It started as a personal identity crisis…

There I am, sitting in a Vietnamese cafe having a regular 1:1 with my manager on a random June weekday in 2022, with tears streaming down into my bowl of Pho as I choked out the words, “I don’t know what I’m doing, I feel like you’re going to fire me.”

My manager was quiet. He stared at me with this look of shock and disbelief. I thought he was going to scrunch his face and say, “What? Noooooo….you do know what you’re doing….You’re a valuable member of our organization … blah blah blah… and please stop crying.” But instead he simply said in a direct, yet compassionate voice, “I don’t understand what makes you say that. You make things happen.” I proceeded to enumerate reasons why I could support my “I don’t know what I’m doing” comment based on the technical definition of my job description, but he stopped me and repeated the phrase, “You make things happen.”

***

Growing up, my friends would brand me as the ‘career woman’. The “Miranda” from Sex and the City. Very Type A, very driven, and very motivated for a New York Madison Ave job. At 10 years old, I decided I wanted to get into advertising because I fancied myself a creative person and I proceeded to make life choices that would get me to a New York ad agency the fastest. Turns out, I have zero talent for visual design (or any design, really) and copywriting, so while I did make it to an advertising agency (not in NY), I had to pivot to project management (in California). During this time, the dot com boom was on the rise and everything was going digital, which was a still a new channel for many businesses, but they knew they needed to have a web presence or become obsolete.

In college, while I came to the dreaded realization that I had no eye for graphic design and copywriting, I stumbled upon a major called “Technical Communication” which focused on tailoring communication based on audiences. Part psychology, part behavioral science, part computer science, part user experience design…. it was magical. To me, I felt like a kid in a candy store.

Through the program, which has been rebranded to “Human Centered Design and Engineering”, I had to learn how to write, code, and use all the latest design programs that supported offline print and online digital mediums. I learned that every person you encounter requires you to tweak your words to match their context, their needs, and their level in order to have productive and meaningful conversations. In a world of business where time is money, the faster you can move someone along, the more you save.

I found myself at jobs at digital agencies working with a team of designers and web developers building websites for customers who were unfamiliar with HTML or WAP protocol. Because I knew how to use design programs and could code, I could tell the team what the client was looking to accomplish in an efficient way. Most of my work was managing current clients and keeping their existing sites updated and operating in an orderly fashion. Turns out that I could get my work completed in one cycle of communication with the team and the customer when others had to spend multiple rounds of back-and-forth emails or phone calls trying to accomplish similar outputs. I didn’t think anything of it, I thought I had a great team that just ‘got it’.

As time went on, I got promoted and started to job hop in the effort of getting closer to my bigger New York advertising gig. Anywhere I hopped to, I got promoted within a year and I attributed it to the fact I always worked with an amazing team or my really strong, pushy work ethic. I was making it happen for myself, I was one step closer to Madison Ave in the big apple.

Then something broke.

Imagine needing to book a conference room for one so you can just sit there and cry. And then setting up a series of meetings to keep the waterworks going. This lasted for 3 weeks. Why was I crying? I can’t explain it – but one random day, the joy of the job…kicking ass and taking names… faded instantly and I found myself just completely hollow inside.

“The job doesn’t matter.”

Clear as day. It was evident to my soul that everything that I had worked for didn’t mean anything. The promotions? So what. The title? It’ll be gone. The work? Who needs another activation plan or onboarding email for an enterprise account? Meh. I chalked it up to a raging ‘time of the month’ and tried to shake it off. Sweets, alcohol, doing more work, doing less work…didn’t matter. My soul was empty.

So I turned to God. I grew up Christian but was more of the ‘go through the motions’ kind of gal. My Lord and Savior? Sure, why not. However, in this time of nothingness overwhelming me, I turned to God and prayed this 3-word prayer that then changed the course of my life: “Lord, help me.”

From that moment, a series of events kicked off that changed the trajectory of my spirit. My soul was renewed in newfound sense of identity. I was not “Cat, the bad ass project management professional”… I was “Cat, a child of God.” I didn’t look at work like a series of projects that had to be managed on time and under budget, but as opportunities to develop meaningful relationships.

I didn’t become a nun, I continued in the same field and continued kicking ass and taking names, but I had a completely different outlook on what really mattered. It wasn’t about dashboards of green and KPI boxes with checks next to them anymore, it was about building purposeful relationships with the team involved to succeed together.

I continued to rise up the career ladder, even though part of me wanted to stay middle tier because it felt safe. I was comfortable now and my soul felt at ease…why change it?

When you think you have plans, God chuckles.

***

So here we are, back at the Pho restaurant where I now have a title that feels too big for me and requires me to have all the right answers to any business’ toughest challenges based on my craft. I felt like a fraud, an imposter. What did I know about any of my client’s true business problems: their market position, their corporate strategy, their strengths/weaknesses amongst their competitors. Who am I to recommend a product roadmap for them? I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to get fired. Someone else could surely do this for them more easily than me, and design it in a better deck with more eloquent vernacular.

“You make things happen”.

These words snapped me out of my mental pity party as my manager went on to explain what he meant by that phrase. He listed out the different ways I was able to convince people to consider alternate paths, move people to action, push narratives forward, empower people to just make a decisions and commit because we can always change it because nothing in this life is ever perfect the first go round. I didn’t give up, I always pushed forward to make progress happen. This I knew about myself.

And that’s enough for this whole site, or even my existence, to exist. Through this journey called life, I have finally realized what it is that I’m supposed to share with the world and it’s not for everyone, but it’s for some. And the some is enough for me.

What you will find on this site:

My purpose is to bring attention to this idea of “Critical Thinking Communication” as a specific communication type or skill. Using simple means such as diagramming or hand motions to communicate, can make a world of difference when engaged properly.

It’s a way of bringing groups of people together in a manner to achieve productive movement in the shortest amount of time needed for that moment. In a world where everything is getting faster and attention spans are shorter — effective and efficient information transfer are imperative. No one likes sitting in meetings or having conversations that accomplish nothing. I was inspired by this idea, or focus, when I attended a Scheidel lecture at the University of Washington, titled: “How we Create Time through Communication”, delivered by Dr. Dawna I. Ballard, Associate Professor of Organizational Communication and Technology at the University of Texas at Austin. It opened my eyes to the fact that using peoples’ time efficiently when involved in teamwork can essentially “create time.” This was the second time I felt the kid-in-the-candy-store feeling. This lecture gave me a whole new outlook on how communicators like me bring value to the workplace.

I am here to help shine attention to this idea of Critical Thinking Communication, and to make it a mainstream idea, so that others out there know they are NOT imposters because they are skilled at something that isn’t necessarily widely documented or part of the professional zeitgeist. Where does “Kinetic Purpose” come into play? It’s an idea that came from this need for the art of communication and its movement of information to be purposeful.