My Job

(photo is from Boyne Falls, MI. That is a ski mountain. We stayed at my Grandparents' timeshare for our 5-year anniversary. It is about a 2 hour drive from our house. This was the first week of February when we took the trip - our anniversary is January 15.)


I thought I would talk about my job since a lot of people ask what I do, and I don't know that when I say I work in New Product Development, they know exactly what it means--sometimes I don't even know what it means when I am super busy and don't know which end is up!

The function of New Product Development is to seek out customer needs and work with the customer to design something that meets their demands. For example, we make material handling equipment and if there is a safety concern when delivering products, we will try to work with that customer to see if we can devise a solution that both solves the problem (makes deliveries safer) and can be made in a reasonable cost so that the customer will buy the product.

Engineers will tell you anything is possible when it comes to building solutions, however in New Product Development we need to help make decisions so that a product is designed to best fit the situation all around - the product cannot be too confusing for customers to use, too heavy, made with cheap but low-quality materials or be so expensive no one will buy it.

The hardest part of my job is to convince people who have more experience in life than me, and people who I am not their supervisor, to get me and others the information needed in order to keep a project running smoothly. It is tough being a tough person for me! My goal is to stop focusing on my mistakes at work and to have confidence I will learn to be tougher where I need to be and smarter where I need to be. I work as a type Project Manager where I need to focus everyone's energies into completing projects and getting products to market. But it is hard sometimes!

I know I hate getting out of my comfort zone when it comes to certain things. But if I never get out of my comfort zone, how am I ever going to change for the better?

The photo above shows beautiful white snow on a ski mountain. What is fresher than fresh snowfall? I hope that my attitude to change and new things at work becomes as fresh as this snow!

What is your job like??