One Year Anniversary

July 7th marked the first time in my careers that I stayed for a full year with a company (not including the 4 1/2 years of my own business). To me that one year barrier is quite the personal accomplishment. It either says alot about my happiness at this stage of my life or Experian's high tolerance threshold for my bullshit (probably a little of both).

My first year at Experian has been one of constant change. I was hired as part of a new leadership rotational program. When I arrived, I discovered the head of the department (and founder of the rotational program) had moved on in the company - but was assured there would be no changes to the program. By month 2, the last managerial tie to the department moved on in the company and things began to become more ambiguous. By month 9, I was told that the rotational program was no more and that I would work solely in the Innovation Program. I can say it wasn't the structure I had hoped for coming out of school, but welcome to life in business; You have to make the most of your opportunities and this is the moral of the story I will share with you.

While our program was slowly disintegrating, my colleague (fellow Merage'08 Chris Ting) and I had a great deal of freedom and access to senior leaders in a large multi-national corporation. That is a great opportunity. During the confusion of months 3-8, we decided to start a project advocating an enterprise "social network". We hung legitimacy of the project on an off-handed comment a senior leader made to us in a meeting - That opened alot of doors. We were told that this had been tried a number of times and met with failure. To the credit of Chris and I, we kept pushing the issue (taking the "take action now, ask for forgiveness later" approach). Somehow, the pushing got us audiences with the right people and good buzz with other leaders (Maybe I shouldn't use the word "good" because we definitely ruffled some feathers with our awkward navigation of the political environment). The next thing we know, we were doing a fully sanctioned research project - but we were told it would never get funded.

I would like to say it was due to conviction, but I am sure a lack of knowing better contributed significantly to how we continued to push the project. I remember being told, "you have done good work but I don't seeing us funding it". Two months later the project was approved. Once we got beyond the research stage, we received the help of numerous other key individuals in the organization without whom this project would have died. More credit needs to go to them because often the project moved forward in spite of us as we learned hands on how to navigate Experian's waters. So while we can't take credit for the project's final approval, we can take credit for relentlessly pushing this idea to anyone who would listen and keeping the project alive until the experts got the final approval - and in my first year I will happily take that with all the practical learning.

Full credit also goes our to my partner in crime, Chris Ting. Without whom this project would have gone nowhere.

I guess the lesson is when you start working and work doesn't turn out to be what you had thought, roll with the punches, look for the opportunities, and attack those opportunities.

Now, I am back full time in the science of innovation. I am trying to find the best data to track and evaluate our efforts and finding the best models to move forward the right projects in a complex organization. At some point I will want to be more actively involved in the product development, but for now I am learning alot about the art.