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If an award existed for the worst performance in your first week at a new job, I did my very best to win it at Florida Power Corporation in March 1998.
Within a forty-eight-hour period, I managed to infuriate the Electric Dispatch Center along with our Information Technology Department.
And I did it all by myself sitting alone on a trading floor during my first two-night shifts as a real time electric power trader.
Yep.
I pulled off two beautiful moves that screamed “Dumbass” to our entire company.
So, what did I learn from the experience?
Blessed are your coworkers who take pity on you and put you under their wing.
For they can provide memorable lessons and inspire you to pay it forward.
First Night Shift
Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash
“Heh man, what are you doing?”
John Doberly, senior dispatcher in FPC’s control center, asked me that question six hours into my first night shift.
“I sold 1000 megawatts to FPL”, I replied confidently.
“I don’t got it”, John replied.
“Yeah, but my Quick Quote software application says we do,” I countered.
“I could care less. Cut the deal now.”
I should have listened to the serious tone of John’s reply. But I did not.
“Can’t we just drag for an hour?” I replied.
Truth be told, I did not really know what “dragging” meant, but I heard the term a few times during my two-week onboarding process. I liked the feeling of using a fancy term to hide the fact that I was completely clueless about anything involving utility operations. I later wished that I had known it meant something like taking power off the grid that did not really belong to you and was a violation of reliability standards.
Basically, something no utility should ever do.
“How about I drag your ass out of that trading floor right now!” John thundered back at me.” Cut the deal now because I am going to deny your tag.”
FPL never purchased 1000 megawatts for HE 01 that night.
Second Night Shift
For anybody that worked or visited the St. Petersburg Florida Power Corporation trading floor, you will remember the massive electronic board that detailed all the trading results, generation status, and real time load graphs.
Somewhere after midnight on my second shift, the board froze, and the real time data updates ceased.
Since I was completely alone and did not how to fix the problem, I should have called the 24-hour support desk.
But that made too much sense to me, so I decided to simply pull the plug on the board, say a Hail Mary, and then put the plug back in the outlet.
After a few minutes, I realized not only didn’t I solve the problem, but I also probably caused other things to go wrong.
The blinking lights on the board and some weird alarms on my desktop indicated all was not well in IT land.
When I came to work for the third night shift, I received a several questions from colleagues if anything unusual happened during my previous night shift
I panicked and lied.
“Nope. Everything seemed fine to me.”
A few hours later after almost everybody went home, I received a visitor to my workstation – Mark Cardinale. Mark was our IT guru. The guy who wrote code for all our applications and he basically was the person who supported and maintained all trading floor information technology.
The Wizard of Oz.
“I want to hear what happened last night. Let’s talk.”
Busted.
Lifelines
Photo by youssef naddam on Unsplash
Somewhere in the early morning hours of my third night shift, John Doberly called my desk.
“Heh Mr. Wall Street, I got an idea how I can help you to learn to tie your shoes. Meet me at the Wing House next Wednesday night.”
John somehow heard about my previous career in the bond market in New York City.
For the next three months on every other Wednesday night, the Wing House became our classroom. I bought all the wings and beer and John shared all his knowledge about power plants and the transmission grid.
And it worked out well for both of us. I learned invaluable lessons one might expect to hear from a twenty-year veteran control center dispatcher.
As for my sin about how I managed the electronic board, Mark Cardinale and I basically came to a clear understanding.
I would never pull a plug on a failing application ever again. I would call the support desk whenever a technology issue arose.
I would come to rely on Mark, as did many others, as a resource to learn about nascent technology.
But Mark also taught me another valuable lesson.
He taught me the lesson of “listening” to your customers. Mark was a constant presence on the trading floor. Watching and learning our workflows.
He wanted to learn about our world on the trading floor so he could help provide a better user experience.
The internet had just made its way to trading floors, computers were just beginning to get faster, and people like Mark were beginning to think up ways to allow us to work more efficiently and effectively.
Mark eventually moved to Norman, Oklahoma and helped revolutionize the energy trading market by creating automated workflows at PCI Energy Solutions. He serves PCI’s client base as the Chief Information Technologist, and we are colleagues once again.
Onboarding
Photo by Gilles Roux on Unsplash
Onboarding is sacred business for any company wishing to recruit, develop, and maintain talent.
Yet so many companies struggle with the process of integrating new hires into their organization.
The Immersion Phase is Human Resource heavy and all companies have an effective playbook to get this work done efficiently.
But when it comes to the Cultivate Phase, the phase all about the learning and growth within the business, integration often seems to get off the train tracks quickly.
During this phase, it is important that the coaching and mentoring is constant.
During this phase, the new employee begins to learn about company culture and hopefully the significance of “why” the company exists.
But that is only if they are lucky to find the few people who will make a difference in their career.
John Doberly and Mark Cardinale played a significant role early in my career in the energy industry. In their own unique style, they taught me that failure can be a tremendous learning opportunity.
I think a successful Cultivate Phase of about ninety days involves identifying one or two mentors for each new hire.
And I think this mentorship program, whether informal or formal, is needed more than ever in today’s environment where people work isolated from home.
A mentor may impart knowledge about his or her own work path to a mentee (or protege), as well as offer direction, inspiration, emotional support, and role modeling. A mentor can aid with career exploration, goal setting, networking, and resource identification.
A mentor is somebody who will be there when you inevitably trip and fall in your career. They are the one holding out an open hand to pick you up.
Blessed are the people who take time to mentor others and wise are the companies who identify the value of mentors.
Your true calling is to guide others to success. Successful sherpas encourage those around them to realize their greatest potential. The same is absolutely accurate of you as a leader in your own business. Ironically, the more you put others first, the more success you'll have on your own.