Friday, February 25, 2011

Task 1 Completed

My application to the Many Voices Event is signed, sealed, and delivered.

SO.FREAKING.BUSY

I'm busy both at work and outside of work. I've been occupied every night this week. Monday with my Prince concert. Tuesday with Toastmasters. Wednesday with laundry. Thursday with Calculus and tonight I have a work event. I have to come in to work tomorrow for the same work event. On top of that I have an application for the Many Voices at Stanford event due today and I haven't yet set pen to paper to figure out what intellectual diversity I bring to the student body. I've got to figure out something to do with my mentee on Sunday. Monday I've got an MLT assignment due. Tuesday I'm giving a speech at Toastmasters and on Wednesday night I'm off to UVA. In the words of Prince, LET'S WORK!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Purple One: Prince Concert in the Bay Area




Last night I finally got to see my favorite artist of all time live in concert -- PRINCE. I missed out on his last US tour because I was studying abroad so when I heard that he was coming to Oakland I was amped. The man puts on a great show. I thought about getting a long purple coat and a frilly top to wear to the concert but didn't have enough time to get an outfit together.

Typically when I go to concerts, I spring for the cheapest tickets, but I went all out and got the 2nd cheapest option this time (lol)! We were still in the nose bleeds but not in the very last row like usual. The opening act was a classic funk musician Larry Graham and he killed it on the bass. Now I know a little bit of how it feels to have been at a Parliament-Funkadelic concert back in the 70s.

In between acts, my boyfriend went to the restroom, and he comes back and says "I got tickets to the lower level." I'm thinking he's joking or someone is playing a joke on him, but as it turns out there were too many empty seats in the lower level so the box office staff started giving out lower level seats to folks in the nose bleed. I knew the seats were lower level but I thought they'd still be towards the back of the lower level. I got to the section and started trying to find my row. I kept walking and walking and walking until I was 5 rows from the stage! Freaking awesome! It was like my dream come true. The only thing that could have made it better was Prince asking me to come up on the stage and sing Little Red Corvette with him.

As I said before, the man puts on a good show. He is full of energy, still has a great voice, and knows how to work a crowd. His back up singers were awesome, too, and Sheila E was great. He sang lots of his old hits: Cream, Controversy, If I Was Your Girlfriend, Purple Rain, Scandalous, Uptown, Raspberry Beret.... He also sang Adore! I was surprised he didn't sing at least one other song from Purple Rain, but I was pleased with the song selection. I was reading some comments on reveiw articles and some were disappointed that he didn't sing Erotic City, 1999 etc... There were a few of my favorites that he didn't sing, but to be honest the man has so many hits that we could have been there all night jamming. He did a good job of integrating enough songs from the various areas of his discography so that everyone had their needs met so to speak. Hell we got a performance from Sheila E and a surprise appearance from Carlos Santana and the entire show was like 3 hours.




All said, I loved it! I'm thinking of going again if he does a show in LA.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Management Consulting may not be for me after all...










One of the early activities in the MLT program is to take a career assessment survey. I've taken one of these years ago at my first job and was surprised at some of the assessment. I thought for sure it was going to peg me as a soft spoken person who is very detail oriented, but when I got my results the survey pegged me as a pretty gregarious person, with a big picture outlook, and who is not afraid of making difficult decisions. Not surprisingly, the assessment said I wasn't a very good listener. I remember the line verbatim, "Be careful in a meeting with her. She may very well appear alert and attentive but she is probably not listening." lol

The organization also had an expert come and talk to us in more depth about the assessment and the guy said based on my profile that I'm probably more reticent when I first meet people and that I'd make a good people manager due to my honesty, and my eventual outspoken-ness but that I have to work on warming up to people faster. That was five or so years ago, and the assessment was pretty spot on. Fast-forward to now, I have a hard time dealing with details, I'm known in the department for being honest and pointing out potential weaknesses in our strategies, and I enjoy talking and being the center of attention.

This recent assessment hadn't changed much since then. It still pegs me as someone who is outspoken and honest, someone who has a hard time listening instead of talking, and someone who prefers to deal with the big picture. The survey also says that my top values are monetary gain, autonomy, innovative thought/strategy, creativity, and ability to pursue interests outside of my career. In addition to the career profile assessment, it gave me a list of careers and a score on how much I'd like the work. What surprised me is that I scored a 96 in venture capital (I'm thinking this is due to my affinity for innovation) and only an 88 in Marketing.



What surprised me was the 37 in Management Consulting. I'm assuming I scored low in this area because autonomy is one of my most important values.






That said, I should probably conduct some informational interviews with management consultants. I'm not going to strike it off my list of possible career avenues just yet, but the assessment has me thinking more seriously about brand management.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Career Goals & My Performance Evaluation






It's time for our annual performance evaluations and I finished evaluating myself today. It's interesting doing this in light of my B-school applications. Going through the process of evaluating myself and setting clear cut goals for the next year was much different this time around. The goals I set for next year are much more clear, concrete and specific and I can't help but wonder if that's attributable in any way to the B-school application process.

Firstly, one of my goals for next year is to be promoted from associate -- something that I've been told is improbably if not altogether impossible. In the past, I've been far more calculating and decided to play nice and go about getting a promotion the traditional way. With my sights on B-school, I'm kind of throwing caution to the wind and going for the gusto. I do wonder how my manager is going to react to this goal. She might try to get me to change it before I submit it to HR, but I'm going to hold firm.

I've identified specific areas that I want to develop: my communication and negotiation skills. I'm very good at public speaking but I notice at meetings that when I speak extemperaneously it's difficult for me to articulate my ideas in such a way that gets me buy-in from the others in the meeting. I've also never had to negotiate a deal before and this is a skill I need to hone if I'm going to be an effective leader.

In addition to setting clear quantifiable goals and identifying areas where I need to improve, I also came up with some projects and initiatives that will assist me in getting to that end and will (if all goes according to plan) positively impact my company.