there's there's something in me that basically OK, want to do better And so I ended up I became the head barman. I was the. ⁓ head waiter and they were talking about me potentially training to the hotel manager. And so this was kind of I felt OK, now I've got a career path. This was ⁓ super interesting. then I like the hotel is hard work. And it's like Really is this ⁓ what I want to do. And I heard about another job that was up. in actually was one of my brothers was working in a semiconductors plant, a manufacturing plant in Meath. And he said, ⁓ I believe that somebody's leaving the IT department. And I liked IT. I like, like I had a computer when I was younger. I used to trick away at it. I was very interested in it when I was doing maths in college because we were doing a little bit of coding. So I went yeah, that Maybe that that'd be interesting. So I applied for a job as an operator then in the manufacturing plant and working shifts ⁓ to get in the door. So ⁓ this is really interesting, right? So you're experience so far to an employer is in hotel, hospitality ⁓ and ⁓ something out of the corner. is saying Yeah, but I would love to get in the door and work with computers. what you've know, just to be clear, you've you've no qualification you've maths and you have history. ⁓ your attitude was, ⁓ well, sure, look, I'll in some way. And in that way, I'll get in the and I'll work my way through to an IT department that is there that has an opening. So when I was ⁓ in as an operator, was doing mind numbing stuff, at one stage it was testing, memory boards. So basically you were picking up the memory board, you were putting it on this machine, you were return twice, and then you were moving it off to the side. like this was 12 hour shifts, of doing this. Was there any chats at home around the dinner table to say you're on a career path, you have line of sight of a management role here and you're going to completely switch across to doing shift work, work that you're not going to enjoy necessarily for the first while on the promise of what might be because you're not guaranteed anything in going in at the shop floor either that you can work your way to IT. Did anyone have that conversation with you? ⁓ I don't really remember it right now, my mother, like so like my father actually passed on when I was 17. So my mother was on her own. I think she had looked at and kind of said, he seems to have a path here, to be working towards something. So she was kind of keen to see where it went. She could see a passion in me about what I was trying to do. when I was there, I tried to make connection to the IT department, even though job hadn't come up. It was a job that was on the horizon. tried make kind of connection to them. And then also, while I was there, I ended up writing a small basic program that would help me count the chips as we were moving through. So every time I hit return, it would do a kind of clock. So I knew how many chips were going through. I knew whether they were passed or failed. And it was a really simple thing, I'm no good at coding. But I just put that together to kind of keep myself engaged and interested in learning. It also broadened the role for you. Like it got the role and you broadened it and you stretched it out to the max. There probably weren't many people doing that on the line. No, like I didn't. I. OK, it was funny actually, because my mother said to me at one stage, because I always talked about it like I wanted to do more. I wanted to do more. And she was there going, you're getting paid. But I always felt that I needed more from the work that I was doing. It had to have purpose. It had to keep me engaged and I had to be learning. But it is the temptation. Your mother's a very practical woman by the sounds of it. There a temptation with which you're getting paid, you know, and there's money coming in the door and that's not guaranteed for everyone either. ⁓ So there's there's a courage. ⁓ that's required in doing this, but ultimately you have to be true to yourself. And once you realize that you're somebody that is driven by more and learning and stretching things out and being better, then you're never going to be motivated by the fact that you're getting paid. for me when I went for the interview for the job ⁓ and then they offered me the job ⁓ and it was only it was a temporary job. So I was covering maternity leave and I jumped at it. And then at that point, I worked really, really hard not when I say worked really hard, it wasn't a case of where I had lots to do. I found stuff to do. And was it like the job or the IT job? OK, you were got your you did once you were in you and the job came up. It was a maternity leave coverage. You applied for that and you got stuck. I got stuck in and I just went. Like I wanted to know everything. I was asking questions. asking about everything. ⁓ And then ⁓ what had happened was at a certain I went, I'm kind of missing something. I'm missing ⁓ some of the basics. And ⁓ I I need to go back college. ⁓ That was something I was missing. So I ended up going back in the evenings then. And I did a ⁓ postgraduate diploma in it was actually ironically it was a postgraduate diploma in IT for engineers. So finally my brothers were proud of me. And so I did that in the evening time. That was I think it was about a year. And that was hard work. because I was basically, I couldn't be working 12 hour shifts. And then I had to go and I had to do study, to do projects, I had to go up to Trinity, it was. ⁓ so it wasn't, none of this was remote at this point, And so that was hard going. And actually, ⁓ as well as that, I took on another gig in my days off, then I was doing some work for a local charity. And I was doing some IT work with them as well. So I just I was hungry to learn or hungry to So I spent, think it was ⁓ four years there. ⁓ And then I ⁓ ended up moving to job in Dublin that was working in ⁓ a managed services, ⁓ IT, purely technology. ⁓ And ⁓ I ⁓ started off a account ⁓ I ended up leaving there as the head of European operations. ⁓ that was an incredible opportunity. They were in a startup phase. They were hugely aggressive, growing really quickly. ⁓ There was huge if you were willing to work and if you were ambitious ⁓ to be able ⁓ move with that. you get into somewhere that is growing at a region outside, I had the same experience at one of the companies I was at. I was very fortunate anyone that could figure things out and get things done. You were picked and dropped into everything that needed to be done or needed to be figured out. But along the way, like it's an incredible university for a career. You know, you're just stacking up all these different experiences and allies as well. You're getting to know other people in the business. You're getting to know who you want to work with, who people are and how they work and the different types of people that you're going to meet. and all that good stuff, but it sounds like you were definitely on a path now with IT. had found path. This was what were going to bring. 100 percent. I was a I was a technology guy and that was it. And then ⁓ actually, while I was there, I did a on this thing called ITEL, which was basically around process optimization. So it was really defining the how, not around the technology as in how does technology work, but how do you run technology organizations? How do you build processes around that? I felt actually something I'd like to explore a little bit further, but also then at that point I felt I'd gone as far as I wanted to go with this ⁓ with this organization. They were in this kind of startup phase. It wasn't really moving on. And as well as that, ⁓ I got married ⁓ and ⁓ like wanted a children, wanted to have a family. And I felt this heavy, real hold on work. I wanted to try and think about maybe balance. ⁓ So ⁓ I went for two jobs, actually. One with ⁓ and And the other one was which a ⁓ German bank, so a subsidiary that was based in Dublin. for Amazon, was the head of data centers for the UK and Ireland. ⁓ And that I was offered. So after rigorous interviews, So I think that there was nine, maybe 10 interviews in total. ⁓ And so really, really detailed and really, really thorough. And at the same time, I'd been interviewing as well for the head of IT for the German bank. And I had a real decision to make then at that point. Because I had to kind of say, actually, do I work for Amazon? And they were growing. They were getting really, really big at this time. The writing was on the wall in terms of who they were going to be. Or do I work for this German bank? And where is my ambition? And I had to really struggle with that one. Because my ambitious side was saying Amazon, And then ⁓ my life balance was saying, well, actually, I know I could do this other job and ⁓ maybe it's time for breath. And ahead of IT is not a breath. By the way. ⁓ my point ⁓ was that I thought would own me but would own the job and the one. And ⁓ that was an interesting switch in head. And I, I also had to struggle with a lot because I was there kind of going, is this a step back? Am I kind of not pushing my career forward? But I felt okay with it. And actually I loved that time in the bank. And as a result of that, I realized, I don't know enough about the business side of it. So ended up going back and I did a postgraduate diploma in corporate treasury. Pat, if you mind me saying it's really unusual. You're ⁓ one of a handful of men I've ever spoken to that have considered work life balance as part of their ⁓ Why do you think that is? Like, it's genuinely unusual. You would hear it in every interview with any senior woman that I've ever heard. I'm always asked that question as well. It's very rarely asked of a man. And I've never heard really of a man who has considered that when faced with ⁓ an alternative. Why do you think that was important to you? ⁓ just see the two as like they're interdependent. it's really important that I'm in a job that I like, that gives me passion and gives me drive. And that's so that when I walk out of that job, I can come with energy to my family and my life. And it just seems ⁓ natural and normal to me. when I took on this new venture, I know I'm skipping well ahead, where we, when we established in Nashville, I just said, I sit with my wife and kind of say, look, this isn't going to be easy. I'm going to need to put in time. going to need to probably travel a little bit more. And ⁓ it's probably going to be quite stressful. But what we to do was that every single Friday we go out, we and we talk about the week and say, is this still working? And that is critical, because it's so easy just to get buried in work and it just all consuming and everything else outside of that just kind of falls by the wayside. But I feel like I do better work. I do better if I know I'm there and I know. that everything around me is supporting this and I'm supporting everything around me. Feels more complete, actually, I suppose is the way that I would describe it. And then, of course, like I have two kids, I learn as much from them as they do from anything else, Their class, So it's, yeah. It's funny, though, the full circle that's happened where you start out with more. I want more. I want to do more. know I'm capable of more. But the pendulum doesn't swing to a point where that's your detriment. comes to a point where you know where the stop sign is and you go, OK, at this point, do I want to be owned by a job or do I want to own the role itself? ⁓ I think there's a there's a beautiful lesson in that for many, many people, because ⁓ someone that recognizes in themselves the more, more, more, go, go, go. I haven't always been good at seeing the stop sign and to go, hold on a second, just because you can doesn't mean you should became a tagline for me as I matured in my career. Because it turns out, you know, there is lots of stuff you can do and there are lots of things that are going to come your way. But should you actually do it? Is this the right thing for you? And if I was to ask you about the journey that you've had, what's the one thing you do differently? Because honestly, it sounds like ⁓ all the right decisions were made ⁓ at stage, but that's never the case. what is the one thing ⁓ you do differently? wouldn't be where I am if not for all of the different mistakes that I've made ⁓ in the past, So ⁓ I think... learning from them was really, important. ⁓ at point, actually, I spent, I would say two years of my career where I was incredibly unhappy, like really, unhappy. And I felt frustrated. I felt like I wasn't moving on and I couldn't understand I was doing everything right. And what had actually happened was I ended up getting a coach. I talked to my coach, and they were saying, Like they were kind of looking at me going, okay, okay. And I showed them my CV and I had this really long CV. Look at all my experience, look at all the great things that I've done. And they kind of looked at me and went, look, I can see all the things you've done. I don't know who you are. It's just not clear. I was kind of going, what do you mean by that? You need to go back to college again. his point was that actually you need to look at where you want to go next. And was saying, you're you deep expertise in technology sector, you deep expertise in process, you deep expertise in ⁓ management. What he wasn't seeing was leadership. I ended up going to the IMI and did a master's of business practice. ⁓ And learned about myself, And I learned how to ⁓ navigate the of work in a better ⁓ happier, more optimal way. If I had done that masters straight after I'd finished college, it would have been a complete waste of time. would have been lost on me. I wasn't ready for it. I was really ready for it then. like, I started the masters I decided that I wanted to go out by myself. So I wanted to try the kind of consulting space. So I went out by myself. That was a failure, absolute failure. I could not get anybody to buy ⁓ the services I to offer. And it incredibly difficult because I was doing it on my own and it just wasn't working out. but then I went actually I have a family to look after. So I'm back into mainstream and working in pharmaceutical. And career wise, I had to take two steps down in order to get that job. And the reason that I was prepared to do that was because I felt. that I didn't have that broad level experience of a really big organization. I felt be able to rebuild my career within it. And that was at that point. It took me two or three years to realize ⁓ that I was coming with the wrong attitude. And this where the masters made a difference. ⁓ within three months, I got a promotion. But in another three months, I got another promotion. And within a year of that, I ended up leading a massive transformation the organization. And then I a really senior role on the back of that. By the time I was finished the masters, like I'd basically gone well above my career perspective and where I'd been for some time. and actually the experience that I got was phenomenal as well. Because I went through three or four roles there. what I'm hearing is that you plateaued somewhat in your career. You found it very frustrating. ⁓ The coach intervenes ⁓ and ⁓ decide to do masters. So what's what's the learning? Is it ⁓ the timing of it? Is it the actual doing of a master's considered at some point ⁓ or, you know, what could somebody take away from this when your career plateaus like that, you know, what's what's the learning out of it? I think it is learning. just continuous learning. when you realize that you can't just pick it up on own, You need an intervention and that intervention is where you go back to You learn from the experts. I did lots of other courses Masters ⁓ a lot different, You're also there with peers. really senior people from different organizations. You're learning from their experience. You're starting to reflect a little bit on your own experience. And you're starting to get clarity in terms of what you want to do I don't think it's an age dependent thing, but it's just kind knowing yourself and knowing what you want to I do think that if you are open and curious, ⁓ stuff just happens. ⁓ And open, curious and working. because I reflected as well even when we're talking about like the the different ⁓ I didn't look at a job and go, oh, that one sounds good. I like the sound of that. It was more actually, what could I do with that? like I'd worked on sites as well, moving a cone from one side of the road to the other for, for 10 hours. That's all I had to do was when the truck came, I moved the cone, the truck went past and I moved it back over but I but I was listening to a books at time. And if we bring it up to the present day and you wanted someone to consider this career path, so you have co-founded Ernesto, what are the perks of the job? Why would somebody want to be a consultant or found their own company? I'm incredibly proud of the stuff that we do. we have very strong values around who we want to be as a company, how we want to support clients. And for me, I get to solve the most interesting problems. Like that's ⁓ just that's a privilege. That's a perk. And we get we get paid well for it. And I have no apologies about it. We only hire people who come with really, strong industry experience not consulting experience. We look for industry experience, somebody who has felt it, who has been there, who understands from inside. Interesting to get to see the insides of other companies without having worked there as well, I'm sure. is. Because we don't like, we're also in a fantastic position because we're not absorbed with the politics of every organization. Every organization has its own politics and culture. And we can kind of sit outside of that. We can observe it ⁓ I can see all the time these light bulb moments where they kind of realize, okay, now, ⁓ okay, now I it, let's try this. I got a significant kick out of that. Now it doesn't, ⁓ it's also hard, So, ⁓ because I like, I'm all the time thinking how do we grow it? How do we make sure that we're completely aligned with our values all of the time? ⁓ And then also, we're hiring people, so now I'm personally responsible. Like the success and failure of the company is not just whether I get a pay packet at the end of the day, it's whether actually my staff do. And tell me, do you travel much? Have you got to see places that you wouldn't necessarily be going to on holidays only for the career path you've chosen? Yeah, like I've been, I've been all over the world at different times. We're in India the year before last. I spent quite a bit of time in Switzerland. I spent some time around Europe as well. And then I would have been over in America a number of times at ⁓ points, but in my career as well. And so I get to move around a lot. But also now that we're in virtual world, it's amazing. get to work with every different culture. I'm very often in a call and there might be five other countries on the call. And that wouldn't be unusual. And I suppose the flip side of that is that every job has the good, the bad and the boring. ⁓ So in terms of your role, And of an average Tuesday, what you know, what is the most tedious boring or ⁓ about the job that you have. don't like much, ⁓ is a bit sad, the does of grind at you. I am doing a lot of it takes up your evenings, it takes up your nighttime. You are there in a hotel on your own. my final question for you is that, there's a lot of noise the role that AI play in the job market now and into the future. And I get a sense that people are nervous about the types of ⁓ third level courses they're going to pick or the whether or not they're going to move companies for fear of the impact AI may have on certain industries. Does AI play a role in your job today? how you see your job being impacted in the future? Someone is listening to this and saying, she's kind of like the sound of being a consultant. ⁓ And maybe that's something I can work towards. how do you that role being impacted by AI in the future? ⁓ Like it's funny because we formed this consultancy roughly when chat GPT really released ⁓ properly. And I'd looking quite at the space and ⁓ I talked to our partners said, actually, we have five years to do because after that, it's gone. AI is going to take it over. And I've since reflected on that, that's not true, So we use it all the time, But what it does for us is it makes us quicker. It means that we can actually give to a client we would have been. So before, would have taken me ages to get presentations together, to get taught structure, to get documentation together. Now I can use AI to of accelerate that. So I use it, like, basically it's ⁓ part of the work that I do on an ongoing basis. My role and AI are working together all the time. That will continue. I was actually a talk yesterday and they were talking about, human in the loop. And somebody reframed it in a lovely way. They said, not human in the loop. It's actually AI is in the loop. And it needs to have human is it's human led. We're just being assisted by AI Now, in saying that We don't know what roles are going to exist in two years time. But I don't think it matters. Do something that you're good at. Do something that you think you will be interested in. And then it will figure its way out, even if you're ⁓ using AI, you're going to be arguing with it. You to be able to argue with it properly. You need to be able to structure your thinking and college is going to be about is about building a muscle there's lots of different things you could do that could be interesting, could be engaging, that you're good at. You're exploiting your talents. You're getting better at them. All of those are incredibly attractive from an employer perspective. when we're hiring, I look for somebody who has worked and who has experience. ⁓ I was working in bars and hotels. it meant I could talk to people. I could engage them. I could understand them. it meant I could deal with difficult situations as they arose. These skills that are relevant for every single job that you would do. And that's the bit that you shouldn't underestimate and say, well, like I need to pick this job ahead of this job. You just need to work and to do stuff. when I think AI, it doesn't replace You also need to have a critical mind ⁓ when looking at what it delivers You're working with leading companies who are in this space, growing and their businesses. I don't think it's something to be afraid of. I think it's something that we just need to harness, hold the reins on and ensure that we are the ones that own it and use it rather than the other way around. Like if I was to advise anybody is to try and understand it. That's really, really important is actually understand what it can do. be curious around it and experiment. So, yeah, it's interesting times ahead. It is interesting times ahead. Pat, thank you so much for joining us today to help translate your career, Pat. I really appreciate it. Thanks a million.