Work or life ~~ 2201 Eglinton Ave E ~~ 6 ~~ developing another focus

One type of work I received intensive practice is Recruiting. Benefit from the strong connection between Roger and his clients, there were continuously replacement requesting.

The initiate stage is to thoroughly understand the requirement from the client. I used to spent a time on line to search similar roles and find out the KEY WORD, which high frequently quoted in those job description.

Then when I posting the position advertisement, I already have the idea in my mind, how to highlight those key skill in the paragraphs. Also these are a hint when screening my candidate's profiles for a good match.

Telephone interview were usually set up when short listed candidates are ready. Since most request are technical roles, Roger keen on asking the technical screening questions, which he believes the best way to distinguish the strong and weak candidate.

After the formatting of resume is also done, the candidate's profile is then ready for submission. Roger will confirm the compensation detail with the candidate beforehand.

To improved the successful rate, I summarized my must do points:

• Check if any other agency contact the candidate for the same position
• Screen the key words from potential candidate's profiles and short listed
• Negotiate the compensation rate within $5 to $10 window
• Receive confirmation from candidate and boss about the telephone interview schedule
• Receive confirmation from candidate about on site interview detail
• Don't stop searching, until the successful candidate sign off the offer

Work or life ~~ 2201 Eglinton Ave E ~~ 5 ~~ study to work

While working for this job, I was in the final stage of my CMA designation. Sometimes, we were requested to use our real working experiences to complete coursework or a study. One of my value innovation cases for the organization got a high score among those assignments.

My approach was to evaluate the current industry fact and value curve of the firm, then based on the observation and analysis, and developed new features added value curve and introduced the blue ocean strategy.

Although the thoughts maybe not that skillful at that time, but when I look back, that's maybe an early sprout of my framework of operational optimization kits.

Work or life ~~ 2201 Eglinton Ave E ~~ 4 ~~ sourcing the best

We met a situation that more than one suitable candidates are identified which fit for client’s requirements. And we need to decide who is most preferred to represent.

During the process of sourcing a specialist developer, there were more than one candidates identified. However we need to decide the strongest candidate who is not only strong in technical background, but also with excellent communication skills.

So we decided to compare each candidate through our decision matrix:

Developer #1:

Pros:

• Strong technical
• Rich experiences

Cons:

• Adaptive in doubt, concern of flexibility

Developer #2:

Pros:

• Excellent communication
• Strong Technical

Cons:

• Knowledge refresh needed
• Away the market for a while

Developer #3:

Pros:

• Strong Technical
• Good communication

Cons:

• Concern of long term commitment

Base on major requirements from client of good technical skills plus good communication, the decision was to present Developer #2 as priority, and Develop #3 as an optional. The feedback from client later on also proved our decisions and Developer #2 is processed further for an offer.

What I learned from this case was, to understand thoroughly the requirement from you client, try to do as many as possible research on the position skills, compare and compare. 

Work or life ~~ 2201 Eglinton Ave E ~~ 3 ~~ resources allocation practice

Project forecast (budgeting) and Project Financial Summary are very important for the group. The activities include resources allocation by working days, estimated supplier expenses and revenue.

When a project is initiated, project lead and development lead propose the best practice targeted implementation days and most suitable

resources. 

By then the forecast is finalized, related project scope and cost data are interpreted into the fund raising contract per client’s requirement. I am notified at the same time.The involvement begin at integration of the financial and capacity data into group’s project forecast spreadsheet, which including estimated revenue, working hours and expenses etc. 

When the project funding is settled and contract is counter signed, the estimated revenue is also

logged into another worksheet - Project Financial Summary, which the monthly billing revenue is being track from there.

This practice is a good combination of basic project management and finance management topics. 

Edge 3: Multiple Reflections in 5 principles

P12. Be Flexible on the Perception of Your Passion
Develop some form of passion in your current work so that get fired up.  

Passions:
1. Helping people solve problems
2. Improving the healthcare system
3. Baking cakes and opening a patisserie

It's important to find your own form of passion. You don't need to match with someone else's. A long as you know what is what gets you fired up, you stick to it and keep working hard at it. Passion can be a combination and it doesn't need to be single-sided. There is no guiding principle of passion. It's what you choose to believe. What's important is finding the energy that makes you happy and fired up in the morning. Try to grab onto anything you do that sparks your inner something - whatever diamond in the rough it may be - and walk out with it.

P13. What Would Marvin Do? Find Your Role Models
Identify different role models to fit your development goals - the more the merrier.  

When you are faced with making sensitive decisions, you need to be equiped with the right mindset. Marvin is McKinsey's founding managing director, was a strong advocate of having role models. Having a role model in mind does not just stop at dealing with sensitive topics. It has a postive influence on a range of things including dealing with your team, dealing with your client, and talking to your superiors. It's especially useful in communication and decision making.

Human beings have a tendency to frame things in a narrow way. A role model lets you take away that narrow frame and see the big picture. Go into the granularity of, say, presentations: for small meetings I will act like person A and for big meetings like person B. You should have at least a dozen people in your role model Hall of Fame.

P14. Know What Gives You the Most Energy in Your Day
Manage your energy gains and drains via knowing what you like and dislike throughout the day.  

Think: what usually drains most of your physical and mental energy comes from stress due to this lack of control. A single philosophy separate successful leaders-to-be and the lackluster: all leaders know how to get energy from their time and release stress out of their systems. Successful people have a tuned-in mindset not only on how they achieve outstanding goals but also in their approach to dealing with the stress and energy drain that everyone faces.

When you're busy, you need to know what will be important for you to get your energy back and reduce your stress levels.

Follow 7-3 rule, count how many 'positive energy' gains stack up against 'negative drains' and make sure you have a healthy 7-3 ratio. The key point here to adopt an energy-giving mode. Treat your mental health the way you treat you body.

Finally, an important thing to remember is that successful leaders leave their problems and stress at work.

P15. Go Jogging to Smell the Flowers
Help prolong your perceived time and set priorities through detaching yourself from daily preoccupations.  

Time is precious. In doing a simple, short, and measued exercise routine, there is huge payout on actual time spent versus perceived time gains. In other words, some exercises allow you to strench or prolong the time you feel and smell outside world. Jogguing and other forms of 'alone-time' exercise allow you to structure your thoughts clearly and set your top priorities - step back to see big picture. This is also an actual physical exercise that allows the brian to physically switch modes. Put into practices:
1. run during the day or at night.
2. run for time rather than distance
3. create a goal
4. run alone

The key concept is physical activity, which alllows you to distance yourself from the current work. Make sure you force yourself to recognize the magic of life: live each and every day to the fullest. It will definitely act positively in your work.

P16. Create a Commitment Plan
Achieve greater things in life by setting aspirational targets and sticking through your plan.  

Long-term vision, mid-term goals, and immediate goals are very useful reminders to set high aspirations. For starters, compartmentalize into four sections: business/career, family, personal health, and friends/network. fill out three or four outcome or results oriented phrases and have a checkbox next to it.
1. become more proactive and achievement driven
2. measure your progress year after year
3. start believing anything is possible and you mean it when you say it.
When write your commitment plan, deploy a sound structure, such as divide a piece of paper into three horizontal sections across the page then carry this paper wherever you go
1. how you will achieve each outcome
2. challenges you are going to face
3. why achieving each result is a must

Knowledge has a half-life, and if you are not on top, you will be seriously selling yourself short. When you start finding your job easier than before, it's usually a warning sign. The danger is that no one will tell you what more you can do if you're doing well 'at your current job.'
To pursue the leadeship track, plan and create your own commitment plan. within these goals, you will definitely find what you are lacking right now. They will propel you to ask the 'right people' qustions or 'when was the last time...' questions.

Work or life ~~ 2201 Eglinton Ave E ~~ 2 ~~ track down invoices

Suppliers and contractors invoices are collected semi-monthly. In order to verify the actual hours and expenses and mitigate any risk of duplicate or short payments. The number of hours and expenses amount was reconciled with the semi-monthly and monthly forecast.

The semi-monthly accruals are input at least 2 months in advance. When the actual time sheet and invoices received, then I will quickly reconcile the numbers and amount.

I also applied the visual management concept. At the beginning of the reconciliation, all the numbers and amounts are highlighted as yellow and fond in red color. If the time sheets and invoices are matched and ready for payroll, the highlighted color of yellow is then removed. After payment is scheduled, fond color is change back to black regular and the cycle is showed as completed.

This process enhances our internal control flow and mitigates the risk of missing payment.

Work or life ~~ 2201 Eglinton Ave E ~~ 1 ~~ black coffee

I think it's since I taken on this job, I began to have a cup of black coffee in the morning and start the working day. 

Appreciate for a close friend's referral, I got introduced and joined this owner's team in 2014 spring time. Role as internal project controller. He has a very solid back ground in the IT solution field, especially in software development for giant banking clients. 

Although we had detail conversations beforehand about our client, the organization, and the nature of the business, I am still surprised by the actual working form after first couple working days. I realized I was actually located at the client's remote work station, not all of the team members were sitting together. We were located in different areas due to to the limited offers of working stations. Addition to those I was the only guy in the team who was from "Non technical" back ground. As a person from finance field, looks like it's "non value added" to the complex development projects. 

Thanks to my gifted optimistic mindset, there were no gap for regret and frustration. All I need to do just to roll up my collars and  pick up the tasks. According to the boss, he had a strong mindset in the in the project planning, budgeting, resources management and billing assignments, as well as the daily administrative activities. He was too busy to set up the all these in good shape. 

I believe that thanks to those hard working days, I was brought into a new world, most of my previous knowledge were broken apart and rebuilt to new format, some potentials inside me were triggered since then. 

However accompany with the excitement of  exploration of new thing, I also experienced many happiness, upset and struggling moments.  I think that's why I fell in love with the bitter taste of black coffee since then. 

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 10 ~~ adjust my communication

The largest service supplier submits many invoices through A/P and to the team on a monthly basis.

After investigating several late invoices that remained unpaid, an additional 50 outstanding invoices were added and severely late and unpaid.

With the team Supervisor on vacation, I partnered with one Engagement Manager to address the issue. I assisted him to track down, analyze and act upon all the missing invoices and communicated the various issues to the A/P team and the supplier. During the first passes of invoices to A/P, all invoices were rejected by A/P with a citation of missing information.

Based on A/P’s reaction, we had to change our communication style from following a regimented, serial communication process that was dictated by clicks and submissions within on line tools to are more open dialogue that involved a series of teleconferences and significant information exchange via email. We temporarily provided additional support information to invoices, extracting data that A/P needed for calculations to validate invoiced taxes. This information then added as appendix to the invoice and printed immediately. 

The hard copies were recorded and sent by courier the next day. A special tracking sheet was developed to track all invoices, payment status, responsible Engagement Managers, next action steps and this report was used both internally with all stakeholders as well as with the supplier.

Within two months, the number of outstanding invoices reduced dramatically and the account payable balance dropped to a reasonable level.

Within six months, the supplier was convinced to change their invoice format to include this information, thus removing the manual effort from the internal team and reducing payment back to within the payment term period. The tracking report was then instituted as an ongoing business management report to ensure the same situation did not develop.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 9 ~~ handle ethical

There was a case when an Engagement Manager was on vacation, his project manager sent out an urgent PO request.

The related quotation and cost documents had already been approved. However, I learned that the final version of the contract had not yet been counter-signed. The internal policy requires that all contracts be fully executed with a signature from both parties prior to committing the company to any related third-party costs such as the issuance of a PO.

Although all the line items were keyed into the ordering system, the back-up Engagement Manager was able to use the information I provided to hold back approval of the PO. He was then able to raise the concern of unsigned contract and helped to communicate with the project manager.

The project manager worked hard to get all the documents settled. The PO was released quickly and the resulting shipment of equipment to the customer site arrived on time.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 8 ~~ aligned strategy

Many years ago I learned from Virender, my mentor, and the first supervisor. He told me his secret to success was 'to treat Every day as a new opportunity. Set high goals and work with people who share your passion for doing their best.' I've always remembered that advice and try to live with it every day.

AT& T's vision is to connect people where they work and live. To fulfill this vision, everyone in the team thrives to provide the best solution and service for the customer.

Service is one of the key contributors to customer satisfaction. If a customer does not receive a level of service that meets or exceeds his or her expectations, the customer won't stay long. Existing customer testimonies may affect potential customer decisions.

I never assume our customers are satisfied with everything, so I do my best to follow up with each PO and shipment. This feedback has provided valuable insight into the quality and characteristics of our services. Customers appreciate this kind of follow-ups, especially when something hasn't gone right and we still have the opportunity to fix it.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 7 ~~ work together for a solution

Monthly customer billing is crucial to the team. Billing requests must be submitted in the first 2 weeks of the month. Billing triggers could be complex when an invoice has multiple lines and site addresses. In addition, we all have pressure to meet the deadline.

From there, I learned a new way to speed up the process. If all the site addresses are loaded in the system beforehand, I can also load a pre-formatted billing file made by Excel to match. By doing so I could accelerate producing the trigger key in the process and avoid mistakes. 

When I proved this step one works well, a colleague from the billing team worked out the next with me. Every time when a new customer or multiple site addresses are required, I submitted a new account setup request and attached the formatted site address details in Excel into the system. Billing operations pre-loaded site addresses so that after an overnight system refresh, all site IDs were created and validated. The next day I could modify the billing lines from the Excel file, and upload all lines altogether into the billing system.

The new method significantly accelerated billing productivity at least one business day. In the past due to lack of communication and out-of-the-box thinking, both billing operator and my role duplicated the work by typing in the same address information into different systems to trigger the action. I am glad that we could save half effort to increase productivity, such as tracing and modify billing mistakes on time.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 6 ~~ If need to make a decision

One time a Engagement Manager was out for vacation, the onsite project manager was requesting a piece of equipment to be delivered within very limited timeframe.

When I pulled out the quote from Cisco, the cost amount was higher than the price in the customer agreement. The issue was then escalated to her backup, the director and project lead for a review.

By the end, the project manager resubmitted a purchase agreement to customer. After all contract items were settled, we processed the order and delivered the product to the customer on time. The project was completed without delay.

To my point, if there is a need to make decision, discuss with the leader first. If anything should be followed up, I must proceed without delay and never assume.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 5 ~~ Pros and Cons practice

The Cisco service contract quotation and ordering tools are rather complex. Like all Cisco partners, these activities have to be processed through the Cisco CSCC (Cisco Service Contract Center) tool. Once a quotation request comes up, the Engagement Manager usually provides confirmed service serial number information, which is crucial to gain a quotation through the tool.

There was a case when the item serial number was not correct and the item showed invalid. Two options I tried:

Option#1: Contacted Cisco CSCC team for validation:

• Pros:
• The earlier the better to involve a technical professional and get on top of the issue
• Technical team may be able to figure out what is the issue within 1 business day
• Cons:
• Complex cases will cause technical team up to 1 or 2 weeks to figure out what's wrong

Option#2: Advise the customer that we need additional information regarding the item serial information

• Pros:
• Customer may maintain the record
• Cons:
• Customer may know nothing about it
• It may take several days for customer to search the record

After discussed with the Engagement Manager, we decided to contact the CISCO technical team for validation. At the same time, we asked customer for further clarification. The CISCO technician was able to provide feedback after 2 business days and we also received feedback from the customer for the same. We were able to quote the service items on time and send the order to the customer for contract review.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 4 ~~ Performance measure support

I was regularly involved with performance management for the organization through the preparation of monthly billing reports, quarterly sales reports and annual sales reports.

Raw data was collected through the sales and billing database. I transformed the data into the Excel summary sheets I designed with input from key report recipients. In the reports, revenue and profit margin are calculated and grouped by each engagement Manager. 

I also came out a summary sheet of financial analysis on margin percentage calculation for the team and individual members. If projects were completed by various regional teams, data of project description and numbers were manually added in. 

With this analysis, supervisors and stakeholders can review, discuss and make business decisions. This is also the reference for revenue tracking, individual team member revenue recognition, strategic account planning, annual incentive reviews and validation of bonus payments.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 3 ~~ internal control risk

At AT&T, the Accounts Payable (A/P) team entered vendor invoices into the ERP system, and routed invoices to the requester for approval. If invoice items or tax lines did not match the order, I reported discrepancies and assisted in reconcilation of these discrepancies.

When comparing ordered items with invoiced items, it was difficult to identify tax related errors. For invoices with an error flagged, A/P team routes the invoice to a tax manager for further investigation. It usually takes one or two workdays to get feedback. This procedure is critical. If any invoice was paid with mistakes, it causes extra effort to notify A/P team and the vendor for correction. Sometimes this clean-up process takes more than two weeks or even a month. Delays in payment could result in contract breaches. With this lengthy process, Internal Control raises concerns as records or important information may be lost.

What I learned from the team was that the tax managers are not normally involved in the invoice approval cycle. Invoices are randomly checked for tax details. They would wait until a flag is raised for inspection. 

Therefore, I suggested for any new project (new PO), the first invoice must be routed to the tax manager for review. This helps set up traceable references for project's invoices and thus mitigate potential mistakes. For monthly recurring invoices that have fixed regular charges, this initial invoice review ensures that all subsequent invoices are processed efficiently and within audit requirements.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 2 ~~ Add value by the job aid

Because it was a job that supports reporting on multiple channels, I learned how to organize miscellaneous information into a form that whenever I was asked, I could respond right away. 

I spent the first couple days to learn and figured out the sale process and generating PO from the ERP system (Ariba). The application enabled users to transfer  quotation data from CISCO online ordering tools into Ariba. But not all the information is available online. For example, the financial expense codes are pending to be pulled and reviewed by the Finance department.

Finance department provided a job aid for how to apply proper expense codes for data entry. However, the support from the job aid is limited due to the complexity of assigning services items, such as buy or lease equipment, finance terms and etc. for multiple stakeholders. To tackle the challenge, I began to create my own spreadsheet knowledge base. For every PO I encountered, the information was extracted into my workbook. I tried to only include the most important piece to limit the file size.

Most of the services are recurring, i.e. the subscription service or software license. As time went by, I was able to accumulate certain amount of backup data. When I was creating POs and looking for the expense code again, I just need to refer to my "bible" index. This practice improved my work efficiency and accuracy.

As experience grew, I expanded the spreadsheet to include billing and invoice data. One of the advantages from keeping this was, whenever I was asked to provide a quick analysis, I could quickly filter by different criteria and present it in a minute.

With this single source, I was able to track, when and who has requested the PO, who the vendor is, invoice currency, how many vendor invoices have been paid up to date, project descriptions and other key fields used in the daily measures of work. This simple structure allowed all Engagement Managers with a no fuss and no training required access to the same data source.

From that on, I've kept a habit of maintaining my own knowledge base in any position.

Work or Life ~~ Commerce Valley Drive West ~~ 1 ~~ Net income or Network

In a cold morning of December 6th, 2010, I started my day one as a procurement specialist for AT&T, the name of a telecom giant. It is worth to mention that AT&T used to be the owner of Bell Canada. Today in Canada market, AT&T as a US subsidiary, is way smaller and working hard to compete with other service providers. 

The Network Integration team had solid business at that time. Since the first day I joined them, my everyday work is filled with quotations, orders and billings.

As I learned, majority of existing clients are having similar stories. In the US, AT&T is their network provider. When expanding their business in Canada, they used to ask support from AT&T Canada. By doing so, their Canadian children are able to take advantage of the relationship and financial shares from US head quarters. The name reputation of AT&T also earns them credit of other local engagements.  

So-called "The NI team", there was a funny story behind. One of my friends from Finance Department, ever asked me what NI is. Is that "NET INCOME"?  Aha, no, of course it was not the 'net income'. However, the revenue the team generated really brought a significant  portion of overall income. 

My direct boss, he is the director and department head. All other seven co-workers are engagement managers. They talked to every potential client, tried to analyze their network expansion needs, drafted a IT solution, and negotiated financial payments. I helped them pull a quotation from the suppliers, placed the order, tracked the shipping, validated the billing and reconciled the payment. 

If someone ever ask me how is everyday like working there, I would say that I feel like working in a busy news station. Why? Because all my co-workers were either talking on phone or online conference with their clients, one after another client. I was listening to multiple channels all the same time!

Work or life ~~ part time costing analysis ~~

Like a writer who works on the first novel, I was feeling sweet and spicy when tapping into the first serious finance analysis project two years ago that I really appreciated. I did not only practice the skills, but also realized something helped me to grow in career.

Data:
The owner, Natalie was looking for a part time analyst to initial her costing optimizes project. It's a task starting from scratch. All she had were original paper invoices. They are so raw to be digitized, grouped and organized into a manner to be analysed. My first step was to set up an Excel framework and act on data entry.  When more and more data were gathered, I had a basic shape for how to forecast the cost growth ratio. This is also the initial stage that vendor and production management concept is identified. Gathering meaningful data paves the way to success.

Model:
The second task was to build a sales number tracking model. Natalie has very good mindset. Her goal is to launch the online ordering and sales tracking tool. However, there is no maturated data to support yet. In a good office talk, we agreed with the spreadsheet framework. There were trials and errors in several iterations, multiple meetings and email exchanges, before the formulated model was finalized. Considering to simply the daily operational process, I tried to use sets of fomulas such as IF or SUMIFS,  as much as possible, and created hyper links for navigation. In my view, the most important thing is traceability, so that my successor can put hands on quickly.

Sweet:
This is an excellent part-time job experience. I learned how to communicate my thoughts in words and numbers. More than that, I learned from Natalie, how she organizes her work, leads a small team, communicates with clients, and deals with trouble vendors. I admired her courage and vision to run small business. Like many of us, she also needs to take care of family and especially, her new born baby.

Spice:
The office is far from where I live. I used to come a long distance to meet and talk, although we communicated mostly by emails. Sometimes there is delay and confusion. For the concern of commute, I finally declined her full time job offer.

New ideas are always in need to solve challenges. When looking back, I realized that better solution on presenting financial data in a slick term called 'data visualization'. That should make the whole model easy to build and follow. I am on my way to achieve goals.

Work or Life ~~ Where is the variance ~~

~ Will I break my record to do a write off for this month? This is always a scary question. I never since I've taken on this job more than a year ago. As long as I am allowed, I would keep searching until the very last minute. For me, this process means giving in to the error. And that flags an error hidden somewhere, if we don't fix it, sure it will show up again.

The story begins that I only have less than 2 working days to complete all the bank reconciliation reports before month end closed. Usually I have at least 3 to 4 full days to knock them down.

Lucky enough, I spent some good time beforehand. I already ran sets of back up data. And I helped fixing my co-worker's spreadsheet and formula. She used the file to upload her entries to SAP. They are critical to the month end data. I believe this proactive actions could save me time and prevent errors.

I was right. Half of the accounts are reconciled right away when the data were released. Also I could quickly figured out one bigger amount and one smaller number mistakes came from three major accounts. So after first two hour of very intensive calculation, I was able to narrow the variances to one major business account now.

But then I realized the harder part was following. This weird variance was a number that itself could not be found anywhere. It could mean anything, maybe a typo, maybe a combination of more than 2 numbers, maybe somebody's error...maybe..maybe... The thoughts terrifies me. It may cost me hours after hours to search and get nothing at the end.

I tried to follow up the suggestions and recommendations from co-worker and leader, searched around any piece of record in the office. The work day was ended, and I was still struggling for the variance. It's a little upset during the night, so I tried to relax and watched a novel before going to bed.

The next morning before to begin anything, thinking about the afternoon was the deadline already. I made the decision to draft the report first. In case if I finally end up could not knock it down, I will need to write off, then I need to submit a very well written report to explain what happen. I would need time and energy later on. This was one of the practice I heard from somewhere, do most important things first, and choose between 20/80.

However, one thing I did not expect was happened. I was required to post an adjusting entry. The story then turn to another direction because of the change of variance itself, it's another number!

It's almost 11 am, I don't have much time left. My leader stepped in and tried to help. I know that I am feeling desperate already. Then suddenly I wanted to run a payment subtotal related to monthly payroll, I just talked to myself that it couldn't be the case, the top 3 numbers in three individual dates may sum up as that variance... but I was wrong! It's the subtotal, they are the variance.....how could that be...

Well, I got my answer from my leader, these are the manual adjustment. The payroll agent deducted the expenses directly from the bank account during those dates and no one in the office taken care of them during the whole month long.

What a good learn! I quickly record the finding first to my notebook. I am thinking if I keep collecting these scenarios, I maybe able to build up my own audit bible, one day will I use that to track down the clues like a detective?

Edge 2: Hang Tight - Keep in mind 7 principles

P7. Smile when you are under stress
During stressful meetings, keep on smiling to reduce your stress and stay focused on getting the work done. 
answer quetions and cordially withdraw from the current distress:

• What is the big picture?
• Are we trying to solve the same common issue just from different angles?
• Can I separate the problem from the person?
• What is the root cause of the hostility?

Smile reduces stress, creates positive emotions and shows more confidence. Keeping a smile inevitably enables you to not lose your temper, think more logically and tend to be ahead of other person. The effort to keep things in control, for you and for your counterpart, is what counts. It's much better than having a stern, negative, or even dismissive facial expression.

P8. Go beyond your self-perceived limit
Growth is not glamorous but painful, you need patience and action: reach out to think outside the box, and focus on the now.
"A strong will is an unspoken art."
First, when you are stretched you need to acknowledge this.
Second, you need to be aware that developing a new capacity to handle things requires patience and action.
Third, reach out. Share your pain points with others. If you hold it in, you will dive into a negative spiral.
Fourth, you have to stop thinking about past failures and future uncertainties. In tough situation, go into the "ticking the checkbox" mode.

Show your vulnerability, but have faith. You will succeed. Growth is not glamorous.

P9. always imagine the worst-case scenario

Imaging the worst-case scenario will enable you to make decisions more quickly and think about the next-step actions. 

To help you keep going, learn to overcome the fear of failure by imaging the worst. Two major aspects of the job:

1. Visualizing and ghosting out the ideal end output of the project, which later transforms into foreseeing higher strategic missions for clients - see a better, even a crisper ideal state
2. Having a ready-made countermeasure in place or prearranged team problem-solving meetings with something flares up - what we can do right away when the bad-case scenario hits home

Benefits of defining worst case scenario
First, you control your emotions better, hence allowing a healthy state of mind.
Second, it allows you to cover more ground.

Expectation is the best done at the beginning of the project and right before the final or important milestone. The beginning is crucial to set expecation and be mentally ready for any bad outcome. The timing before final or important milestone is to focus on risk mitigation as much as possible.  

P10. Start following up

Following up is an important skill to boost your credibility and stay on top of your game; codify to-do items to make it possible.

It's because you don't want to miss any important opportunities and want to avoid major losses. You want to show presence, awareness, and a solid reputation. It's a way to reach higher matury and build stronger credibility fast. 

But only a handful people grasp it well, why?

1. Following up is perceived as a minor theme.
2. rereading notes, unless you have made it a habit, is cumbersome
3. Overreliance and confidence in memory - "it's better to take notes and free your mind for problem solving"

Use codification for follow-ups: "the note-taking skill is the prerequisite to become good at following up". use simple codes, such as highlight in different colours or use symbols and set minor rules, such as sending back key learning and summaries into neatly three or four core themes. It helps remember particular details effiectively.

Make follow up a habit.

P11. Push back with less emotion

Use the 24-hour rule and an evaluation mechanism to push back logically; don't listen to anyone cruising at 33,000 feet!

24-hour rule: Every time at work someone gives you something outrageous to do, wait for 24 hours before you act upon it with a counteroffer.
Two basic underpinnings:

1. People (usually senior leaders) have the best interests of you and the company at heart
2. You will tend to regret any negative or rebuking answers you make when yu're under emotional siege. 

When having an assignment, try to take a step back and ask yourself a simple queston: "What is the objective, or why are we doing this?"

Second, assess the value of your efforts by quickly doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if the impact is big enough. This will help you drill down into the why question with more precision. It should be a number-driven effort if possible. Both figuring out the objective and estimating an impact number should give both parties a clear idea of the task's relative significance. 

Only when both objective and impact are relevant, then you move on to the required people, capability, and timeline validation - the how effort. 

You start with the objective, then measure the impact, and follow it up with a question of personnel fit and the required level of urgency. This process will assert more control over the project and a sense of reliability for you as a leader

Cruising at an altitude of 33,000 feet

"Great project leaders receive 10 inputs and make that into 5 on the spot. Mediocre ones take all 10. The worst ones make it into 20. It is always better to deliver on three and produce a 120 percent output rather than deliver on 10 and produce a 60 percent output.”

People who are great at pushing back get a lot of work done, formulate their own approach such as the 24-hour rule or an evaluation process, focus on the positive side of things, and respond less emotionally. 

Work or Life ~~ do something while waiting ~~

I have a similar working dilemma like most people do, that is I need to wait for other people's work before I can begin my real "task". During this waiting time, we play our fingers, drink, eat snack, take a walk and show our faces everywhere...Does not help.

Anyhow, I need to maintain optimism. So I list supporting activities that will keep me busy and take a good use of the waiting time. 

Here they are:

To my point, no matter what activities the list has included, as long as they can cheer me up, I will do. Sometimes I just simply push myself to a 15 minutes nap to re-charge.