Becoming a beaver
Having heard it and experienced it enough times that writing helps structure through and gain clarity, I am using this space to help me reflect on my first three weeks at MIT (the mascot being a beaver). The impressions are many. Too many to get them all on paper, and to even have a chance to retain them. What I do want to do, is reflect on my emotionally most moving experiences. I am reflecting on the time period between Jan 3rd and Jan 26th 2024.
Getting to know the other students of my cohort:
I am impressed, humbled, and excited at the same time. Having the first bonding session over python code at 8pm, two days into the program, gave me a feeling of belongingness to a special group. My classmates are incredibly smart and dedicated. For me, there is a constant oscillation between having imposter syndrome and feeling smart. In hindsight, at work from a pure logical “smartness”, I lately have felt a bit complacent. Within my cohort, I am concerned about simply being within the average. Honestly, I have to step up my game here. I need to become more precise with my speech again. Being in a managerial position where I was also the domain expert has been a valuable experience, but I am happy to move on. Seeing my classmates confirms that.
We all have met in an exciting time of our lives, and have gotten very close already. We have been embedded in an environment dedicated to learning where everyone in our class is an equal, regardless of background.
Investing time in the Gallup / Clifton Strengthsfinder:
For those who do not know what it is, here’s the Wikipedia link. I have not taken the assessment seriously before, though the fact that the people at MIT have continuously highlighted the value of interpreting the outcome made me curious. Therefore I spent additional time, understanding the strengths through watching Youtube videos about them and it gave me a lot to think through. Which, at the point of writing is not complete. My top 5 strengths are Learner, Restorative, Relator, Consistency & Achiever.
Being a Learner and Achiever did not overly surprise me. By investigating what being a Learner means though, I have gotten the conscious realization that learning can be fun. Instinctively, I always knew that and acted upon it. But when getting asked the question: “what do you like to do for fun”, learning was not part of the answer. Learners (i.e. me) are also prone to get bored quickly if nothing new arises. Seeing learning from this angle makes me slowly understand why I don’t find a lot of other activities engaging. E.g. some of the students here went on a ski trip last weekend - and even though I could have joined it did not sound exciting to me (note to myself: “it doesn’t excite me” - should become part of my repertoire to decline plans). I already went skiing before and the activity in itself is not enjoyable enough to do for the doing’s sake.
Being Restorative caught me off-guard as I had no intuitive understanding of what that meant. A note I made about being a Restorator while investigating was: “Repairing - brings you energy. You take something that is broken - and bring it back to life. You’re not really a maximizer: a maximizer brings something to new heights, a restorative person likes to fix something that is broken“. This puts into perspective, that I have always felt unsuited for creating / coming up with new ideas - but am rather a “fixer” of things. The drawback is that a Restorative person tends to want to fix everything around them. That matches well with a realization I had during one of my leadership courses at work. My subordinates were approaching me with an issue and my first gut action was to take ownership of the problem and try to fix it myself. That basically leads to a line in front of my office, with my subordinates handing over their problems to me. Great for them, as they no longer had an issue. Bad for me, because I just received 5 more issues to solve. That certainly lead to almost burning out on my side.
Consistency was the other strength that surprised me. A quote from one of the videos was: “It’s what we do consistently that shapes our life - you find what works and repeat what works.” When I heard that, I through: “duh, why would you do anything different?” and I had a good laugh with myself as I was a fish trying to see water. As a typical consistent person, I care about having a good foundation built, in my case being reflected in my absolute aim to train my people well. As a consistent person, I tend to lead out of a position of applying the same rules towards me and my subordinates. That makes me lead from a place of being equal in some sense. It’s something we learned in military leadership training as well. The principles of “you don’t expect from others what you don’t do yourself” and “leading by example”.
Realizing that Supply Chain Management is not my main interest:
Paradoxically, having heard many supply chain leaders talk about supply chain management, I slowly realized that SCM for me is solely the agent that let’s me continuously learn. My Learner strength is so pronounced that I have chosen a profession where I can quickly pivot between subjects and never stop learning. This realization makes me re-frame my daily life activities. What struck me, is that I find many activities interesting at first, though after trying they quickly become uninteresting. This tendency will likely keep me from going into a fully specialized role, as it would quickly become boring to me.
Emotionally, I have to understand which activities I enjoy because of the “learning”, and others that I enjoy because of the “doing” process. Listening to music is one of those I enjoy doing. Running obstacle courses is another and I could see dancing, going to a shooting range, or volunteering potential others. And maybe those are just enough. Maybe I have been too occupied searching for things to enjoy, that I missed finding them. I question now whether I am the same way with people. Always looking out for “new”, looking for the excitement of novelty rather than enjoyment of the existing.
A final thought: I do feel like I am getting my energy back. The move to America prior to the move to Boston made me an executing machine. I know how it is to just do, and do and do while making sure certain boundaries are kept (enough sleep, certain rituals, physical exercise). Three weeks into MIT I’m getting back to making progress on reflection, getting back into writing in this Blog - something I haven’t done since I became a people manager.