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Janina Lieser
Head of Product @ Pivotus Ventures. Excited about customer experience, product management, design, fintech & innovation

Things I have learned this week

The first and most important thing I learned is that I should write about what I learned! Many thanks Diana Kimball for her inspiring presentation at the Facebook Women in Product (#wip2016) conference earlier this week. Have a look at Diane’s original post that lists the benefits of this approach — I won’t repeat them here.

I am acutely aware of how easily I get excited about something new and then my interest just vanishes, so let’s hope this is not a one-off ☺.

So here the things I learned:

  1. The importance of writing

Diana Kimball‘s presentation that I just referred to didn’t just cover the importance of writing about what you have learned, but writing in general. I loved hearing how being out there in the open actually opened so many doors in her life and allowed her to express herself and connect with others. But she wasn’t the only one that talked about it this week. I also had the pleasure of meeting John Rampton and hearing his story. He made a career out of blogging and having opinions, he build a business (due.com) and within less than a year managed to attract 50,000 small business customers. Partly because he is awesome, of course, but a large part was because he knows how to influence, where his target audience is and wrote compelling content. Writing and expressing my own opinions has always been something I shied away from, despite being pretty opinionated. But 2016 shall be the end of that. So apart from taking this up, I also volunteered at work to own our Comms strategy (which is basically none existent) and make sure that everyone knows what a great place to work Pivotus Ventures is and how exciting the things we work on are.

2. Recognizing that being a woman in the workplace is different

As mentioned above, this week I had the honor and pleasure of attending the Facebook Women in Product conference. I was rather skeptical to be honest, as I always am with events like this. For the longest time in my career I didn’t want to be seen as being different or wanted special attention — even though that is what unfortunately you get. I wrote a blog on that earlier this year…

The conference was inspiring for me in many ways — I loved not only hearing the personal stories of the women on stage, but also was amazed how strong, confident, and articulate they were. I have never been at an event where the caliber of speakers was so high. It made me want to be better, aim higher, and get to a position where I am on stage and share my own story, just like some of these amazing women did:

During Sheryl Sandberg’s speech she asked all the women in the room to stand up who ever said that they would be CEO in their company — even if it was just to friend. The number of women who stood up was pretty low. Sheryl talked through some of the reasons why and a lot resonated. Women often feel they are not good enough (imposter syndrome) and aren’t ready for the next step. Something I have battled with all my life as well. Constantly doubting and questioning my abilities. Nothing ever being good enough. Finding it hard to be proud of my achievements as I always see the opportunity to improve things. Sometimes you need to realize that being good is much better than what others achieve. Sheryl also asked the audience to think of a stretching goal and work towards that. Mine was giving a TED talk one day. When you read the next learning you will understand why…

Another fascinating presentation was by Facebook’s Global Head of Diversity, Maxine Williams. She talked about the biases even women display towards other women. Always judging women or other minority candidates more due to the fear of a minority candidate not working out reflecting badly on you. We expect them to be twice as good, while other candidates just need to meet the criteria. Maxine also talked about the power of diverse teams and how a diverse candidate will always bring a different perspective and hence enrich the conversation and thought process.

3. Ignoring fears will help you achieve the seemingly unachievable

This week I also had to be on stage myself — moderating a panel discussion at Banking Disrupt. Giving presentations and being center of attention is really not my thing at all and preparing for this event really stressed me out. I spent an insane amount of time researching, preparing my presentation, practicing etc. But despite what everyone tells you about practice making you perfect, it still doesn’t help with nerves. I tried a few tricks that I learned the day before at the Facebook conference around embracing a positive mindset, e.g. by attempting to turn my nerves into excitement to have the opportunity to present and looking at funny cat video and pictures just before the presentation to make me happy (a failsafe method). The outcome? I survived. I personally thought I was average at best, but the feedback was good. Which yet again highlighted that my own perception of my performance doesn’t always correlate with everyone else’s. I realized that my fear of making a fool of myself stops me from attempting things. I was actually hoping I would catch a serious cold to have an excuse to not present… In hindsight I can only laugh at myself.

I had a similar learning in a very different situation over a month ago when I climbed Half Dome [in Yosemite National Park] in a rather quick 8h and 50mins. I nearly didn’t go on the hike, out of fear of not being physically fit enough (despite working out 6 days a week) and dying while attempting to scale the cables. Again, I survived, it wasn’t a big deal — I wasn’t even sore. The lesson learnt is that if you try, you might surprise yourself.

4. I hate networking

Having been to two conferences this week I realized (yet again), how much I hate forced networking in big groups. While I love 1–2–1 conversations, I hate the awkwardness of a big networking events — working the crowd, pretending you need a drink to just escape a dull conversation, subtly joining an existing conversation without looking creepy, feeling the need to move on from a way too long conversation because you think everyone judges you if you are seen with the same person too long, realizing that you forgot the name of the one person you talked to and really, really liked and have no way of digitally connecting with them. Despite all that, if you endure and at least try, you will meet some fascinating people and it offsets the pain. I am grateful for all the connections I made this week…

That’s it for this week, I felt I actually learned a lot more, but this post is already way too long to capture anyone’s attention. ☺

Until next week!