Man, time flies! One year at Emerson and the question I asked myself:

What have I learnt in my first year at Emerson?

I had been contemplating writing this blog post for a while, so I figured I keep it simple and highlight three areas where I have improved extensively.

Adaptability

In the past 12 months, the exposure to working in Emerson has been surreal. Following a rotation program before COVID-19, I had to adapt to various aspects of the business. I currently enjoy my experience in the manufacturing department, which entails work that requires a more hands-on approach. I had the exposure to build, plan and execute various tasks within the scope of the project. I honed my ability to delegate tasks where necessary amongst the multidisciplinary team or even took it upon myself to complete it. Being adaptable was a critical part of my learning and a major attribute to helping the team out during COVID-19.

Open-mindedness

Coming into each rotation required a sense of open-mindedness. There is a challenge in the work that gets assigned as it allowed me to push myself outside my comfort zone. But also, through my initiative of ferreting around and asking engineers if I could help out. I was able to build a diverse range of networking amongst different business groups.

However, there were elements of monotony and the advantage in such monotony – it allows you to reflect and come up with ideas to make the process much more efficient.

I realised quite early in my rotation having this mindset was critical for two reasons:

a. I opened myself to the idea that every opportunity provided a learning element.

b. regardless of the type of work that I was assigned, I took accountability in completing it and made sure I over-delivered.

Never make assumptions

In the past year, these words have become a pavilion response. And, the way I have learnt to counteract it is by:

Asking questions all the time

The process of asking questions became the default to understanding the task or project at hand and to minimise the following:

1. Making assumptions which in hindsight causes misunderstanding.
2. Lack of information can lead to an increase in setup cost.
3. Avoid Sunk cost bias – the tendency to continuing to invest time, energy and money in a loss proposition for something that can’t be recouped. 

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