Start With Why 📔

This line resonated with me as manipulations are widely used in marketing and sales. There are the typical manipulations such as lowering the price, fear tactics, running a promotion, peer pressure, or making promises to influence behavior. While these manipulations are effective, the effect is temporary. You play the short game instead of the long game.

The term "value added" turned a light bulb on in my brain. In working with installment products that include promotions, there are also associated "value added" fees. I never knew why we used this term until I read the above line. In addition, a business requirement such as "the merchant needs to have these "value added" fees configured" informs what we code and design. Therefore, this further stresses the importance of understanding why we're using this terminology and how they're associated with the products we're building.

A good mentor of mine came up with the term "harvest hunting" as opposed to using the commonly used term, "cold calling". I appreciate this perspective because the point of harvest hunting is to find your wells of companies that align with your mission (your why). Instead of making 100 cold calls, seek 10 companies that share the same goals/values that your product seeks to accomplish. That way you intentionally invest your time into potential partners.

In 2022, I conducted interviews for expanding my team and finding potential candidates for 2023 internships. I evaluated each interview using the following criteria: 1) Can they explain their thought process? Which was more important than arriving to a working solution. 2) Do they have a curiosity for learning? 3) Are they someone that I want to work with every day? From my internship to full-time, I've consistently been a culture champion as I truly believe that it's the people who make the work both fascinating and enjoyable. When you get to work with folks who create an environment that I would describe as a group project where each person is that one member who does all of the work, the learnings and experience is invaluable.

In a group setting, I naturally find myself sitting back and listening to the exchange of ideas. I then create visuals in my head to understand how all of the ideas relate and what we can start building off of the ideas. In any meetings that I conduct as a tech lead, I strive to ensure that every voice and idea is heard.

A mentor told me that she jumps into things head on yet she acts with intention. This resonated with me because you have to try yet still be conscious of the choices that are being made. I feel this is important because you can only go so far theoretically. There's going to be a part where you have to take action and gather all of the learnings you can as the actions continue.

I had read about psychological safety in the past yet hadn't fully experienced it until I started having monthly 1:1s with skip-level leadership. By knowing that leadership has my back and is invested in my career, I feel more empowered to take risks that have both the organization and culture in mind. For example, we were looking to create a FAQ Slack bot for one of our live support help channels. I was curious about how Slackbots were built and eventually took it upon myself over a weekend to build a slackbot that would reply in thread with an answer with a list of 10 FAQs when a person posted in the respective slack channel. While we didn't launch this slackbot, we found a team that already had a slackbot that supported our requirements. The awesome thing about this is that this solution would fit for all teams as they would only need to have a document with their FAQs and the id of their live support slack channel.

An example of how I identify with this is in my practice of improvisational dance. I enjoy exploring the different options of how one movement can lead to the next. I also set an intention such as "What if you kept the movement flowing instead of creating hard stops?" and "What if you encompassed the feelings of the song only? Or the beats only?" that starts of the movement exploration. These "what-if?" questions inspire my curiosity to try different options and also not stop until there's an outcome that I'm satisfied with.

In reflection, it was great to compile all of the points that resonated with me whether it was through advice that a mentor has shared with me or personal experiences. I was finally able to understand why I had the energy to dance at 2AM in the night and also be able to apply these learnings in my career. In addition, I also learned some vocabulary and added it to the bottom of this post for reference. If you've made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read as I hoped you got something from this post as well. Happy reading!