Strengths Inventory

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Something I've been needing to do is to reevaluate my own strengths inventory. This has something to do with self-knowledge and awareness, which is always a good thing to do, but maybe something more to do with finding a full-time job and getting onto a real career track.

To jump right into it, here are some bullets representing what I think my strengths are:

• Interactive Communications Skills/Abilities
• Communications
• People Skills
• Maturity
• Diplomacy
• Negotiations
• Writing ability
• Personal Affinity/Inclinations
• Crisis Management
• Problem solving
• Execution phase project management
• Customer Focus
• Strategic View
• Integrated, inter-disciplinary viewpoint
• Ability to connect the dots
• General Business Knowledge
• understanding of legal, hr, contracts
• understanding of finance, money
• business analysis, metrics
• understanding of project management methodology (waterfall vs. Agile)

While I want to focus on my strengths, it's instructive to understand what my weaknesses are as well, so that I can avoid, mitigate their impact.

• Long-term, detailed planning activities - it's one thing to put together the broad outlines of a plan, which is more of a strategic approach, it's quite another to deal with all of the little details at the task level. This is where my patience tends to run out. For example, dealing with all of the little details of planning a very simple event like the PMI dinner meetings just drives me crazy. At the same time, it's pretty easy for me to see why it's so difficult, i.e. lack of documentation, lack of standardization of routine processes, lack of a checklist.
• Some level of shyness when in an unfamiliar organization - very reliant on developing situational confidence based on my role - in retrospect, when I came into my current organization, I could have done better with going around and introducing myelf. This is something of a limiting belief issue on my part and is related to my failure to take action and market myself. I tend to get comfortable where I'm at and let things ride.
• Tend to dislike lesser tasks, committments, the small stuff - examples include things like updating SharePoint sites, creating the sensitivity calendar
• Taking notes: this might be my biggest weakness as a PM - I'm adequate at this when I'm engaged in a subject and I understand what the issues are, but if I lack that understanding, it's almost impossible for me to take effective notes.

1-4-2012 Progress Report

1) Two phone interviews in the last two weeks. The first was with Cobalt Group/ADP. The second one was with Tommy Bahama. Both went well, but I thought the Tommy Bahama one went a bit better.

2) Finally got some movement from Expedia. A recruiter sent me a questionairre a couple of weeks ago, which I filled out and returned to him. Haven't heard back from him since, but then again this was over the holidays and Expedia is known to move slowly.

3) Phone interview with a Microsoft hiring manager tomorrow. This guy is located in the UK and since he cannot interview me in person, he wanted the names of my previous Microsoft managers for references, which I provided. I'm not 100% of one of those references, but I don't really think he'll screw me over.

Notes On Creating A Real Blog

I would very much like to create a blog and link it to my LinkedIn account. I think I have some potential in the blogging arena. I'm a pretty strong writer and I have some good ideas and opinions that I think people might be interested in. One of the things holding me back though is learning freaking wordpress, since wordpress seems to be the blogging tool that all the cool kids are using. Wordpress also has it's own LinkedIn plugin, which is helpful. If I want to use blogger, then I have to integrate via Blog Link, a third-party app. Also, even if blogger had it's own app, I don't know that I would trust Google to keep it updated and maintain support. I don't think blogger is a key part of Google's strategy. I don't know who owns Wordpress, but it seems to be fairly well supported, and I'm guessing I would have to switch over to it eventually anyway, so I may as well start with it.

So what should I name this thing? The best blogs seem to have catchy names, e.g. Half Sigma or The Calico Cat.

Two names under consideration: The Spotted Dog and The Emerald Chateau. I don't think either of those are being used right now.

What do I want to write about though? What are my interests? Let's see, HBD is one interest. I don't know that I have much to contribute in that area that is original, but I could see myself expanding on the posts of Half Sigma and others. Media and the film industry is another interest. Books, obviously, both fiction and non-fiction. Mobile Technology is an interest, though not really a passion. Politics, Education, and Economics are huge interests, as is career development and job search. If I ever buckle down and learn Sabermetrics, I could see writing some baseball-related posts. One interest there is comparing the evolution of performance measurement in baseball to the lack of any real progress in the area of performance evaluations in major companies. I could even write about CrossFit and strength training.