Tag: throwback

Being the new kid…

I have an interview next week! I’m trying not to get ahead of myself but naturally my mind has raced ahead to what the first day at a new job might be like.

My last first day was in September 2018 and it was not what I had expected. The culture at Walgreens at that time was that when you introduced yourself to anyone, you told them how long you had been with the company. And my team was all very proud of how long they had been with the company. It was a little bit intimidating because I was the first person to come from outside Walgreens in a long time and to be honest, they were not as welcoming as they could have been. There were also a couple of people who weren’t selected to be promoted into my role so I get why they were less than thrilled to meet me.

However, I’m always in it for the long run. It might have been a slow start but about a year later, my team was MY team. I’m a firm believer in getting the lay of the land and figuring out how people/processes/systems work before I make any pronouncements about making changes. That way, when I initiate a change I know where the pitfalls might be and I don’t make changes that just can’t work because of systems or process constraints.

I think you need to know why things are the way they are before you try to change them. I also think this is something that too many managers don’t do. Managers, Directors, VPs, CEOs – too many times they make pronouncements about change and they don’t take the time to understand how things got to where they are. I understand business urgency – but if you don’t know how things really work, how do you really know how to change them for the better? This is my BIGGEST business pet peeve. What’s yours? Tell me in the comments!

Throwback to skills training

I filled out an application for a job yesterday where one of the job requirements was the ability to present to multiple levels of audiences. That made me think back to my days at Young & Rubicam in New York. 

Y&R had a fantastic training program. You went into the program the day you started and you left it the day you left Y&R. At the beginning, my training was purely focused on the skills needed for the job. So as a Media Planner, it was all about media math and the mechanics of media planning/buying. But when I was promoted to Senior Media Planner (all of about 4 months after I started), the presentation skills workshop I was required to take, is branded into me.

LOVE this!!!! Practice is really important.

Presentation skills was multiple weeks of sessions on how to speak without being afraid – nervous is one thing, but the point was to take fear out of a presentation. We had to prepare multiple types of presentations – demonstration, persuasion, establishment of facts, etc – and they video taped us each time.

It was PAINFUL watching the tapes while the entire group critiqued you. But I learned so much from going through it. Amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone no matter how humiliating it could be in an isolated moment.

Later in my career, I worked at Bates USA on the Wendy’s account doing field marketing. I was responsible for as many as 20 franchisee co-ops local advertising. So I presented A LOT. The presentation training I received at Y&R was one of the reasons I was very successful in that role. 

I remember presenting for my Wendy’s franchisees once in Indianapolis. The group was in a ballroom at a hotel and I was presenting competitive information at the front of the room. The unfortunate thing was that I was directly under an AC vent that was just blasting – and I was wearing contact lenses. As I presented, my contacts were getting more and more dry. I was fighting my way through it but about half way through my presentation, a lens peeled right off my eye. I felt it going and stuck a hand out to catch it. As I caught it, the second one peeled off as well. So I’m standing in front of about 50 people holding my contacts in my hands, blind as a bat. The room burst into laughter and we had to take a quick break for me to find my glasses and continue. I probably was as red as a tomato but in the end, we all laughed – and my franchisees teased me about it for a long time. But that taught me I could get through ANYTHING in a presentation. 

Have you had any odd presentation experiences? Tell us about them in the comments!

Resilience

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a physical therapist. We had a neighbor with cerebral palsy and the work the physical therapists did with him was amazing. So in high school, I volunteered in the PT Department at the hospital where my Dad worked. I thought it would give me a better idea about the career path and maybe get me credit for observation hours when I started college. 

But then life happened. My Mom passed away when I was 17 and my college plans got a little messed up. I decided to go to the branch campus of Ohio State for a year rather than going away to school right away. And in that year, I decided I would rather study business and go into advertising. So I transferred to Bowling Green State University and got my degree in Business Administration.

The point is, life for me rarely goes to plan. My current “corporate hiatus” certainly wasn’t in the plan. I thought I would work at Walgreens until I retired – after all, they have a reputation for people staying there for their whole careers! But life had other plans and here I am surfing the job boards once again. 

I am resilient – I just need a new employer to see the value in that.

Disney 100

What is the point of being on a hiatus from the corporate world if you don’t have the occassional fun day? So today, I’m off to the Disney 100 exhibition in Chicago.  What a great Thursday Throwback for me!

I love almost all things Disney – although I haven’t been to DisneyLand yet. I need to work on that! Here’s the link to the the Disney 100 information – if you’re in the Chicago or Kansas City areas, you might want to check it out now too!

https://disney100exhibit.com/

Disney100: The Exhibition invites guests to step into ten magnificent and imaginatively themed galleries, where moving stories, unique interactive installations, and behind-the-scenes glimpses will take them on a journey through 100 years of The Walt Disney Company. There are ten large and imaginatively themed galleries with renowned classics from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Encanto (2021), including the latest members of the Disney family – Pixar, Star Wars, MARVEL, and National Geographic. Celebrate the magic of Disney with timeless stories and memories through the visual, audio, and interactive elements of Disney100: The Exhibition.

Feeling like a kid…

Last night, I went to the Illumination at the Morton Arboretum. Walking around looking at the lights and drinking hot chocolate will sure make you feel like a kid again! It was just beautiful!

As a kid, we didn’t have anything like the Morton Arboretum near us. But every year, we drove around town in the evenings to see the Christmas lights put up on various homes – it sure puts you in the holiday spirit! My favorite was always Dr. Herman’s house – he lived in a big 2 story house with a big porch and on the roof of the porch, he had Santa flying the sleigh with all the reindeer. I wasn’t the only one that loved that house – people in town had a Cat’s Meow figure of the house created that was sold in a shop downtown! And when the house was finally sold, a condition of the sale was that Santa and the reindeer would continue to be displayed every year. So Santa has been on that house for more than 50 years! Here’s my Cat’s Meow figure:

I’m enjoying my blast from the past – what makes you feel like a kid again? Leave a comment and tell me!

Thursday Throwback

Part of processing being laid off last week has had me thinking about when I was at my happiest in my career. The thinking being, to shake off the sadness over the Walgreens lay off and find what makes me happy again.

I think my happiest years career-wise were the years I spent at Midas. Big brand – tiny marketing department. It was my first client-side job and while I was hired because of my media and field marketing experience, the tiny size of the marketing team let me get involved in almost all aspects of marketing. Boundary lines between roles and even departments in the company were blurry. There weren’t silos.

Even though Midas wasn’t always a well managed corporation during my tenure, in the later years under our last CEO, we flourished. We got serious about focus, used hard data to guide decisions and put our franchisees/customers first. And it really paid off with 8 straight quarters of amazing growth. Maybe it paid off too well since it resulted in the company being bought out – but I’m thinking I need to get back to that kind of place. Encouragement for out of the box thinking, no silos, customer first. Now I just need to figure out if that kind of place still exists – and how to get my foot in the door when I find it!