Category Archives: Work

This past week has been a blur.  I knew that the pace in the office would pick up and I’m proud that I’ve been able to keep up.  Since my co-workers have come back from vacation and returned to the office on Tuesday, September 8th – work has been very busy.

I’m not much for people who constantly talk about how busy they are so I rarely address my work in this blog unless it pertains to something I am doing which I find cool or interesting and want to share.  However, the past two weeks (and this last week in particular) have really kicked my butt. Groceries, laundry, returning calls, checking e-mails and yes, blogging have all fallen by the wayside.

The break-neck pace will not cease for another couple of weeks when a report I’m helping launch, a webcast series I am pulling together and a handful of other very interesting projects I’ve been asked to help lead all get off the ground. I have no regrets about my involvement and like each project. It is the convergence of multiple deadlines that provide me (and my team) little wiggle room and has kept me up late working and wondering, “are there are enough hours in the day?” 

Oddly, last year around this time I was logging some pretty crazy work hours as I scheduled and led meetings across the U.S. for a project called “From Proposals to Policy”.  I’ve only been with my employer for 18 months so perhaps I should just plan for every fall to be a bit chaotic.  Even though the work is gratifying and I like my team, I’m looking forward to returning to a more sane work schedule.

Although I enjoy both my job and my co-workers, I’ve been buried with work since recovering from my bout of meningitis. This is partly due to the fact that I had to play a bit of catch-up after missing a week of work, but this is also driven by several projects I am managing, which require my constant attention.
Later this month we are coordinating a fascinating one-day event in Washington, D.C. that will bring together healthcare leaders from around the country to discuss how the industry can better leverage healthcare data to improve quality and patient care. Earlier this year, the Obama Administration made a significant investment to drive greater adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Many organizations already have adopted an electronic platform to capture and analyze their data but this initiative will (hopefully) significantly move those that have yet to implement such IT projects. This program in D.C. is truly visionary and one of the reasons I really like my work. Leveraging secondary health data is not likely to make anyone money anytime soon, but by thinking about this strategically today – steps can be taken for leading institutions to position themselves in the market.

I’m also fixated on two web-based projects that will dominate most of my summer. No doubt I’ll be obsessing about hitting deadlines and answering a multitude of questions from all the stakeholders this project will impact. I think I was asked to lead these web-based projects because of my previous experience spearheading similar (albeit smaller) projects, and because the rest of my team had little desire. These are both fairly high-profile so I’ll keep my fingers crossed. If everything goes according to plan both of these web projects will be completed in September.

I’ve never worked at a company that has so many large-scale projects occuring at the same time. It really can leave my head spinning at times, but for the most part it is something I genuinely enjoy. I’ve been more challenged in the past 18months (since joining the firm) than I have been in the previous seven or eight years of my career.

Tina Brown has an interesting article posted on The Daily Beast blog today called,”The Gig Economy“. In her article she refers to a trend that is being overlooked by economists, which shows that more and more Americans are holding multiple jobs to make ends meet.

What I thought was interesting about this article was that this trend no longer affects just the ‘working class’, but now is fairly typical for even college-degreed professionals earning more than $75,000 a year. When I met my partner nearly 10 years ago he worked in the service industry and balanced three jobs to make ends meet. About 3+ years ago he started working at a Fortune 500 company in a highly specialized role. When he took the job, he thought that it would mean he would work Monday – Friday focusing on only his new job but he quickly realized that he needed to keep his consultancy business to make ends meet. I have friends who are very successful at recognizeable firms in Boston including, Fidelity Investments, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BlueCross BlueShield, etc.. who all have side jobs that augment their income. Some people do this because they like the diversity or enjoy the extra income the work generates, but Tina’s story indicates that for many (and I know these people too) the extra jobs are a necessity due to a decline in real wages and or loss of employment.

This story has really made me stop to think about the implications and what this all means for the real health of our economy. It has also made me pause to wonder just how incomplete a picture our unemployment reports really are providing us. Recently it was reported that the U.S. unemployment rate jumped over 7% (a rate not seen since the first month of the first term of office for President Bill Clinton). What might the job reports indicate if they were to measure real income for all American families?

Once upon a time, there was such a thing as a single-income family. While there are still a few of those out there, nobody would argue that it is quickly becoming a thing of the past. However to have traded the need for a two-income family for a two-income multiple jobs family is a trend that has terrible implications for family and family life.

In an attempt to avert the train wreck that is Game 4 in the ALCS and shake my sour mood, I thought I would spend some time writing about what I’ve been doing at work these past few weeks.

For nearly 5 months, I’ve been focused on a project designed to get people thinking about healthcare reform. There are so many pressing issues we face individually and as a nation, but providing affordable, quality healthcare for our children and each other has long been a top priority for individuals, families and businesses (at least until the recent financial meltdown).

I am working with a handful of colleagues and a business partner to coordinate a ‘national town hall’ that will begin with a satellite broadcast in Washington, D.C. to address the president-elect’s healthcare reform policies. The broadcast will be viewed in 15 other cities around the country in late November. Immediately following the broadcast, each host city will have their own local town hall with a panel of healthcare experts that include policy wonks and government types, providers (i.e. hospitals, doctors, etc), payers (insurers), local employers and families. These local town halls will address problems and challenges they face and try to identify how the president-elect’s reforms can best be implemented.

Despite the long hours and work involved, I have really enjoyed this project and am finding it very gratifying. I would like to think that encouraging this type of dialog serves to raise awareness, educate us all and hopefully work towards developing implementable solutions both on a national and local level. We will see… There remains much work so if my postings become little more than humorous photos you will know why. I’ve timed my annual trip to Brazil to start two days after this huge event occurs. I hope that the flight down is one filled with feelings of satisfaction from a job well done.

I know I’ve been slacking and not spending much time collecting or sharing my thoughts but that has been mostly due to an overly active social and work calendar that has left me with little down time to write. Lately I’ve been posting pictures that I have thought are funny, adding video clips and / or summarizing content that I have read in the news and on other blogs, which in my mind does not really count as a blog entry.

However, right now I’m pretty much absorbed with my work as I help my team prepare for a major event in late November and juggling a travel calendar that has me on the road more than I am accustomed. Last week I was in Dallas for training and early next week I will be in Chicago to talk about the progress of the November event I’ve been absorbed with lately. I was asked to go and talk to this group, because PwC wants more interaction between the industry marketing folk (like me) and the marketing professionals tied to geographies (precisely the people we have reached out to help us with our November event). It is a cool opportunity to share the work we have done to date and a neat chance for me because I get to be the messenger. My travelling will continue the following week (9/22) when I head to NYC for a few more days of training. Then hopefully, my travel will subside and I’ll have more time to rant and rave about whatever is dominating my thoughts.

It was a mere six months ago that I started my “new” job. Leaving my former employer was sad but exciting. I had no idea how much I would ultimately enjoy the change and to be certain in those first few months, although I knew I had made the right move, adjusting to working for such a large employer took a great deal of getting use to.

Fast forward 6 months later and here I am happily integrated into a high performing team that is held up as a role-model for other business practices in my firm. My manager and team are all talented professionals who have taught me much and allowed me to help with projects that are both interesting and daunting in scope. I hope the six months that follow continue to be as interesting and fun for me. It certainly makes getting up each morning and starting work seem less like a job and more like a great way to spend my day.