Act Your Dream

In my first job as an intern at one of Canada’s top telecom companies, I was privileged to work in an environment with open doors. Throughout my career, I quizzically probe my to-be bosses to understand whether their organization / team has a similar culture, but I’ll leave that topic for another time. Working within an open environment, put me in touch with the VP of the team on a number of projects. She would email me directly, ask me to pop by her office and ask me for my input on numerous projects. I trooped into her office one day after submitting my resignation to my manager. As she was mentioning her frank disappointment at my decision, I gathered the courage and asked her to be my mentor. It has been 5 years since she agreed. Why mentors are important 1. They tear down the tunnel: As you are working day in and out on projects within your role, you start focusing on short term goals and suffering from tunnel vision. A mentor’s perspective breaks down these imagi...

Who would have thought that coffee would come to be recognized as the Swiss Army knife of professional (and not so professional) networking? Centuries ago, when the first of Kaldi's goats nibbled on the nameless red berries, I'm sure the poor goatherd had no clue that the serendipity would eventually give birth to a whole new way for people to build real-life relationships with each other. Fast forward many centuries; today we are all familiar with what "let's meet over coffee" means. Well, for one it doesn't mean you have to drink coffee. It is just an invitation to have a casual conversation about things that might be of interest to both parties. In not too distant past, many conversations that started with that phrase ended up becoming admirable success stories for businesses and individuals. 200 Coffee Meetings Later This realization came to me a bit late in life. I do not recall considering my first coffee meeting as a chance to offer or rec...