Week 9- Disciple Leadership

This has been an interesting week.  I've had the opportunity to travel to Italy with my family.  This is a beautiful place and I would love to have more time here. However, this experience has caused me to question what my dream job is.  For the last 14 years I have talked about being a tour guide and traveling the world, seeing new places, experiencing new cultures, and teaching people about these places.  Now I’m not sure if what I originally pictured as my dream job is a possibility.  Not because that type of work doesn’t happen but more that my personality doesn’t fit within that structure. 

I got to Italy and am nervous to explore on my own.  I haven’t learned any Italian so communicating is difficult.  I haven’t done any research of what to go see or what’s available.  Basically, I just got here and didn’t know what to do.  Really bad planning on my part.  I can’t do that in a job.  Is this behavior typical of me in just a personal setting or will I be like this in a business setting?  Or should I change my dream job to fit more of my personality?  I can always do tours of places that I am familiar with- like where I live now.  Or I can build up slowly- start with places that I can at least speak the language. 

There were two questions that I need to answer for myself that I picked up from reading A field Guide for the Hero’s Journey.  At the end of Ch 1 we are asked “How could feeling sorry for yourself prevent you from setting out on a quest?” I need to look at this and see how I need to change to be able to be comfortable to go out on my own.  I need to learn to go on adventures! Take chances!  Step out of my comfort zone a little bit.  Learn how to do things on my own. As I do that, I know that I can eventually get to my initial dream job.

This also leads me to the second question.  At the beginning of Ch 2, we are reminded to “Know thyself… search out who you are, and then you will be equipped to discover your heroic calling”.  I need to answer the question of who I am before I can really move forward in my dreams. Until I do that I can’t really determine if what my dream job is will be something that I will be happy doing.

Week 8- Overcoming Challenges

This week was an interesting week.  We started reading A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey. The book takes a while to get used to the format of and I struggle to read chapters out of order.  But I’m getting it done.  What was enjoyable to me was the video on The Five Whys by Eric Ries.  

The Five whys are all about continuing to ask questions to figure out what the root cause of a problem is.  Mr. Ries talks about how technical problems can be traced back to a human problem.  I find this a lot in the current work that I do.  My job is all about trying to solve problems and issues that come up.  First, I need to handle the issue for the customer at that moment.  I need to figure out if they need a refund and how to do that in an international business.  Most of these issues already have a current process in place so it shouldn’t involve much on my part.  The biggest part of my work load is determining why these issues happen in the first place.  Is it just a on-off glitch or is it a bigger issue that we haven’t seen before?  Once I have that than I have to figure out why this happened and how to it needs to be fixed so it doesn’t happen again.  I am constantly having to ask why all the time, sometimes I don’t think I ask enough.  I don’t get to the level that truly resolves the issues and I need to start asking more whys.  And more importantly I shouldn’t be the only one asking these whys.  This is something that needs to be adopted by the different departments.  Especially when a single issue in one department can cause a ripple and effect many other departments.  We need to work together.

Week 7- Moving Forward With a Driving Passion

This week I was reminded of a conversation I had with a person about what our goals in life were.  I wanted to get a degree so that I could use it to better my career and to actually find a way to do something that I loved doing.  He wanted to make money.  Listening to Guy Kawasaki discuss passion vs. money I realized that

This week I was reminded of a conversation I had with a person about what our goals in life were.  I wanted to get a degree so that I could use it to better my career and to find a way to do something that I loved doing.  He wanted to make money.  Listening to Guy Kawasaki discuss passion vs. money I realized that money isn’t everything and that guy was wrong to put it bluntly.  I also realized that he was never going to be happy.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me: I’m going to school so I can get a degree that will help me no matter what I do; which will some day be something that I absolutely love and where it doesn’t feel like a job.

Him: I think I’m going to get my masters or even higher?

Me: do you need it for what you want to do?

Him: I need it for what I do, but I don’t love it.

Me: so why do it?

Him: because I can make good money.

Me: money isn’t everything.  Especially when you hate your job.  You’ll spend 8 hours a day or more doing something that you hate, just so you can have toys to pay with for 3 hours every night, or less?

Him: yes. Cause I want the big toys- a boat, exotic vacations, nice house.

Me: why don’t you find something you love doing and get a job in that field.  You can make money in any field, you just must work for it and network.

Him: I want to watch sports and there aren’t any jobs that pay enough in sports.

Me: yes, there are- recruiters for colleges and pro teams can make big bucks, sports agents. You just need to work hard in those jobs and network with people.

The topic of networking got us on a completely different topic for another day.  But basically, this man wanted to do everything all on his own, didn’t want to network, and thought life was all about making money. 

Kawasaki’s Porsche was exactly what this man was after, except he hasn’t realized yet that life isn’t about money.  Sure, you can make a lot of money in your life- there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  But how are you going to use that money?  Are you going to use it to have lots of toys that really bring you no real happiness in the end or are you going to use is to better the world around you? I have never been one to strive to make a lot of money.  I understand the importance of having money, but I guess I am one of the lucky ones who don't value money above happiness and doing something that I love doing.