Ten-Year Work Anniversary ??

Days are long but years are short. Don’t like getting sentimental but guess what, this week marks my ten years in current company. A little walk down memory lane always help keep things in perspective! Well let’s just say the jobdoesn’t just pay the bills but these many years has been one heck of a meaningful ride! I would have liked to go for ten lessons learnt but a five-point reflection will do for now. Lessons for now and the future:

1?? When in doubt, stay on and figure it out. On my second day, I was whisked off to a hospital and watched a colleague give guidance to the nurse doing dressing change for a pressure injury patient. It was massive and took two full hours in total to complete it! Welcome to the world of wounds! Not quite sure if this was the dream job I had envisioned. I had just left my previous company and forfeited a bountiful bonus to take a leap here. I don’t know then if it was foolhardy. But looking back, pressure Injury space turned out to be my most fruitful endeavour down the road.

2?? Good things take time. I was fortunate to stumble across a blockbuster product early in my career. Pressure Injury literally singlehandedly gave me the breakthrough I needed after a few years’ sales slump and taught me the power of influence, the power of storytelling and the magic of simply putting in the hours to ply the wards, one at a time. The herbal tea picture was the day I celebrated the win at the hospital foodcourt. There was no champagne. I celebrated the product listing confirmation at a quiet food court corner and reeling in from disbelief that I had done it. Celebrated over a herbal tea no less! ?? Oh, simple pleasures give the most joy.

3?? Clinically proven is boring but clinically proven is good. Call it uncanny if you would but every time my family needed a woundcare product, no matter how I understood other competitors’ USPs and tried others, inevitably, it was always a product from my company that turned the corner for me. Most notably, I recall being reduced to tears once seeing a loved one’s surgical wound go horrendously south, swollen and grimacing in pain post-surgery. I rang up a colleague and burst into tears. She assured me it was going to be alright, leave the nanocrystalline material with incisional negative pressure therapy on and wait. Boy! Was that a torturous 4 days! Needless to say, the swell subsided and my family member moved on to step down to a simple wound contact layer (yes that simple), stitches off and 6 months of scar care. Viola! it is now a flat scar, barely obvious.

4?? Stay open and keep learning. Grateful to past managers and bosses who really gave me the time and space to learn at my own pace. Through the time, I discovered the next leap to learn marketing. Looking back at past works, I truly pitied my then-bosses (hopefully less so now) when I opened up some “vintage” ppt files. It was cringe-worthy indeed, how did my bosses then endure such standards? ?? I thank my managers in times’ past for their patience!

5?? ”If you want?to go fast,?go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African proverb Well actually, if you want to go fast AND go far, you truly need a team! Lessons from last year’s distributor changes and ongoing projects are bringing this to mind. Anything worthwhile and impactful truly need a team effort.

Today I remember good work is work that is not just prosperous but imbued with purpose. Counting my blessings to be working in a space that comprises both. Believing for more good days than bad and a confident expectation of good to come. Cheers to the next ten years wherever the next chapter may be! ??