What are the major lessons you have learned from your job?
I spent the most malleable years of my career at my post-graduation, and I’m really grateful that I did. The experience I gained and the skills I learned there have opened doors to many of the opportunities that I’ve had since leaving the company 3 years ago, as well as helping me to manage all the many projects and priorities that I work independently.
These are some of the things that I learned at my post-graduation that gave me better opportunity today
1. You can’t meet (and exceed) expectations until you don’t know what they are
To get straight to business when working with a new boss, and think that we’re being productive. Spending time to judge expectations upfront, however — whether that be in terms of the work itself i.e. which projects are the most important, to find the scope, and so on; or in terms of the working i.e. how you can work most effectively together.
You might dive straight in and try to solve everything you think needs fixing, but that may or may not be happen need to understand the client demand. Justify those expectations at the starting of the relationship, identifying your main areas where you’re going to focus your time and really deliver results, will allow you to deliver the most value while making sure that the client demand you will able to fulfill.
2. Make sure you’re communicate to the same language
Any large company, there is a whole system of words and expressions and those dreaded TLAs (three-letter acronyms) that you need to understand the sequence to be able to communicate. Once you understand, this will give you the easiest way to getting your point across and will ultimately get things done more quickly and in a way that everyone agrees with.
3.How to take ownership of a project
When you are a junior employee your boss or superior will give a task but in superior position, not so much (especially when your own business)! Of course we have our managers and/or clients and if we don’t deliver our projects we’re going to hear about it; but what we’re not going to have is someone leading us by the hand and telling us exactly what to do. We’re responsible for getting the job done in the time that we have and in whatever way we have appropriate
Taking real ownership means being proactive and taking the initiative, staying on top of all the milestones and deadlines, following up with others to get their input, and looking beyond the obvious of what you’ve been asked to do to really deliver added value. (In fact, you may remember that ownership is another of P&G’s top values.) This is the way you will meet you expectations.
4. Your priorities are not important the priorities of the people you’re working with
We blast people with emails, we interrupt them at their desks, and we get huffy when they don’t deliver to our schedules and our specifications. Following up relentlessly shows commitment and drive but what it doesn’t show is emotional intelligence. Your priorities are just that, your priorities! At P&G in particular, the whole organization was built on a system of checks and balances, which by definition meant that each function had a different set of priorities. Finance of course would have one set of success measures, marketing another, and the consumer research department yet another.
5.To execute the task isn’t enough (- the PIE model)
Some specific model were taught at P&G that we weren’t supposed to tell junior managers for fear that they would misunderstand it and change their behavior in their regular advised way. The model was PIE and told you the “formula” for how promotions and salary increases would be applied. ‘P’ stands for ‘performance’ and this is what you’d expect, how well you do your job. There are two more elements, however, which are ‘I’ — ‘image’ i.e. how you are perceived by your peers and most of all your seniors — and ‘E’ — ‘exposure’ i.e. it’s no good doing wonderful work if no one knows who you are or what you’re doing.
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