It's Friday afternoon and I am listening to some musicians playing Jimi Hendrix on the beach. They are setting up for this weekend's annual Polynesian festival. There seems to be something going on right across the street every weekend.
I was lucky with traffic and able to get home before 5pm. I try to leave work around 4pm on Friday's as my reward for a week of work where I get in for 8am. This week was tough in that I am hitting my first wall. I don't know about everyone else, but I always seem to hit a period where I have taken in so much information that my head gets cloudy and my productivity drops. Normally this happens in week 6 or 7 (this is week 7 for me). I have grown to accept that this is the way I work, try not to be ridiculously unproductive, and let my head settle.
Work is going well. Chris (my team mate and fellow Merage grad) and I arranged to meet with the CFO next week to discuss our proposal to improve our innovation process. Our discussion paper is complete and sent to the CFO so he would know what we are talking about. The paper looks pretty good. We could have gone into more details with the specific numbers, but at this point we would be making pretty big assumptions and the numbers are only a small part of what we want to improve.
Improving the innovation process in a multi-national, muli-business line company is an incredible challenge. In business school we talk about how to fuel new ideas, good environments for creativity, how to commercialize ideas, but I don't think any school talks about how these wonderful theories can work in any incredibly complex organization. In a one business unit company, its easy to align priorities. In a multi-business line company you have competeting interests, infrastructure issues, political issues, and financial resources you need to structure properly before you can even think about creating that environment. So I am a bit lost for the moment as I try to understand this environment in 3 months which realistically should take me 5 years. This may have contributed to the head fog...
Friday, August 22, 2008
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Working For a Living is Different
After 21 months of working on numerous projects, analyzing processes, making recommendations for a variety of topics and companies, it feels somewhat unusual to continuously focus all my efforts on a single company. The great thing about this is that I will have the chance to make a real impact on my company by gradually building influence for some of my ideas.
To date, my job has been incredibly enjoyable. No large company is perfect, but there are a number of things to admire about Experian. It is efficient, has a nice collection of strategic data assets that few can match, and quality people. They have allowed me to slowly settle in by giving me only one project to focus on. This has allowed me to spend some time getting to better know the business and the company.
I am working on my project with another Merage colleague. We were tasked with recommending and implementing better idea evaluation tools into Experian's innovation process (oddly enough a similar project to the one I did in my experiential learning class). Through discussions with executives we have taken it upon ourselves to also recommend changes to the innovation process. So far, we have received a lot of support for our direction, but I can see a number of barriers that we will have to delicately tip toe if we want to improve this critical process.
It's turning out to be a real exciting project. I am not sure if many MBA's straight out of school get the opportunity to lead a project with such impact across a billion dollar multiple business line company. That makes the challenge fun.
Other than that just enjoying our appartment. On certain days the commute can suck (50+ minutes), but I get home on that patio and look at the ocean, a sense of relaxation comes over me (oh yeah, and its nice to see my wife too).
To date, my job has been incredibly enjoyable. No large company is perfect, but there are a number of things to admire about Experian. It is efficient, has a nice collection of strategic data assets that few can match, and quality people. They have allowed me to slowly settle in by giving me only one project to focus on. This has allowed me to spend some time getting to better know the business and the company.
I am working on my project with another Merage colleague. We were tasked with recommending and implementing better idea evaluation tools into Experian's innovation process (oddly enough a similar project to the one I did in my experiential learning class). Through discussions with executives we have taken it upon ourselves to also recommend changes to the innovation process. So far, we have received a lot of support for our direction, but I can see a number of barriers that we will have to delicately tip toe if we want to improve this critical process.
It's turning out to be a real exciting project. I am not sure if many MBA's straight out of school get the opportunity to lead a project with such impact across a billion dollar multiple business line company. That makes the challenge fun.
Other than that just enjoying our appartment. On certain days the commute can suck (50+ minutes), but I get home on that patio and look at the ocean, a sense of relaxation comes over me (oh yeah, and its nice to see my wife too).
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