Can anyone help?

As part of our personal review process at work, I was reflecting on the role I am currently working in and how the heck I got here. It really wasn't by design, despite what some people have suggested to me. So what? Well, I think it's worth trying to learn from journey that we travel to get where we are, so I'm going to share what I *think* has happened and see what I might have picked up on the way. Hopefully it's of use to others too.

First things first, a couple of years ago, I applied for a job in our eCommerce Support Team after realising that my old job was doing my head in. After a few months, an email went ‘round the team I was working in: “can anyone help Garry with some slides?” At the time I was working on some excel-based stat fest, but wasn’t really that busy ;-P. I thought it would be fun to do something different...

I wasn’t really sure who “Garry” was, just had him appear at my desk, tell me he was looking for some slides to help articulate the opportunities that lay ahead for Corporate Pensions. I took the text-only slides, added some images to augment the content and make it slightly more visual. The slides were, in the end, still very text-driven, but it seemed to hit the mark with Garry – and with his audience.

The piece of work didn’t lead to anything directly, but was a bit of fun. It gave me a chance to get better at image manipulation, and to learn more about Powerpoint. It turned out that the “Garry” was the Director of our area.

Looking back at it, I guess the lesson I learned was to be willing and do good work. That will ultimately let you enjoy what you do and that you can make a difference having fun!