20 Lessons I Learned During My 3 Years With Oracle

Last month I concluded 3 years working with Oracle in Dubai, I cherished those 3 years because of all the great things that happened and those learnings that I captured in my professional and personal life, so I thought to try to reflect on the key important lessons that I either come to experience in practice for the first time during those few years or at least my perspective on it was enhanced and deepened while working there.

I want to pause before I go further to write a special mention to Rosemary Clancy, my manager, mentor, and friend who had the biggest influence on my experience there.

The main reason that I'm documenting those ideas and conclusions that they would inspire someone one day to help them look forward to a better tomorrow and to be a reminder for me for all the things I came across in Oracle so I can come back to them anytime, now how about we get started!

1) Building Leverage

This was the single most important point experienced in my role, It's all about giving a hand and serving others even sometimes if this doesn't fall under your KPIs and not trying to ask for anything in return, do this with no expectations, help with your heart and you will end up being a member of the corporate community that is trusted and respected and everything will follow from there. Building leverage is an art in my opinion and ofcourse it must be balanced with staying focused on your success in the role you are doing but in the long term, building leverage will be one of your greatest assets.

2) It's Which Leader You Follow

Your manager is going to define roughly 80% of your experience with any organization, a good leader will make you a leader even if you don't manage officially others, a good leader will teach you things, will open up the doors for you to go and conquer, so it's not which company you work for as much as its which leader do you follow especially at younger stages of our careers, your manager doesn't have to know tactically how to execute your role better than you but a manager has to know how to grow you, put you where you fit and invest in you, a good leader would create the environment for you to lead a great life at work and as a result, this impacts even your life outside of work.

I was quite lucky with having a great leader during my time at Oracle and it was a huge factor of my great experience and learning at the company and enhanced my understanding of leadership, if you find such a leader that's a great opportunity especially at a younger age where you are building your core competencies and skills so always go for the choice of an opportunity with a good leader before considering other factors.

3) Consistency - Consistency - Consistency

"Consistency would win over sharp skills on any given day"

Now sharpening skills is needed and essential but without consistency, it can fall behind, if you have two team members, one with exceptional skills and not consistent and another one with "Okay" skills but consistent, in the long term the one with okay skills will be able to preserve more relationships and build a better reputation and trust with stakeholders.

4) Own It

It's such a liberating mindset when we understand that it's all down to us and what we do that can change the situation that surrounds us, there is no perfect company, nor job but we do have the choice of going all-in and making things to the better every day, bit by bit, however, we can choose to blame certain reasons and I'm not underestimating those conditions, in lots of cases they are real but once we understand that it's only us who owns the responsibility of our own success then the focus becomes super narrow on "What can be done to make things better today?"

Another meaning for "Owning It" is when things go not in an optimal way, and if it's my responsibility then it's my mistake, I'll admit it, I'll apologize for it if it had a bad impact on others and the business but most importantly understand how it happened and how it can be avoided in the future, and don't go shy or try to hide it because sometimes this leads into even more mistakes, so if mistakes happen, own it, admit it and move forward.

5) Communicate Often, Openly, and Effectively

I'm more focused here on the written and visual communications, in today's corporate environment, you will be working with lots of people that you will need to influence and in some cases, you don't get plenty of time with them so we all need to master preparing perfect communications that go out in various situations while you are preparing something, working on it or reporting its results, this gives your work and effort a whole new level of visibility which is a good tool to progress forward, learning and practicing the simplest things like writing the most compelling emails, newsletters, presentations, making simple designs that summarize your ideas is going to be critical in helping transmitting your ideas into other people minds whether to get their approval, buy-in or participation, that's why it's important to take care of the quality of your communications and also it's frequency, it's better to have a balanced frequency that's not too much or too little to keep a share of mind whether if your focus is internal customers or external.

The way I have seen this is that If I'm preparing anything and I mean almost anything I consider this as something that's going to be presented to our CEO, now this mindset is not only about the visuals but it's also the motivation that I always want to drive great sustainable results that I would be proud of to present to anyone even the CEO and if I will, I would communicate those result in a compelling and exciting way to capture attention.

6) Pick Your Allies

"If you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together" It's almost impossible to do things in the corporate world alone, having a supportive manager is ofcourse the first asset but you will need to build connections and allies within your team, your organizations, and even outside it, meaningful connections is a great asset and help you solve lots of situations, so keep in mind that it's useful to build a relationship as much with all your interactions, the diversity of your connections inside the organization is also very impactful because it extends your influence to wider audiences so don't focus just in one silo or team that you interact with daily.

7) Do Things That Makes You Scared

If things you are doing is not making you worried in a healthy way, then they are not big enough in your eyes, so it's important to have part of your work that you perceive as something strategic and big at least for your role and for your success, this will keep your interest in the role because it means you still have challenges to solve and at the end of a year or two or maybe more you will great success stories to tell when you had a good percentage of your work going on things that you believe has driven a significant impact to the business so in my opinion don't do things that will keep you at the job but rather do the things that will show you can do an even bigger job, and even if we failed while trying to do this thing what better way to learn and grow.

8) Macro Patience, Micro Speed

This one is crucial for me, I always had this argument inside my mind of how to balance between being patient and looking at the macro image from an eye-bird view but also stay connected to the details and the hustle of executing daily on the ground with speed, so I heard this sentence and it was really powerful for me "Macro Patience & Micro Execution" which means you go micro-focused on trying to do whatever you can do in the day but being patient with the results and looking into it from a macro perspective where the pieces start to fall together so don't be patient with what you can do but be patient with what can happen as a result of what you are doing, so do your best today and know that it will lead to a better day tomorrow but be patient in expecting the results but ofcourse audit on your direction and have some guidance to ensure that you are moving into the right direction, I want to give credit here to my hero Gary Vee whom I learned this concept from.

9) The Butterfly Effect

"Something as simple as a butterfly wing movement in one side of the world can trigger a set of events that evolves to a hurricane on the other side of the world"

You never know which small actions or events would drive into a significant impact all these small, tiny steps and course corrections lead into the big picture looking beautiful and that's why never underestimate a small action or bit of progress.

One time, I was planned for delivering onboarding training for a wave of our new hires that was really exciting for me because it was a large number and I check the profiles and it looked like a great opportunity to win new players who support the business practice that was my responsibility to drive among the organization, I think the invite went out to around 20 people and maybe around 17-18 people accepted it and I prepared a lot for this workshop.

On the day of the workshop only 2 people showed up and after I started another 1 joined and we had 3 people in total, I felt a bit frustrated and I felt that something went wrong for all these confirmed attendees not show up and I started to think what maybe I didn't do right, I still delivered my work at my best abilities for sure but I wasn't feeling at my best, little did I know that those 3 will end up being ones of the most active and impactful team members in my program and my work, and two of them became 2 evangelists that gave amazing success stories that helped inspire many other people across the organization with their excelling progress in the area that I was leading.

10) Lead With Empathy And You Will Win

We are all focused on our KPIs especially in a corporate world but if you want to win people and business for the long run don't forget that you are collaborating with humans and learn when it's time to be empathic with someone that might be causing slow progress with something you are working on because of some conditions that they are going through.

If you understand someone is passing through a rough situation or a hard time, try to be the person that made their day just a little bit better and they will never forget that, and if you want to show empathy it has to come from your heart otherwise it will not be believed so I think the key here is really feeling the empathy to others when they are facing hard times because this makes it easier for you to understand them and be able to offer any help if you can that will help them recover faster and the desired business outcome faster with no or reduced shortcomings

Empathy is easier to say than to be felt, it really needs one to genuinely put himself or herself in the shoe of the person in a situation, and it becomes harder to be empathetic for those you are far away from so getting close to people make it easier to be empathetic with someone.

11) Leadership Is A Choice And Not A Tittle

You can lead a project, a change, maybe a new idea in the business without being a manager to anyone but with a positive attitude, winning people, standing by your beliefs, helping others, and showing ownership people would want to choose willingly to support your direction and follow it, age and seniority won't matter, leadership is partially a nature in the persona and partially a mindset and actions that you can apply in any role at any capacity and it starts by learning more about how to influence others positively which is the hardest but yet the most effective and sustainable way of leading because you would have no authority on others.

12) Volunteer As Much As You Can

It's the things that you don't need to do that gets you to move forward faster, helps you build more connections, and allows you to see things that typically others in the same role or seniority might not have the chance to see, volunteering to do this extra project, opens up new paths for you to learn new skills and widen your understanding for the business, almost all the people whom I have seen progress and achieve things in their career are those who went the extra mile with things that maybe weren't falling under their responsibility but the benefits you get out of this adds value to you in so many different ways.

Volunteering can have many forms as well I mentioned above the example within the core business but also you can volunteer with CSR programs within your organization or also volunteer outside your organization individually and all those forms are going to help you in several ways

13) Trust Is Earned Hardly And Not A Default Setting

It's the key to building relationships with anyone starting with your manager to your teammates to your customers and stakeholders and it becomes much easier to achieve trust once we understand it's not a given and people should work hard to earn trust by offering real value consistently and not being offended or taking it personally when they find themselves in a situation where they are dealing with new people and there isn't great trust in what value they can bring to the table, focus on how to showcase and prove the value and the trust will follow organically but also keep in mind that trust can be lost way easier than how it can be hard-earned so maintain it by being always transparent, open and consistent.

14) Pick Your Fights

In a corporate busy world with daily interactions with lots of teams and individuals, you might come across situations that you don't find ideal, but how you respectfully disagree plays a vital role in defining your personal brand with others you work with, also learning to prioritize what should argue on is important, don't let your aim for perfection let you hold every small detail in your collaboration with others and learn to balance perfection and high-standards with the progress of work, but always remember that the objective not to do confrontations nor feeling good about proving your point but the objective is to do the right thing for the business.

ofcourse I never meant compromising quality or ethics or staying silent in the face of red flags, but I meant to understand that we can't object to everything that we don't fully agree with because by doing this the objections themselves become less effective, it's better to know what is impactful and argue and challenge that when needed.

15) What Value Do You Bring To The Table

It's super important to first understand yourself what kind of value can you bring to the table with those you work with whether internally or externally and it's even more important to communicate this regularly with your audience and actually focus on delivering this value that sometimes others wouldn't understand until it's delivered and impact the business not only once but several times and it's completely fine and normal for that to happen.

It's important that you work on auditing and altering this value through time with every changing business priorities and audiences that you are dealing with, what might have been really valuable last year might not be that value to your audience this year and that's when you will understand you need to optimize the value you bring to the table and will keep you relevant to the business and your audiences, part of doing that is staying on top of things always trying to stay updated because this allows you to fit the value you bring to the most recent and updated snapshot of the business and how it operates in your environment.

16) Have An Outside Perspective On Things

It's very helpful to have this neutral eye that would be relatively outside your picture that will see things sometimes differently and offer you the advice, this can be through a mentor or a friend whom you trust their perspectives on general paths, such a person won't be influenced by things you know which actually might be a good thing for a fresh perspective that drives new ideas to you, I was lucky with having this perspective also during my time at Oracle and it made a significant positive impact on me and my ability to go around situations and challenges and how to drive forward

17) Different People React Differently

In many situations at business we need to influence others, this might be customers or internal stakeholders but it's very impactful to always remember that humans beings are remarkably unique and each person has their own interests, triggers and motives and based on that we have to understand that different value propositions and communications approaches has to be followed in order to achieve maximum reach and coverage as what might attract and convince someone might not be the same for another, some people wants recognition, others wants to feel that they are working on a big challenge, others focus on the financial rewarding of something they would be involved in or maybe the likely hood of the involvement in something in advancing their career, so understanding that means that we got to be as close to our audience as possible and be able to articulate our messaging and value based on what matters the most to them, sometimes this involved individual 1:1 understanding of people when possible and applicable ofcourse.

18) Don't Confuse Movement With Progress

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where a certain business direction is being pushed for the business interest but while trying to join this strategic direction and contribute, we got to ensure that we are trying to do is not just activities that shows contribution but also a meaningful progressive step that leads into achieving something,

Sometimes we must pause and try to audit if what is being executed is making progress towards the bigger objective and not just highlighting activities being executed.

19) Work Backwards From The Day You Will Leave

The day you leave the role or the company, the legacy you leave is what would matter the most, that's why I feel that when we start a new challenge we might want to think about how we want to be remembered when we leave it in the future, and based on that you would decide on your approach, It's a great motivation knowing that one day you will be handing over this responsibility and role and till then you want to give your 100% constantly in order to be proud of the legacy you will be leaving behind once you move on to a new challenge, It's a good mindset that reminds us that time is finite and we want to be as impactful as possible during our time in a certain team, role and a company and remember that a big part of this legacy you will be leaving is the impact you have done in the lives of others around you and this can be anyone you have been engaging with during your time at this role.

20) Run Towards Your Work Not Away From It

The mindset to working behind great things that drive us forward is the right growth mindset that gives us fulfillment in what we do and the reason that makes us excited about waking up every day, sometimes for various reasons we can feel demotivated but I think the best resolution to that is to go more into our work or if we feel we have delivered our value and it's time for taking on a new challenge then it's time to do it but it's never the solution to try to do the bare minimum to get by even if the environment around us is allowing this but it's us who gets our growth slowed down, for sure we need to balance this with our personal life however I believe we should never stop trying to find the spark in what we do and even if there are things that we don't then we should work towards making things better even at the smallest scales.

That's it for me, I wanted to leave memory notes that I can go back to and remember my great time at Oracle with, and I hope you would find some value in this, I would love to know what you think about those points as well.

I will miss my presence in this place a lot, but I will always carry with me the great memories and connections that I have made there so to all my friends at Oracle, keep drawing great personal stories, and it was a pleasure working with such an extraordinary talented group of people and I wish you all the best of luck. See you all!