Get Laura's Grill On!

I don't get the Food Network here in the UK, but one of the shows is apparently looking for the next great griller to showcase. My friend Laura (a kindred spirit who left a successful career in the IT industry to become a chef) has entered the competition and needs your support...

Click here to view her video (with a decadent but easy recipe for stuffed, grilled pork chops on an indoor grill - the ooooozing goat cheese made me gasp in delight).

And please give her 5 stars and great comments!!!

Ideas for my Career??

A couple of years ago, I thought long and hard about what my 'next job' might look like. My coach helped guide me through the process, and I was able to develop not a job title, but some descriptors of what I was looking for from my work life. I reviewed this recently, and found that while the descriptions still apply, I've never had more than a vague idea about what specific jobs I should be tracking down.

Here's my list, in case anyone out there has any ideas they'd like to share:

- Offers opportunities to create (ideas, products, markets, etc)
- Focuses on solving problems
- Works across disciplines (i.e. science and business) and/or departments (i.e HR and strategy and finance)and/or countries
- Involves building teams and developing people
- Offers flexible day-to-day working environment (i.e. open plan/hot-desk working - if a desk has to be involved at all, something other than a 9-5, Mon-Fri in the office-type job)
- Located close to home (i.e. no train or Tube ride required)

One Red Paperclip

I have to be honest - I missed the whole 'one red paperclip' phenomenon when it was happening. But I was in the bookstore the other day and saw this book about this guy who attempted to 'trade up' a red paperclip in a series of trades for a house. My kind of book, quirky without being too wierd, so I bought it. And I have to say, I'm glad I bought the book rather than witnessed the phenomenon because I like closure and it would have taken a while to follow the story while it was on-going.

For those of you who also missed the event, buy the book. It's a great story, and it touches on a lot of themes that I really buy into and try to live in my life, things like "they can't say 'no' unless you ask" and "if you don't put yourself out there, the opportunities won't find you". It's a fun book, too, the kind that makes you wonder "Why don't I have ideas like this?" and "Would I have the courage to act on them if I did?".

Pet Insurance

I wrote yesterday that my LBS MBA was one of my best investments. One of my other best investments has been pet insurance. It's much more common in the UK to insure pets than it is in the US, and when we first started paying for insurance for our cats, we did question the value. They're housecats, they rarely get sick, how much would we really need the insurance? It was clearer-cut for the dog, who is outside in a city on a regular basis, interacting with other dogs. We were pretty sure she'd be at the vet for some sort of treatments on a regular basis. But the cats?

Last week, I realised the value of the insurance when our oldest cat was diagnosed with a chronic disease that will very quickly shorten her life. It was such a relief to be able to take her to the vet, pay the excess, and then be able to make decisions about her treatment solely on what's best for her rather than what we could afford. It's hard enough to make difficult decisions about a loved one, so much harder to do it while weighing the cost. I have no idea how uninsured people cope, and I'm so glad we didn't have to worry about this with our cat.

To top it off, when I look at the numbers this week with a clearer head, over the years that we've owned and insured the cat, we will have paid less than half for the insurance than what the insurance company will pay for her current treatments. It's been money well-spent.

Half of my pack are insured with Pet Plan, the other half with Direct Line. We've had good experiences with both companies.

FT: LBS MBA is #1

Hooray! My alma mater London Business School has been ranked by the Financial Times as the top MBA in the world. Not just any number or anywhere, but number one in the whole world.

My MBA is still one of the best investments I ever made, and I love that the school just keeps going from strength to strength. Congratulations to everyone in the LBS community!!

Fulfilling Your Potential

I've been emailing recently about career paths/choices with someone who reads my blog. The topic of 'fulfilling my potential' arose, and while I don't want to repeat any of the personal discussions I've been having with them, I do think the generic concept of 'fulfilling your potential' is a good one to blog about right now - especially since it's that time of year when people are thinking about fresh starts and university applications are falling due.

I always find the concept of fulfilling your potential a bit of a mine-field. What exactly does the phrase mean? For example, as a healthy woman, I have the potential to be a mother, but I choose not to do this. Does this mean I'm somehow a failure who hasn't lived up to their potential? I'm sure there are people out there who would say, "Yes", but I don't agree.

To me, the key part of the phrase is the 'your' part. Your potential. Not just any potential, but yours. Which means that you have to make choices, and only you can decide what to include in the potential that you strive for.

Funnily enough, though, when people ask the question, "Am I fulfilling my potential?" they frequently ask an external source. They often (unconsciously) use the question as a way of understanding if they're meeting other people's expectations of them. While I do think it's useful to get feedback from the people around you, I truly believe that noone else can tell you if you're fulfilling your potential.

What I'd like to see is a re-working of how we determine the answer to the question "Am I fulfilling my potential?". It would look a little something like this:
- What are my strengths?
- What do I really enjoy doing?
- How can I use these things to make a difference to myself/my family/my community/the broader world?
- What opportunities come out of this?
- What do I need/want to achieve in my life?
- How do the opportunities I've identified help me get to what I want to achieve?
- What do I need to learn to pursue these opportunities?
- What trade-offs am I making by pursuing or turning down some of these opportunities?
- What impact will these trade-offs have, and can I live with them?

Where I've said earlier that other people can't tell you if you're fulfilling your potential, they can definitely help with this exercise. For example, other people will see strengths you didn't know you had, help identify opportunities you didn't know were out there, and help you weigh pros and cons of your choices.

At the end of the day, you will have identified some sort of endpoint for the kind of life you want to lead that is right for you at that moment in time - your potential. The reason why I say 'that moment in time' is because your potential can change as you move through your life and as your experiences change. It's good to stop and take stock to see if what you thought your potential was 10 years ago is the same as it might be now.

There's very often no right answer for how you get to your potential, some routes just might be easier/faster than others. But as I often say when I'm travelling, if you stay focused on where you ultimately want to be, there's no such thing as 'getting lost', you just see more along the way.

Live My Island Dream for Six Months

If anyone out there has the sort of lifestyle where you can pick up and leave everything behind for six months, you could be living my island dream:

Tourism Queensland in Australia is looking for someone to act as caretaker to the Great Barrier Reef on a six-month contract. Not only do you not need any formal qualifications other than the ability to write blogs and take photos/video, but they will pay you £73,500 and provide a posh place for you to live on Hamilton Island. Click here to apply.

I've been to the Great Barrier Reef before, and it is a little slice of heaven. If it were a permanent job, I'd be sending in an application myself.

Same-Day Dry Cleaning

I try really hard not to dwell on all of the things I loved about living in New York City, but the one thing that follows me wherever I go is how much I miss same-day dry cleaning.

On my way to work, I used to drop everything off, and on my way home that day, no matter how late, I could pick it all up. This included laundry, too, which used to be charged by the pound and would be sorted and folded on my return. Prices were reasonable, and quality was good. It never occurred to me I couldn't get this service everywhere.

As I've moved around the world, my once-very-tasteful wardrobe is now full of wash-and-wear. My main consideration when I'm shopping is not 'does this look good on me?' but 'can I put it in the wash?'. I can't stand the thought of going to the cleaners every Saturday to bail out the clothes that have been sitting there all week since they've taken days to be cleaned and the shop is only open when I'm at work.

Why should my clothes spend more time with the dry cleaner than they do with me??

America Bashing

I've been sitting in meetings recently with international colleagues, one of whom has a predilection for comparing his way of working with the 'hard, aggressive, pushy' approach that his American competitors use. He has a penchant for negatively stereotyping Americans, and is not afraid to be vocal about it. On the odd occasion, he used to look at me and say, "Of course this doesn't apply to you". He hasn't been doing that anymore, which leaves me wondering if he either has forgotten I'm in the room and might take offense or if these statements now actually do apply to me.

As the often lone American in the room, I'm always left wondering how I'm supposed to react. Do I correct it and run the risk of being seen as too sensitive? Do I continue to ignore it, despite the fact that America bashing has become more and more commonplace in recent years?

The other thing that baffles me is that this person is one of the most gender-sensitive people in the organisation. Where he's very supportive of women in the workplace and would never make slurs or publicly stereotype genders, he has no qualms about trash-talking about Americans. Are we now looking at a need for a new form of sensitivity training in the workplace?

'Tis the Season to be...Budgeting???

Anyone else out there trying to get their budgets done before year-end?

I never thought that when I started my new job in August, I would spend almost all of my time with my nose buried in a spreadsheet. But all kinds of things needed to be modelled so that we could try to put a realistic budget in place - the recently implemented compensation structure, target income based on consultant utilisation, profit margins, cost allocations, etc.

Then there were all of the scenarios - the budget for the target income that I thought was realistic based on capacity. The budget for the discounted target income that the Board thought was realistic. The budget for the discounted discounted target income that now seems realistic due to the severity of the economic downturn...

It doesn't help that we budget as six divisions around the world plus head office in four different currencies. In four months, I've generated more than 80 spreadsheets. I honestly couldn't believe it when I counted them all in my folder - I seriously did think for a while that I was over-hyping all of the time I spend spreadsheeting simply because someone's changed their mind about what the spending constraints and priorities should be. That's almost one new spreadsheet for every day that I've been in my job - and they're pretty complex spreadsheets!

Only today have I managed, with the help of my angelic co-worker (who says that working on spreadsheets 'relaxes her'), to consolidate the latest version of the divisional spreadsheets into a single workbook. I'm dreading showing it to anyone because they'll just want more revisions. It feels like it will never end - by the time the budget for FY09 gets signed off, I'll have to start working on the one for FY10.

The worst part of it all is that this is my weakest skill set - I'm in a job where I spend most of my time doing the thing that I do the worst and enjoy the least. While I keep trying to look at it as a growth experience, it just feels like someone out there could be making better use of my other, more exceptional, skills.

If you're looking for a career in management, be forewarned - and take an Excel class!!