I Love It
I had the company holiday party this evening. I’ll start right out by saying, I am usually reluctant to go, because once I get there, I tend to feel uncomfortable. However, by the end, I’m having a great time.
There are a couple things I noticed this year, with it only being the second one that I’ve attended.
I suck at mingling. It’s true. It’s a major weakness that I simply must overcome. How does one do this? Well, by attending more mixers and holiday-like parties of course. Oh, and watching the people that are good at it helps too.
One thing I am good at — when I get talking about my job and what I do with someone that holds a significant interest, I am totally jazzed and off in another world. This happened tonight with some visitors from our German office. I am so pumped about 2006, and the roadmap and plans that I have been working on with our CTO, I want to shout it from the hilltops. I want to tell everyone what is in my head, that I want to execute on.
Have I made some mistakes thus far? Absolutely. But, it’s not the end of the world, and I’m recovering.
There’s one thing a mentor I have at work told me, "we’ll always take talent over experience, so you have nothing to worry about". Wow. What a great thing, eh? Well, it’s true, if the person you work for believes in the same thing.
I’m learning a lot of exercising patience, and how that can help. I’ve been reflecting quite a bit, and I love using this blog to do that. I also have learned to take every opportunity that I can to talk ad nausea about my passion - the product I am currently the Product Manager for. This, of course, has to happen regardless of what some folks may have on the horizon; they are out of your control. As per my previous post, just freakin’ execute. Nothing else matters. Line things up, bang them off. Boom - boom - boom - boom. Before you know it, you are the de factor answer for a lot of things in an organization. I’m on my way there, but need to get over this "maturity" hump and simply realize that at the end of the day, I need to do what I do best, which is my job.
I love what I do, and have incredible passion for it. I enjoy getting really detailed and talking about the finer points of Product Management. I need to have the patience to take things as they come and do what’s best for the organization. In my case, market-driven products are were it’s at, and I gotta say - I’m becoming a better Product Manager every day of the week.
Man, I love what I do.
