|| Some Career Decisions

5. Career decision and change moment and learning (life event story #1)

There were two important capital one career change moments.  Both times I re-programmed my work and life routines to learn new skills for the new jobs.

1) in 2007, I started supporting the credit card acquisition business and felt a lot of pressure for not being able to have a fluent business conversation.  People are so smart, they effortlessly talk about the financial market, competitive products, credit turns.  Will I ever become one of them?  At one time, I finally started paying cable TV because I want to watch CNBC and Bloomberg.  I'm also cutting back on my redundant routines so that I could read more books of the Americal political and financial structures, history and etc, that's how I trained myself to be jumpy and intellectual in conversing business and financial topics.

2) fast forward into 2012, I took a new job supporting the bank business, and immediately the pressure was mounting as I met with people with diverse backgrounds, eg. the card legacy vs the bank culture.  Analytics drive business decisions, but business results require motivating people at their heart to take actions.  Will I ever be seen as a people leader?  I prioritized my times towards understanding humans and adjusting my problem-solving approach with more context, more storytelling, more inspirational conversations, more empowering.  I cut back on the desire of knowing the tactics or the details of from A to B or simply knowing everything.

As human beings, we learn in our lifetime.  When there is a will, there is a way to learn.  At times, they require some hard work, trade-offs, awkwardness, getting out of the comfort zone.  The efforts always pay off.  It's always the brighter side that is waiting for us.