The Ground and the North Star - How Lives are Built

We often speak about careers as if they are linear things. like railway tracks stretching predictably into the horizon. But anyone who has lived long enough in corporate corridors knows this is an illusion. Careers don’t run on tracks. They run on foundations and direction.

Platform vs Purpose: The Two Dimensions

PLATFORM - Is the ground beneath our feet.

Every professional stands upon a platform, whether they choose to recognise it or not. A platform is not a CV, nor the polished confidence of a LinkedIn headline. It is the quiet architecture beneath a life. The sum of six hard, uncompromising factors that shape what we can carry, how far we can go, and how steadily we can rise.

1. Education that shapes your thinking
2. Experience that shapes your reflexes
3. Networks that shape your access
4. Financial stability that shapes your courage
5. Health that sustains your stamina
6. Family and relationships that shape your emotional resilience

A platform is the silent scaffolding of a career — rarely applauded, yet relied upon by everyone who rises. I have seen brilliant professionals with volcanic ambition crumble because the structure beneath them was brittle, unable to bear the weight of their aspirations.

And I have seen the opposite too: modest, unremarkable résumés that unfolded into extraordinary journeys simply because their owners kept fortifying their platform quietly, patiently, year after year.

PURPOSE: Is the fire in the compass

Purpose is not a slogan. It is not the corporate poetry printed on office walls, nor the rehearsed lines that echo through offsites. Purpose is direction in the fog, the quiet instinct that steadies you when the path ahead is blurred. It is the whisper that rises in the middle of a chaotic quarter-end, cutting through noise that spreadsheets and meetings cannot. It is the unseen north star behind career pivots that seem irrational to others but acquire perfect logic in hindsight. Purpose is what keeps you afloat when the waters rise, but also what prevents you from drifting aimlessly when the waters fall still.

A strong platform without purpose becomes a comfortable stagnation, polished but unmoving. And a fierce purpose without the anchor of platform becomes a heroic struggle, all fire, no footing.

The Moment I Got My Purpose

When I began my career in 1998, the capital markets were being quietly electrified—not metaphorically, but in the most literal sense. Paper certificates, floor shouting, the rhythmic sprint of human runners between desks… all of it was dissolving into the cool, humming circuitry of digitisation. The old guard watched the screens flicker to life and dismissed them as a passing fad, a temporary glare that would fade back into the comfort of paper. I knew no better than them, but in the noise of that era, something in me recognised possibility. The world was changing, and I had the instinctive sense that transformation would need people who could straddle both worlds: domain minds who understood the business deeply enough that not a single line of meaningful code could be written without them. I quietly decided I would become that person. The one financial institutions would look for when the time came to reimagine itself.

In truth, I had only the early fragments of a platform then. No pedigree, no powerful network, just a modest beginning and a mind that refused to stop learning. What I did possess, perhaps the only real advantage I had, was an almost unreasonable curiosity and a willingness to take on the roles others avoided. I grabbed the unglamorous assignments, the ambiguous projects, the messy corners of the business. Looking back, those choices weren’t just work; they were the first deliberate bricks of a platform I didn’t yet know I was building. 

I’ve met professionals who say, almost apologetically, “I’m an introvert, so leadership is hard for me.”

Platforms bend to purpose, While purpose without platforms remains poetry.

But no, leadership does not belong exclusively to the loud or the naturally assertive. It rests on platforms that can be built, strengthened, and nurtured over time. The same is true of communication. The same is true of confidence. These are not gifts, they are constructions.

I, too, am an introvert by nature. Silence has always been more comfortable than spotlight.  Yet I like to speak, when it comes to speaking sense, to present, to persuade, because my purpose insists on it.

The Homogenity Paradox.

I studied in a residential school, and along with most of my classmates, from grade 2 to grade 12 we spent our 10 years with the confines of the same school, being guided by the same teachers and trainers in classrooms and in fields. Being brought up under very similar cultures. Yet when I look at the career journey where life has taken them there is hardly any similarity today. Therefore why is that, two individuals having had similar opportunities  end up with dissimilar outcomes in their careers paths in the long term?

Every year thousands pursue MBAs believing it will change their lives.It rarely does, because an MBA is a certificate.

While platforms may be similar, purpose defines as what you do with those certificates. The books you continue reading. The leaders you observe. The problems you volunteer to solve. The humility with which you ask questions

Two graduates from the same class can diverge wildly. not because one is more talented, but because one built a platform and got guided by the right purpose, and the other bought a qualification.

There are non-engineer who outgrow Engineers in technology and engineering firms. There are many influential people I’ve worked with didn’t write a line of code.

Why?

Because they invested deeply in:

• Systems thinking
• Business architecture
• Risk awareness
• People management
• Strategic clarity

While platform sets the right foundation, it's the purpose that tells you where to go, and how far you’ll go. We often admire the success of others as if it were a magic lucky break, a chance meeting, a surprising promotion. But beneath every lucky break is a long platform, and behind every bold pivot is an old purpose. If there is one truth the corporate world has taught me, it is this:

Your platform is your runway. 

Your purpose is your direction.

Your success is the lift you generate from both.