Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Funny how sometimes a few hours of reading can cleanse my too-busy-analyzing-and-thinking-and-wondering mind.  And remind of my favorite parts that seem so forgotten in a world that sees too much hurting and not enough....carefree days.  Maybe it really is about choices.  That we can choose for it to be easier.  That we can be peaceful and fun and just enjoy.  That going to work can mean learning and exceling.  That being with friends means laughing and forgetting your worries.  That there are people who truly think we're great and we accept that love as willingly as it's given.  You know, things like that.  At least from my own reflections I look back and think of myself as a young child as being very grown-up and responsible.  My family needed a strong personality to take care of them.  They needed someone that would speak up for them.  And that was me.  At five.  Not that my mom wasn't good, 'cause she was, it was just something different that I did.  I guess she took care of the "family," but I tried to take care of her.  It's kinda hard to explain.  And that probably continued until 14-15.  I went away to school at 16 and I think I learned a little bit of how to let go of taking care.  I learned to hold hands with my friends and have that wonderful relationships that teenagers have with each other...where you want soooo badly to trust and love each other and all of your emotions are new and exciting.  And you believe that those feelings are going to last forever.  And then 18-22 was a transitioning phase of realizing...maybe you really shouldn't trust everyone, some friends are temporary, some people are really different than you and are awesome and you should open yourself at least hearing/listening/thinking about what they have to say.  And then I moved away and had to pick what pieces of myself I wanted to reinvent and keep the same and I feel like I did that based on what I thought whoever I was around at the time would like.  What would 'cause the least amount of a voice/difference.  In the three years I've been away...how have I changed?  I'm certain that I'm less trusting of people.  I'm less giving of myself in general.  I get angry more quickly and it's less of a "five minutes of mad and then I'm fine."  I'm less directly honest.  I don't like any of those changes.  I'm 25.  I should be young and carefree.  I should be willing to trust people even if the risk is getting hurt.  I want to laugh and be fun to be around.  I want to make the world a warmer place.  I shouldn't think of being "sweet" or "nice" as insults.  So, my goals are to work back to the pieces of me that are gone that I miss.  :) This sounds more dramatic than it did in my head.  Mostly I just feel good and clean.  Comments11:40:00 PM

Matt Goyer talks about interviewing at both Microsoft and Amazon. Here're his interviewing tips Be well prepared, study hard. Buy books. Talk to friends. Aggressively pursue interview opportunities. They rarely come to you. Make sure you can perform well with little to no sleep. Know what they want. Then show you have that. Enjoy the game. Contact HR if you haven't heard from them (see JC Oct 6). Be enthusiastic. No two interview experiences are alike. Prepare for anything and everything. Research shows that the interviewer makes up their mind in the first thirty seconds that they meet you. Don't have a cover letter. Be honest with yourself and your interviewers. Comments7:29:06 PM

HP Ad mentions Blogging. Douglas Bowman took a picture of an HP billboard in San Francisco. It asks: "You Blog, Don't You?" [The Scobleizer Weblog] Comments7:27:49 PM

SOA up, process down. At the same time as building up a service oriented architecture, enterprises need to equip business managers to take ... [Loosely Coupled weblog] Carey believes there are five key elements required to successfully embed a culture of BPM and improvement into the organisation: "Process, procedures and governance — excellence can be achieved through operational discipline without being too restricting). "Communications, which Carey calls the number one core competency. "Relationships — managers must understand the importance of working with and around people) "Accountability — a core competency of leadership. "The process — quality management process, which means always remembering to keep the business vision and the client in focus Comments7:27:08 PM

I took an IQ test today and the results said: We can tell your Intellectual Type is an Insightful Linguist.  This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind. Comments7:02:18 PM

Sometimes I get in the pettiest mood.  Everything bothers me and makes me feel slighted.  That's stoopid.  I gotta stop doing that. Comments4:00:36 PM

Actually, here's a great list of articles on Change Management.  Comments10:49:38 AM

One of my friends said I should go into Change Management, so I've started doing some research.  Here's a  list of tips from Fast Company The job title on Chris Turner's business card simply reads "Learning Person." "It's like 'citizen of the world,'" she says. "Ultimately my hope is that people in all parts of XBS will see themselves as Learning Persons." As nonhierarchical as her job title sounds, Turner's role at XBS is that of "chief change agent." Here are her nine lessons for would-be change agents. 1. Be open to data at the start. "Even if you think you know what you're doing, chances are you don't know what you could be doing. Open up your mind to as much new thinking as you can absorb. You may find different and better ideas than the ones your organization started with." 2. Network like crazy. "There is a network of people who are thinking about learning organizations. I've found you can get in touch with them easily. People say to me, `I can't believe you talked with so-and-so! How'd you do it?' The answer is, I called him." 3. Document your own learning. "People in the organization need to see documentation for their own comfort. The smartest thing I did was to create a matrix of ideas from leading thinkers. I documented two categories of thinking -- the elements of a learning organization, and the pitfalls to avoid." 4. Take senior management along. Turner's own education included benchmarking trips to Saturn, Texas Instruments, Motorola, General Electric, and other companies known for their innovative approaches to learning. "Some of the people in the senior group were very skeptical," Turner says. "It helped to take them on these benchmarking trips to show them other companies that were actually doing some of the same learning practices." 5. No fear! "You've got to be fearless and not worry about keeping your job." 6. Be a learning person yourself. "Change agents have to be in love with learning and constantly learning new things themselves. Then they find new ways to communicate those things to the organization as a whole." 7. Laugh when it hurts. "This can be very discouraging work. You need a good sense of humor. It also helps if you've got a mantra you can say to yourself when things aren't going too well." 8. Know the business before you try to change anything. "I don't think you can do this work if you're just a theorist. I've been a sales rep, I've been in a marketing job where I worked with the operations side. So when I go about the work of creating a change strategy, I already have an understanding of the people in our organization and what they do." 9. Finish what you start. "I made a list of change projects we'd started and never finished in the past. We called it 'the black hole.' I determined early on I didn't want to be part of a second-rate movie." Comments10:47:50 AM

© Copyright 2005 Rebecca Schwoch. Last update: 2/8/2005; 2:15:08 PM.