Planning for a New Job

I start my new job next week, supporting a military contract with a combination of training, configuration management, and web design. Or, at least, that’s the initial charter, based on my interview.

I face a number of challenges:

1. I’ll have to spend some time figuring out my real charter. Exactly what is expected of me?
2. I’ll have to build relationships with several different clients, each of which will need different things from me. This will involve lots of “people skills,” and some penetrating questions about what my clients really need.
3. I’ll be establishing my reputation, so my work will need to be excellent (as it always needs to be, but especially now).
4. The group I’ll be working with is still setting itself up, apparently, so I’ll be establishing my work environment. I’ll need to set up my computer for web evelopment, which requires a lot of software. Since many offices have strong restrictions on what can be installed on a system, I’ll probably have to set up many work-arounds just to build a productive work environment.

Even more problematically: Much of this can’t be specifically planned. While I can plan to meet with clients, I won’t know who to meet until I get there, nor do I know how to deal with them.

So, while I have a basic plan, I’ll need to react quickly while keeping my plan up-to-date.

And all of this must be done while I’m still learning everyone’s names, remembering where the bathroom is, etc. And teaching adult ed classes every evening.

I’ll be tired, stressed out, and probably cranky once I return home from my classes at night. But it’s a fantastic opportunity, and by the end I’ll have grown and improved.

And thank goodness for Getting Things Done.