When I started my career as a technology consultant back in 2006 I was awestruck by how much I was learning on the job. My experiences were very diverse. Be it the diversity of the people, technologies, processes, ideologies, methodologies or culture. At that time I was still pursuing my Masters and was overloaded with work and academic obligations. And even though I was in an absolute time crunch I resolved to write down these experiences and observations. I feared that if I don’t write, then these learnings will settle at the bottom of the stack over the years.

 Fortunately, my experiences only became more and more diverse and the stack was constantly replenished. Unfortunately I did not keep up with the habit of writing my learnings. But it is never too late. And so I am picking up that resolve once again. And before I turn 10, (uh I mean, my career turns 10), I want to recount some of those learnings and share them publicly (finally!).

 I was always very conscious of sharing stories from work on a personal blog. But recently I met a fellow Product Manager whose blog has encouraged me quite a lot. I will have to be crafty to hide any sort of associations with organizations that I have served in the past. But that is a small price to pay for writing publicly.

 A few themes that I want to write about are – leadership (my pov as an employee who is always hungry for strong and bold leaders), women in technology (the dark side), managing without authority (matrix organizations and project based roles), getting things done (checklists, accountability and managing meetings) and speaking the truth (rather facing the consequences of speaking the truth).

As always, I would love to receive feedback from fellow bloggers, readers, friends and colleagues.