This is a bit how I felt walking into Roundedcube on February 1st. Not knowing who was who, what was what or even where the bathroom was located I wondered if I had made the right decision. Was leaving my last job the right thing to do? Fortunately, now almost three weeks into this, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about the whole thing. I’m starting to get the hang of it around here and even know how to make it to work without using my GPS.
When I decided to make the move to St. Louis (originally hailing from the Cornhuskers state) I knew there was going to be some uncertainty, discomfort and change. In fact a friend of mine told me that the reason you feel like the stupidest person at your new job is likely because you are the stupidest person at your new job. For a good couple days that was undoubtedly the case and now I’m regretting the name calling he endured.
In my previous position it was my responsibility to invent the vocabulary, the definitions, the processes, and the templates. Now, even though I’m in the exact same business, a lot of those things have changed. Development…implementation; scope of work…statement of work; tomato…tomato. The map is still the same, we’re all heading in the same direction but the legend is just a little different.
The more I thought about these differences the more I was reminded of Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.” One of my main take-aways from the book was that constructive conflict is a good and necessary thing. If used and managed correctly it keeps us from trudging down the road of “artificial harmony” because, in the end, the real magic, the stuff that separates good from great, really comes from our differences not our similarities.
Now, to be totally fair some things didn’t really change at all. Prior to coming to Roundedcube I spent the last 10 years in the IT/Web world so this definitely wasn’t my first rodeo. That being said here are a few things that made me feel right at home:
- By 10:00 AM more than half the staff is hopped up on coffee, Mountain Dew or some other high glucose or caffeine rich substance
- An almost diabolical sense of competition whether that be in web strategy or ping-pong
- One-half out of their mind in search of an iPad – the other half snickering at the first half because they’ve yet to receive their much anticipated, gold embossed invitation to the “Cult of Mac”
- 50% in favor of the waterfall method, 50% in favor of agile and 0% of customers who really care as long as their projects get done on time and under budget
- Four words…scope creep, change request!
- But most importantly; an amazingly talented group of people that spend their days pouring their creativity into strategy, work items, code and comps then leaving the office to make time with their family, playing music or cheating death on a high speed crotch-rocket
As the new Manager of Client Engagements for Roundedcube I’m really looking forward to meeting with all of you…that is existing and future clients, vendors and partners. My long-time philosophy for every project is that we should be able to (A) decrease costs or (B) increase revenue. If we can’t do either then we’re not doing our job but if we can do both then you’ll want to work with us again in the future. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help your business. You can e-mail me at shane.freeman@roundedcube.com or give me a call at (866) 692-2823 x 102. I look forward to hearing from you!
*EDIT October 28, 2010. We have moved our blog to http://blog.roundedcube.com and you can now comment on this specific post at http://www.roundedcube.com//WhatsNew/Blog/wheres-the-bathroom
