One Friday afternoon my manager comes into my office and mentions that on Monday the Site Maintenance Director will be coming to the building to do a meet and greet session.
He asked me to be prepared to discuss everything that I had done so far that led to value creation.
His request totally blindsided me! I was not prepared to talk about my projects yet alone share the value that they would create!
I was terrified because even though I had made some great progress, I hadn’t formally documented anything. I spent the entire weekend putting together a summary of all of my projects and included the potential $ value. This was the highest-ranking Maintenance Leader for the entire division and as I’ve learned, you only have one shot to make a great first impression.
Fast forward to Monday, the Director came into my office, and we made small talk for a few moments. He eventually asked me about the things that I was working on. I generally spoke about the first project but quickly transitioned to my presentation. I prepared more than he had expected, and he was surprised that I actually developed a detailed summary of my projects and their associated value opportunity.
Needless to say, I KILLED it!
I learned a valuable lesson that week, always be prepared to share your value.
Ever since that experience I keep a portfolio of every project I’ve created value on. It’s easier to update it once every several months then it is to get caught off guard.
Here's an example:
