Early Stage Leadership - What I have learned so far in 2 months
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| Source: Integrity and Leadership Quotes |
Have you got any chance to lead someone? Yes, I have.
I took this offer from my GM, to lead 3 apprentices and 1 intern so far, together with my colleague from Advance Analytics. For me, this is a really good opportunity to develop myself further and beyond. If you have read my story from the very beginning, you might know I used to lead someone through Volunteering or any social project, but this one is really different. I should act in the professional ways, to develop them more advance in analytics world.
One of main reason why I take this offer also, I want to lighten-up my confidence as a leader. Since I graduate, I'm not really touched this leadership activity, except managing my flow of work as analyst, mentored by my GM and team lead, also being a part-time mentor for my 2 beloved brothers (that's currently enrolled as university student and junior high school). This opportunity, would be my best chance to learn leadership directly, from designing the Apprentice program, and execute them once and for all.
So far, taking role as leader has been an eye-opening moment for me. The first two things I learned, being a leader is not only thinking about yourself. There's always more reason from that. You're not only thinking about get things done more faster, but how could you develop their hard and soft-skills. At least in this analytic world, especially in Customer Analytic division, we should be able data-wrangling, exploring, and crunching it, and of course, these data would be analyzed deeply to answer the business questions even more. In other words, we need to assure our apprentice could get all of the exposure, from getting the data, analyze, visualize, explain/present, and give the recommendation to improve the business even more.
My colleague and me, design a full package curriculum, to cover all of these. This is an early stage of my leadership journey and I love it so much.
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| Example of Apprentice Curriculum Design |
1. Designing Data and Advance Analytics apprentice program
Oke, the first step to do is simply designing the apprentice curriculum from scratch. For those who's wondering "Why'd from scratch? Don't you have any reference before, since you graduated from this program, right?". The answer is .... Because at my apprentice term, my GM and the Team Leader did not really have any particular curriculum, they just develop us their way. I do understand that, since they already have great and decade experiences to develop a person.
Despite this, from my point of view, curriculum is necessary, since it's going to make a program easier and have a real purpose. If we forgot something, or simply want to give what kind of project they are going to develop next, this curriculum could be a guidance for us.
So, how's the process?
The first thing to do is googling. I mean, who doesn't, right? Simply searching "Apprentice curriculum program" also "Data Science apprentice program" and stuff, to get the draft what's important to be included in this guidance. Mixed them up.
From several articles or books, the first thing to do is defining the situation.
So, at first, I define the situation. Simply by knowing my Apprentice major background & CV could be huge advantage, define what kind of person they are, and at what level they're in right now. Next, I should define what standard need to be met during the program, at what level they will be developed, and what skillset they should have after the program. We want to assure, their skills can be huge advantage in the future, since they're our future analyst, the best investment for our resource. Last but not least, I define what capabilities my apprentice would have after the program. Similar with the standard, but more focused and detail. Of course these were the initiate goals, and could be added during or in the middle of the program. Here's what I've defined:
So, at first, I define the situation. Simply by knowing my Apprentice major background & CV could be huge advantage, define what kind of person they are, and at what level they're in right now. Next, I should define what standard need to be met during the program, at what level they will be developed, and what skillset they should have after the program. We want to assure, their skills can be huge advantage in the future, since they're our future analyst, the best investment for our resource. Last but not least, I define what capabilities my apprentice would have after the program. Similar with the standard, but more focused and detail. Of course these were the initiate goals, and could be added during or in the middle of the program. Here's what I've defined:
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To make it simple
1. What kind of person we faced?
- Fresh graduate from Statistic background
- Already had experienced in term of Data Analytics (at
least on college level)
2. What standard need to be met?
- Advance business acumen
- Complex problem solving
- Have completed skillset of data analyst, including Excel
(Pivot, Functions, Text and column manipulation) and SQL
- Have completed skillset of presentation skill including
design effective powerpoint & communicate the insight
3. What capabilities apprentice should have after
apprenticeship?
- Able to collect, organize, and study complex and
unstructured data from different resources
- Able to answer BAU and complex business questions
- Able to understand elevenia business operation end-to-end
- Doing pricing analytics to support business team in terms
of promotion
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After defining this, developing the apprentice program is a piece of cake. You just need to align with Team's 2018 future project or timeline, and assure every program would enrich apprentice's knowledge and skills when they do it. Plus, my colleague and me also put several projects we have done during our program last year, what's good should be perfected, and the perfect one should be maintained. One example is Google Analytics exploration. This could be good for our apprentice's portfolio, and of course, could be used to update our team's knowledge to explore GA even more. I remembered, at the moment I explore this, I learned a lot from someone's article, and how useful GA could be, to possibly maintain the KPI of company.
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| Source: Quotesurf.com |
2. Executing Curriculum
Designing curriculum after working hours, take 1-2 hours a day to explore and googling, and think about the program was really exciting stuff! After sketching, designing, and creating the apprenticeship curriculum, present it to our GM and approved. Here comes the best part, executing the program. Every week, they would have the project they should explore, create the ppt, and present. Presentation should be conducted in English. Why? Simply we want to encourage them speaking in English. At first, they were shocked, and I gave them no choice but presenting in English. We told them it's a good opportunity, to break their comfort zone, move further and beyond. Even though in our daily live we speak Bahasa, I bet, one day they will be right over there, perhaps they will work on International companies, consultant, or simply being speaker for something big. And this presentation skills, would be their advantages, right?
What I found interesting, of course during the process, sometimes there is a small detail I missed, and the apprentice didn't ask anything about that. During the presentation, my GM would give the advice to them for "Asking Why" or simply know the objective of every task we gave. For analyst, simple question "Why" or "What's the goal" and stuff, can be eye-opening and make Analyst life easier. At one side, analyst could ease their data exploration, and transform it to be what user want, and generate insightful analysis and recommendation for the user. I noted to my self, and apprentice learned what they should learn. Both side wins.
One thing for sure, what makes a leader happy, is seeing their peers developed day by day. I remembered when our apprentice do their first task, about aptitude test of analyst. We want to know, at what level their pivoting and business skills. They're not confident enough, and apologize a lot. I told them "It's okay, they will use to about it, and they will be better day by day for this stuff.". They accept, and keep struggling more, and do it better day by day. Their confidence level is also getting better and better, their presentation is keep improved both in design and presenting, and their business and SQL skills also getting better. And I personally happy about it :)
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| Source: Path |
3. Evaluate
There's a time, when you have a deadline, but your apprentice have done their job as well. That job should be checked and validated, and as analyst, you might check their script as well, to assure what they have developed right or not. The art of leadership is here. You need to spare time for them, even though you have your own task to do. Sometimes it costs my work time, but checking and appreciating their work is important as well. I have done it for the last 2 month, if it happens, what I am going to do is scheduling at what time I will check them out. Sometimes it's only take 10-30 minutes, but if they created hundreds of slides? It could cost me more than 1 hour. The thing is, you need to remember, being a leader is also a commitment, we're not talking about "Me, myself, and I", but "Us, Ourselves, and We" instead.
Evaluate also happened every week, when our apprentice present their own research. In the end of session, me as a moderator, would ask the audience (from another CA Team members) whether they had any comments or advice for the contents that's just presented. Next, I would ask them if they have any advice to our apprentice personally. This session always end-up in positive way. Lots of gratitude, appreciate, and a lil bit reminder what they should do and check next time. This process often be my personal reminder, since this is the place where all of CA team used to gather every week. And I believe, everyone could learn something during this presentation and evaluation. Once again both sides win.
Conclusion
Leadership process is fun, as fresh graduate, if you have a chance to lead, just grab it fast. I know in this term (moreover as Fresh graduate), we should develop the hardskill to make our job easier, but if you think about this even further, this can be moved and grabbed together, and it's just a matter of how you manage your time well.
Leadership is a process where both sides could win. Your subordinates might feel they're developed, but the process -indirectly- develop you as well personally. The process giving the advice might be your self-reminder, the process comments/ asking question/ sharing the ideas, might as well gave you sense of communicating better, to assure your messages could be heard and understand by your peers. And of course, leadership is a fun thing to do while working here.
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| Apprentice presentation to know ecommerce better |
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Thanks for your time reading this, if you have any feedback, do not hesitate to leave the comment below, I would love hearing that to make my content even better in the future. Once again, thank you and have a nice day!
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Thanks for your time reading this, if you have any feedback, do not hesitate to leave the comment below, I would love hearing that to make my content even better in the future. Once again, thank you and have a nice day!
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#Leadership #CALyf #CAteam #Lifeatelevenia
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