Monday, March 08, 2010

Well, I survived the first week.

Well, I survived the first week.


What can I tell you about where I'm working?


They move FAST. Really, really fast. The corporate culture is a combination of cheerleader squad and programming moles. What dose that mean? It means every new hire is expected to send out an eMail introducing themselves to the 100+ other employees. (I finally did it this morning.) Everyone is chipper, and cheerful, and NO ONE says anything bad about ANYONE. (Well - except I had lunch with my boss of Friday. She rocks! We have the same attitude and humor. Clearly we will be the two outliers to the cheer-leading team.)


Already a few people have commented on my high energy and positive attitude. Which is a good thing. The high energy is easy. That's who I am. The positive attitude, well - I mean, I am a cup-half full person. I'm willing to give people (and processes) a chance. But NEVER saying a bad thing about someone? This worries me. I have a good friend who encouraged me to stay "a little bit in the background" when I started (totally paraphrasing her words btw). To keep my stories to a minimum and focus on the company. I can't say I've succeeded (*sigh*), but I am TRYING to keep my mouth shut (not succeeding) and not say anything negative about people in general.


The other thing I've come to realize is this particular job tracks all time in 15 minute increments - AND 60% of my time must be billable hours. So far in my professional life I've never had to track time or have my activities evaluated as "billable" or "overhead". I've decided I'm just not going to worry about this. BUT I am also giving myself stern lectures about not getting lost "in the details" - and not looking at projects and requiring small things to be perfect. This is ALSO not my forte. But we can all grow and improve, right?
All last week (and the next two weeks) are training classes on how to use the tool we sell and setting up our database. There are two other new hires from my department in these sessions PLUS three new salesmen. Next week will be all in-depth implementation process training. The week after that, we start shadowing a mentor. On 4/13 I give my first webinar. By the end of April I'll have given 7 webinars. In many ways they are different and easier than the webinars I created for my old employer. The content has already been established. There are written scripts to follow. They (the departmental team) has already outlined the data content - and I think there are going to be fewer pieces to manage. (In the other webinars I managed sound, 3 applications, a web browser, PLUS the webinar tool and a crazy phone/microphone setup.) We had a literal pre-flight checklist to go through to make sure everything was setup right. Here - I'll only be managing one 1 application and a phone. Plus - they've already established the checklists.


I guess that's the other thing I've noticed. It's a department of women. Very cooperative women. They have vast amounts of check-lists and resources and are very happy to share them and pass them around. Which also means the eMail volume is HUGE. Thankfully on my first day I started setting up eMail rules - and so I feel like I'm on-top of the deluge with non-critical eMails going directly to sub-folders and not overwhelming my in-box. 


So - that's the report post week one. 

1 comment:

Mamie said...

Sounds challenging and transformative. I know you'll do great. I sympathize about the tendency to say too much. Fortunately, my "boss" will tell me to can it. Then we laugh!!

Hope it's a great week for you.