Finally Back! - Be Prepared!

Yeah! I am home! And I learned a bit of something about being prepared!

It was supposed to be a quick 3-day trip. You know, Carry -On Luggage only. In and out! Didn't work out that way days kept being added while I was out and I ended up being on the road all week.

It is really tough keeping up on a blog while traveling so I started to try and write ahead, but then the trip kept getting extended...vicious circle!

While I was out on a trip to our subsidiary, I was sent to corperate in order to make a presentation to our CEO on a new program I started...one on one (plus my Boss in attendance) for a 1.5 hour meeting. It is pretty rare to get 30 minutes of his time much less over an hour so it was great that he thought enough of the program to block out the time.

Here are the couple great lessons from the trip:

• Winner's Want the Ball - If you have a chance to present or show off an accomplishment, take advantage of it. I had the call where my Boss could have pitched it and I could have come home. No one would have thought the worse for it. But I wanted my face associated with the program. If the the program fails it is my fault, but if it works it is my credit. Risk=Reward
• Know your Stuff - 1.5 hour is a nice way to say grilling about each point and had I thought through this and that. He brought up great angles I hadn't considered, but I could answer 99% of his questions quickly. I studied and knew my material
• Prepare - I went over my presentation...oh...47,000 times :) And guess what, 5-minutes before the meeting my Boss changed the order of the presentation to better match how the CEO liked to review programs. This was great as he knew the audience, but since we didn't have time to discuss it, I had to flip the page to see what was next! But...I knew the material well enough that I could roll with it and it came off better!

Results:

I have lots of follow-up to do, but we got great comments from everyone, and the potential of expanding the program faster! On top of it, as a bit of a surprise we got tickets for the NCAA tournament and saw a game last night (UCLA and MSVU)!

Take the risk...you're worth it!