Upgrading My (Personal) Operating System
This is the changelog nobody usually sees. 😂 A few years ago I sat down and wrote my personal values. I didn’t think much of it at the time, it felt like one of those sensible things people do when they’re trying to become a better leader - and everyone else was doing it!
I've been through so much deep change in the last few years I recently realised that original version just wasn’t me anymore. It's not because the old values were wrong but because they described the person I needed to be at that point in my life.
Looking back, those values were about supporting other people. My values were:
Kindness
Passion
Curiosity
Accountability
Integrity
They weren’t bad values. In fact, I still like them but they reflected somebody who measured success by how much they could carry for everyone else.
Over the last few years something changed. Actually…Lots of things changed!
My children became independent, I navigated menopause, the pandemic reshaped the way I worked, my career took an unexpected direction, and a series of professional challenges forced me to question long-held assumptions. Through it all, I finally started to understand my neurodiversity not as something to overcome, but as something to understand and work with. Instead of trying to work harder, I started designing a way of working that actually suited my brain.
I built a support network instead of assuming I had to carry everything myself. However, the biggest impact was when AI arrived, in my opinion it's the most under rated accessibility tool we have every seen! Suddenly I wasn’t spending hours doing mundane work that drained my executive function, I was using software to complete those tasks in minutes.
One of the biggest upgrades wasn’t technical. For years I thought I talked too fast. In reality, my mind processes multiple ideas at once, and I’d learnt to race through them before they disappeared. AI has given me the space to slow down without losing the thinking. It’s improved my communication, reduced my anxiety and, ultimately, changed the way I lead.
With all of that came a realisation: the values I’d written years ago no longer described the person I was becoming. So I rewrote them not to become someone different, but to describe the person I’d deliberately become.
I now have…
Clarity - How I communicate
Courage - How I lead
Curiosity - How I learn
Agency - Why I teach
Integrity - How I build trust
Two survived unchanged. Curiosity as I’ve always been professionally nosy and Integrity which I suspect is connected to the neurodiversity and inherent righteousness. #ifyouknowyouknow
For fun I also retook a Myers Briggs personality test I’d done years ago. It suggested I’d moved from ENFP to ENTJ - A. Whether that’s meaningful or not is almost beside the point.
The interesting question wasn’t “What personality type am I?”. It was “What enabled that change?” because I don’t think people change in isolation. I think sometimes they finally get the environment that allows them to become more of themselves.
For me that environment included better support, understanding of how my brain works, AI, better boundaries and a growing confidence to stop trying to be everything for everyone.
The lesson?
Maybe we shouldn’t ask people “Who are you?”. Maybe we should ask “What operating system are you still running?” because if you haven’t looked at your values in five years...there’s every chance you’ve evolved without noticing.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more about the practical changes behind this “upgrade”—from AI and digital transformation to neurodiversity, leadership and building Human First Digital. If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear what has changed in your own operating system over the last few years.