Hello, my name is Lesley, and by the time you read this I will have been at Floricane for three weeks. In what was no doubt an effort to get me out of his hair, John asked me to reflect on my short time here at the ‘Cane: what I’ve learned, what I’ve seen, how I feel, etc., and the following is my attempt at doing just that.
My first thought is this: I’ve never been asked to share my thoughts on a new employer, for a new employer, as well as for all of its blog readers. Kind of daunting, but completely expected from a place like Floricane, which is all about relationships, self awareness, reflection and development. Joke’s on you, Bruno!
Some background: After 12 years of promoting the fantastic work of a diverse mix of organizations as a “marketing & PR professional,” I’ll now be helping local nonprofits find their true north and chart a way to get there via Floricane’s unique and people focused strategic planning process. Floricane serves all types of organizations, but I’ll be focusing primarily on nonprofits.
Here’s why this appealed to me. I’ve been on the client side of this equation, both with Floricane and other consultants, and enjoyed it tremendously. For some reason, herding people into a room and asking them to consider the future of their organization and, by extension, themselves is fun! So, I took the leap. And as my friend Anedra says, it’s always handy to have marketing tools in your back pocket.
As far as what I’ve learned and seen and done in the last few weeks, it’s been a lot of following John around, eating lunch and introducing myself to people. He knows a lot of people, and I’m eager to meet all of them. But the process of transforming from a marketing person to a strategic planning consultant is nascent at best, so I offer the following rudimentary observations of my time thus far and promise a more cerebral update in the coming months. In the meantime, I look forward to meeting all of you and possibly working together on something awesome.
Lesley’s Thoughts on Her First Few Weeks at Floricane/in a New Career
There are more nonprofits in this town than I had ever imagined.
You can try all you want to leave the Marketing/PR world behind, but the urge to post things and rewrite websites will never ever go away.
Orange truly is the new black.
Working in a collaborative environment is a challenge for me but one that I’m eager to tackle, as soon as I learn how to tune out people. (JK JK JK, new teammates!).
Sometimes it’s okay to head over to the comfy chairs during business hours and read up on organizational development.
With the exception of the Vertical Horizon song that is playing currently, my coworkers have great taste in music.
Almost everyone here has kids, so it’s fun to make the non-kid people uncomfortable with talk of unspeakable bodily functions.
Greens* can and do Get Things Done.
As an ex-PR hack, I find it oddly thrilling to run into RTD newsroom staff in the cafeteria. “Look, everyone, it’s Michael Martz. MICHAEL MARTZ!”
These people will allow me to wear jeans to work, as long as they are high rise editions. It’s in my contract, and I’m okay with that.
I still need a Diet Pepsi and a salty snack at 3pm each day. Some things don’t change.
*What’s a Green you ask? Register yourself and 5 of your colleagues for our Insights workshop on June 11, and find out. It’ll change your life.