New company - week 9. Too fast, balance and direct impact

About a month has passed since the last entry. What now? How did it go from the frustration and patience talk?

Calm down

My upper manager (commonly called "boss" but I'm no fan of this word) was right and even gave me one formal feedback with some bad as well as good news.

Wait, what? Already? Dude, how? Yes. Slower. Calma. Breathe.

Ok. let me explain.

As said in my previous post, my professional scope has changed quite a lot. Being in a new context, I wanted to show my value asap. So I on went to apply the (intense) rhythm I used to have at my previous company. But this time, I did not have that many direct and side occupations, so my energy went straight ahead into my project and team.

It used to be something like:

10% here, 35% that, 10% this, 5% aqui, 15% on this, 10% here as well, and 15% over there.

To something like this:

30% ON THIS (too much), 40% ON THAT (too much as well), and 30% HERE.

With "this" and "that" not requiring, by far, this much. Confused? This might not have been the best storytelling. Let's go try again.

On the project side, I started to learn as much as possible about the topic, from formal external regulations to the current state of the product, IT development, and UX designs. Testing the feature on the app in production, testing the same feature onto competition's apps, analyzing every Figma file from the UX team, reading through dozens of presentations found on Drive... You got it.

Then on the team's side, I wanted to organize rituals, gather channels, create new ones, start 1:1s, get a clear vision of all the tasks for the current quarter deliveries, and know about what my team members were doing (yes, I might have gone back to micro-managing without even realizing!). I even caught the flu, not the crazy one, and kept on working while tired real good, with almost no voice and a nose full of non-glamourous things.

Well. Done. Me. (sarcasm inside)

I ended up scaring my team, showing the wrong things to do, and working while sick. Something I had been fighting against for years, telling my reports to take care of their health first of all.

Two things.

1. As said above, I guess I wanted to show that "I am good", and prove my value.
2. The previous way of working I knew, was not the one to apply to a new context.

Bad thinking here. But you learn when doing things and making mistakes. And once again, writing this down helps a lot to rethink my actions and improve upon them.

Wait. It has been all bad since your last post?

No. Hopefully not. I got some good feedback as well and among other things not really relevant here, I was able to have a good impact on one aspect that can be tackled within a short period of time: hiring.

I wrote about this already on this blog but will repeat myself. Once you have a strong experience in this domain, the good thing is that you can apply this straight away in a new company. Just adapt your pitch to the new team, project(s), and context and you are good to go.

Ok. Almost two months in. How's the feeling?

Very good, though odd at first. I have a balanced rhythm during the day, not jumping from one meeting to the other, and have time to breathe and think.

Tasks are coming naturally. My knowledge is increasing, as well as my scope. But little by little.

I exchange a lot with my upper report and will shortly receive a new team member.

I also keep on writing down as much as I can, organize my files and folders for my team, project, and hiring topics, and ask a lot of questions to my peers without being overwhelming.

Oh, and my Spanish is improving. Yup, true story.