My first year at Unifyed

April' 2018; I started my journey @Unifyed, having a mix of thoughts; a rush of excitement and chills of anxiety. Although I came in with 16 years of experience to Unifyed, still it was a new organization, new team, new environment, new culture, new people, new policies, everything was NEW (even my name ‘Stella’). Except one of our MDs, who hired me, I didn’t know anyone on the floor. But that’s normal, right? and I was anticipating nothing unusual, but had lots of questions (don’t worry, now I have answers to all of them).

How I started at Unifyed?

I joined as Manager, Customer Success to handle Tier-II clients. However, in next two months, I was moved to Support, considering my core skill set, since I spent 14 years in Product Support. Luckily, this move proved to be a right decision, and here I am, completing one year successfully – time flies!

Of course, I enjoyed every bit of my first year and got promotions too (if you want to check my profile, feel free to!). Does that mean everything was really easy to achieve? ummm…tricky it is.

Every ride has ups n downs, so had mine. The only important thing is, your learnings and achievements. With the completion of one-year, there are a few additions to my learnings and my ideologies. Let me share my top 5 learnings which helped me get through it:

1. Break down your tasks into smaller bits, focus on WHY

Sometimes items assigned to us seem to be difficult and like climbing big mountains. You can achieve the goals only if you break them down into pieces and start working on them one by one. There were a lot of shattered items when I started and I knew changing all of them in a single go was never going to happen. What I followed; I first tried to know ‘why’ for all the tasks. Until you realize the end-goal of the tasks, you can’t prioritize them. I picked the most important tasks which needed immediate attention. Tried to understand the end goal and then broke them down step-wise to reach the goal.

And, the most important - Celebrate every small win. Be in the game!

2. Teach yourself how to learn

Learning learning and learning, that should be the only passion. If you’re keen to learn whatever comes your way, it will be easy for you to be on track and adapt per the changes. Even with 16 years’ experience, Higher Ed was new to me (though I have a masters in computer applications). I didn’t know about LMS (Learning Management System) or SIS (Student Information System) in respect to what role do they play in Higher Ed space as a tool. To know your products, it is very important to understand the terminology and the market/industry.

Fortunately, last year when I started with Unifyed, my elder son moved to one of the Canadian Universities for higher education. This gave me an opportunity to have access to university's portal, login into it to explore, and have a mobile app to understand the functionalities. What else would be the best version to it; to know about the products offered by your own organization and then getting access to competitor’s products (how mean I am?? ). Additionally, I started following our competitors’ blogs, twitter handles, etc. to know more. Within a couple of months, I had some good contacts from Higher Ed following me on twitter (sounds good, yeah?).

Most importantly, don’t hesitate to reach out to any member of your team or organization to seek help. Everyone has their own story to tell. Try to learn from as many members as you can, you never know who has the most interesting facts with them. Plus, working n learning from different teams help you to expand your knowledge and scope of learning. Never limit your scope!

3. Think like an outsider

After a year, I am sure now all of my team members are aware of my favorite saying “think like an outsider”. When you are into the system, your thought process always revolves around proving yourself correct. Thus, when you start thinking like a stranger, you can easily gauge what is missing and where you need to bring in for improvements. Once you’re able to identify the gaps, you can just come up with ideas to connect the dots. Believe me, it really works!

4. Document the processes

People are sometimes very adamant to documenting the processes, they consider it as an added weight on them to write down the things. Let’s say you are into a meeting and decide to follow a new process. But that’s a verbal discussion. Your team starts following it, and one day, you realize that some of the members are doing it incorrectly. Problem is not that they are doing it incorrectly, it is okay to fail or miss a few steps. Problem is, where is that process document for reference? If tomorrow, you want to analyze your own processes (which is again a normal flow), how would you remember what you decided initially? (if you are on drugs, pardon me)

It is very much important to have the document ready for reference and then review it at a later stage. It not only helps your existing team members to know the processes and follow, but also helps your new ninjas to get onboard properly. Help your team, help yourself!

5.  Stop cribbing, start working

Be a team player + Get your hands dirty = Start following it and you will see a difference! ??

Thank you to the awesome Unifyed team I’ve worked with. It’s been a fantastic journey for me so far - and I know that the best is yet to come.

Happy work anniversary to me!