After my exciting 3 day weekend, it was back to work. It would be the first time I'd be working in the actual office, as I spent the previous week in the mock store environment.

Getting to Work

Since I would be living in Redmond for 3 months, I figured I should learn how to navigate the neighborhood without my phone. Microsoft's HQ is a 5-7 minute drive away from my temporary home, so I figured there was no way to mess up... But MAN, did I mess up.

The first time I tried to take the highway to work, I missed the onramp and took a left. In Hawaii, almost all the side streets can still get you where you need to go. I learned very quickly that it is not the case in Washington, and I was moving very, very far from where I wanted to be. I turned right at the next stop so I could circle back onto the main road.

On the 2nd turn, I braked. Hard. In the middle of the road, there was a bird tearing into the freshly slain carcass of some animal. While counting up the minutes I was late to work, I quickly figured out I was staring at a bald eagle engaging in its first meal for the day. As fascination and disgust battled out in my brain and stomach, I was thankful I hadn't eaten yet.

While I watched it fly away, I confirmed the animal it had slain. In its talon, bouncing in sync to each flap of the eagle's wings, was the leg of a rabbit. After this, I can certainly say that not everyone starts their day with front seats to nature's stage.

Standing Your Ground

This week, I was assigned my project for the next 3 months. I was tasked to meet other people working on different legs of the same product. I made sure I set my first meeting right away, since time was ticking.

My first meeting was with another person on this Career Experience program. His project focused on the deployment of the product, and how to make the process smoother for our in-store teams. Mine was to help our sales teams better understand the product. The goal of our meeting was to make sure that our separate projects referenced each other.

I explained to him how I wanted to lay out the training modules. I would focus primarily on the product sales pillars. He acknowledged that while it was a good strategy, the team should have a better foundation in cloud technology first. He gave me a bunch of reasons that made sense, and suggested that I try to change my training to align with his goal. Eventually, I said, "If teams don't know how to sell it or talk about it, your deployment teams won't have anything to work on."

I reiterated that the purpose of the meeting was to see where we could align. Our audiences weren't the same types of people, so we shouldn't be creating the content the same way. In the end, he agreed.

From this conversation, I began my weeks long journey of trusting my instincts when it came to my project. Not to say I didn't change directions at times. I remained flexible, took the tasks I was given, and stayed firm on how I wanted to deliver the content. I was still in the planning phases, but similar conversations would come up in different forms a few times more.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test

The following week, I needed to attend an event called Impact. Event attendees are individuals from each store who are selected to grow their careers and leadership skills. A pre-requisite to the event was taking a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. The point was to determine your personality and decision making process so you could better lead a team and connect with its individual members.

My results were strange, to say the least. I tested at an ISTP, but I thought I was an INFP. The test allows you to choose what you think you are, after showing you what you had picked prior to the descriptions being revealed. I think that's where I got confused. While I'm a hard introvert, I scored extremely close to the middle for most of the other categories. Cresta, my host manager, is an ENTP. Gricelda, my team member, scored the same and picked the same (ENFP)... I had a harder time with mine.

The next week would have sessions about our types, so I wasn't worried yet. I know for me, the reason I chose the F (Feeling) had a lot to do with the fact that I think feelings are important. If you want to read more about types, click here. It isn't the test we took, but it gives insight to each of the letters, what they mean, and how any particular combination of letters can display a different personality.

Career Development Talk

At the end of the week, Cresta shared that I should talk to a variety of different people to figure out what I wanted to do. She also gave me some people to begin reaching out to. I was excited, to say the least. I like learning about what other people do. We then began discussing my project, and revisiting what my final output would look like.

Earlier in the week, I had pitched to her an idea I had for explaining my assigned product. She said It was a good idea, and to begin working on it. It went under a few revisions, since the first version was speaking to the wrong audience (salesperson). I revised it to speak to the right person (business owner), but also had to redo the video and audio tons of times. Tons. I even sat in my closet to make sure the audio had less echo.

I basically did a long-take screen recording, and edited out all the mistakes to make it appear as if it was one take. If you've ever seen, Saving Private Ryan, you'd see that long takes are complex scenes shot with no edits. My video was nothing like that, but the amount of work for one person was intense. Could you imagine if it was a major production?

Anyway, the video needed to be ready for the Impact training I was attending. Let's just say it took a lot of long nights to get that done on time. After many long nights revisiting the video, I couldn't wait for the weekend.