Find the full Amazon blog series here: charleskunken.com/season2
This is a sketch of the kids book I’ve been working on with my wife. Another one of many loooong lead time projects.
I just found this blog post in an old folder of word documents and it hadn’t been published. So I’m throwing it up.
The purpose of your first project isn’t to solve world hunger. It’s to be useful quickly. Try this: ask your foremost stakeholder (the main person who benefits from your work) what is something they need?
Probe. Try and find low hanging fruit, that is, something within your power to solve quickly. Ideally something you already know how to do and can tackle without approvals or dependencies on others.
In my first week at Amazon Web Services my business partner told me he was struggling to get a grasp on the financial solvency of three new vendors he was vetting.
So what did I do? I dropped everything and spent the next week combing through their financial reports. There was no format, I just used the same methods I knew from investing, even going so far as to speak to the vendors on the phone. By the end of the week I provided him a detailed writeup of the potential risks I saw in each one.
I joined his vendor meetings the following week and by the end of those meetings he was able to recommend signing contracts with two of them.
My business partner got the immediate feeling that the new guy (me) was helpful and that the finance team was going to help him achieve his goals. His delight set the foundation of our relationship and bolstered my team's reputation. But there was much more to it than reputation building.
I also begin to cut my teeth on actual work.
When you first start it’s a bunch of effort for somebody else to figure out work for you to do. If you come to your boss and say you’ve developed your own idea for a project by talking to your stakeholders you’ll not only be saving him or her a ton of hassle you’ll also be diving right into influencing the economic activity of your organization.
Being useful quickly is the best way to learn. Find tangible business problems to solve.
Here’s another thought: this isn’t only useful for your first week. This is how you continuously add value over time and how the really big ideas start to come. Pretty soon you’ll be connecting the dots on your own and in your 1-on-1 meetings with your business partners you’ll be the one suggesting solutions before you even hear the problems.
It’s the way of the finance partner. Which brings us to another topic. What exactly is a ‘finance partner’ anyways? https://www.charleskunken.com/blog/what-exactly-does-finance-do-and-how-do-they-add-value
Have some thoughts? Feel free to drop a comment or hit me up: charlie@charleskunken.com
Other Posts In The Hollywood Heist Series
A good input metric is one that enables us to monitor and change our behavior. It should have the following characteristics: (1) Focus – it measures one thing; (2) Ownership –a specific person is accountable for its performance and accuracy of the measurement; (3) Benchmark – there is a target which informs whether or not performance is satisfactory.