Organizing my thoughts.
There’s a lot about me, that I have to offer. Finding the sliver of individuals in the world who may benefit from what I already know, love doing and intrinsically want to help with - well, that is the task.
I love to organize things - information, mostly.
I enjoy brainstorming, analyzing, and seeking patterns. Stitching them back together in a simple, illustrative way.
I enjoy facilitating conversations and bringing individuals on a journey. Asking the right question, at the right time becomes an art and a science, to gain alignment, insight and true awareness of the opportunities.
Facilitation. For instance, today at my banking job I led a round-table to gain valuable insights from our sales team, on a new idea we are thinking to launch for our customers. The conversation required priming, details and will require follow through. To go in prepared, and get the most out of the time together, we spent the first 15 minutes acclimating and ‘teeing up’ our goals, followed by some industry data. After which it was time to dig into our opportunity.
We defined our customer engagement challenges on the whiteboard and refined our problem statement with some feedback in the room. From there, we introduced the prototypes and asked our panel to chat with their neighbor for about 15 - 20 minutes, discussing what they saw and if would help address the experience gap.
Based on the feedback in the room, we were able to affirm a few items, make adjustments and satisfactorily create engagement with our participants.
Facilitation is a key aspect of Product Management and one of many areas I can opine on, which may have application for others who are still unfamiliar with the concept. I fell into Product Management before I knew what it was. I’ve applied it to many areas of my life over the years - relationships, kids, work, health - the core concepts have helped me in many ways. Perhaps they can also help others.
Layer on the fact that as a woman in her forties, who is early-post-menopausal, whose kids have moved out on their own, who is recently single, whose dog passed the Rainbow Bridge this past year, who recently in the last year also moved to a new organization / new role in her 9 -5, who in her forties finds herself with an over abundance of interests, hobbies, passions and things to do - could literally talk about anything - for any length of time.
Crypto, or homesteading?
Brainstorming creative or climbing corporate ladders?
Financially wealthy, time wealthy, relationship wealthy.
Marketing, or data privacy?
Archery or guns?
Hiking to smell the roses, or crush the miles?
Carnivore or vegetarian?
Parent or empty-nester?
Investing or Spending?
Roller skating, skiing, kayaking, bouldering?
Time reading a book, or writing a book?
Re-organizing containers, adding personality or simplifying to minimalistic proportions?
Reviving fine art skills twenty years gone, or learning new skills and staying with the times?
Unplugging, staying social?
Meeting someone, enjoying peace, thinking too much or not enough?
Building and fixing things, or finding others that do?
Patronage or divulgence?
So many things - how does the combination of these yield anything of value? Who may benefit from hearing what I have to say?
Before I overthink to oblivion - I do know that systems, structures and processes tend to help - and while I have many thoughts to share - creating a framework - and means to share them, is the first step.
And so, we have this website.
