Cracking-the-Safe: dubious activity or the route to Global Shapers?

04 August 2015

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CLICK! Another turn… CLICK… one more… CLICK!! THAT’S IT!! I’M IN!!… Or something along those lines anyway! Crack-the-safe; the crazy, addictive, exciting, frustrating and challenging introduction to Global Shapers 2015. My name is Jerome Roberts, and I was one of the fastest safe crackers in ARCADIS – I wonder if this should go on my corporate CV? Or will it make some clients, like banks, nervous? In any case, safe-cracking skills resulted in me being lucky enough to secure the Golden Ticket and a place on the prestigious ARCADIS Global Shapers program along with 99 other very talented Arcadians. So what happened? What events led us to this point where I am writing this blog post and (hopefully) you are reading it?

So the safe was cracked. I knew I had been quick… but how quick? A scan of twitter and messaging many of my fellow Arcadian safe-crackers gave me hope! Maybe I was in the top five, only the first five would be in with a chance of winning a place on the scheme… but alas I couldn’t spend the rest of the day finding out! I was meant to be studying as I was sitting a masters exam the next day and had to get back to the books… but there it was… nagging away at the back of my mind; was I fast enough? Did I fill in the form correctly? Who else has cracked it? What IS systems theory? … no wait, that was definitely to do with the exam! Anyway, enough of that, I sat the exam and came back to work… and waited… and wondered… and tried to work.

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I was also in the process of changing commission and signing up to sit a professional competence qualification whilst this was going on and, sadly, work kept distracting me from thinking about Global Shapers. This was the state of affairs when my Head of Client Service came to my desk and said he wanted “a chat” in a very stern, slightly “you-have-messed-up-badly” sort of tone… needless to say I was now franticly thinking about what on earth I had done wrong! And this was my mind-set as I was led into the breakout area on the first floor of ECHQ to anxiously await my fate… Was I to be sanctioned? Sacked? At least it’s a public place, nothing too awful can happen surely! It was around this point I also noticed there were a number of people ‘loitering’ in the breakout area… unusual perhaps… but not in itself too suspicious… and then, it happened! Applause, party poppers, congratulations from colleagues! My immediate confusion gave way to delight as I was handed the Golden Ticket and congratulated on being selected for the Global Shapers program 2015!

So here we are, the beginning of August, and we are our first challenge down. I’m part of an amazing team and I’m already building a global network of talented Arcadians. This is what Global Shapers is about; collaborative global working, excitement, challenge, pushing yourself, learning from others, creativity, and a lot of anticipation for what is to come! Soon all 100 of the Global Shapers will all be coming together in the Netherlands for an unforgettable five days and I cannot wait!

Jerome Roberts, ARCADIS UK, ECHQ

@LondonJerome

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