What were the most impactful learnings from the early stages of your career?

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I learned that while you can have a voice in a very large corporation, you’re never going to have the same impact that you think you will unless people from outside validate what you’re saying. When I was CIO at Celestica, I was a big proponent of doing e-commerce and B2B long before everybody in the high-tech industry was doing it. Some folks said, "This is going to change the world," and I saw it a bit differently.

I said to the CEO, "We have to participate in this because we're an industry leader." I got the, "No. Nobody will ever listen to you. Quiet down, little girl. Go back to your office." I was very put off by that. Then a friend of a friend introduced me to some folks at Sun Microsystems who said, "This is a big deal. You have to do this in a big way, because all of the OEMs are your customers and you'll have to respond."

I managed to join an organization or two and still kept the same job. I told my company I was going to hold a town hall in San Jose, and invite people that are customers and suppliers of ours. The defining moment was when the room was over capacity and we couldn’t let anyone else in. 480 people showed up for that event because the entire industry was busy riling IBM about doing B2B when everybody had been doing electronic data interchange (EDI).

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Always help others more than you ask for help. It builds a lot of goodwill that pays back when you really need it

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Always provide support to others, irrespective of their level or circumstances

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A few come to mind: (a) Manage up [gently], (b) showing up [on time] is half the work, (c) speak up [know when to] and (d) Watch your 6

What were the most impactful learnings from the early stages of your career?

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