Building Successful Careers

John came to me at noon time. He opened our meeting with serious business topics talking professionally about projects and resources. After our discussion, he relaxed and smiled at me: “Elizabeth, would you please give me some feedback?” I smiled back at John, “I would like to pass on feedback I once received from one of my mentors.” Harry, the Executive Chairman I worked for, had a productive meeting about software global resource strategy with me. At end of the meeting, I asked for his feedback. Harry looked at me with a serious face: “Elizabeth, you are too serious, and you are too scary!” Then he laughed. What an astonishing remark! I was too serious and too scary! I viewed myself as a nice, flexible and resourceful professional. I knew for fact that I was not outwardly humorous. However, I was not boring either! What could I do to correct that impression? Solutions appeared. A few days later, my husband came home with a tip on effective communication with executives. ...

WSP 229 Registration at Stanford University starts on Aug 22, 2011 Here is the link https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/course.php?cid=20111_WSP+229 Stanford Class WSP 229: Ten Steps to a Successful Career: Elizabeth Xu and her mentor of 20+ years Ms. Pat Zimmerman, Jefferson Award and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award winner, (bio at: http://www.blogger.com/profile/12719189363354248427) will co-teach this class at Stanford. We will provide you with tools and practical steps to help you build a solid successful career. We will help you go through a paradigm shift in how you see yourself and how you approach your career and life. We will help you to discover your burning desire and goals, and help you to build attitude and plans to realize these goals, build a sound professional brand and broad network and support system. WSP 229 Course Description: Your career development has become your own responsibility in this ever-changing talent mar...

When you stop learning, you start dying. Pat Zimmerman

It has been at least seven years since I last met Wayne in person. Seven years of time washed away many sandy grinds between us and left only sparkling gold. I could not help to thank Wayne for one of my most important career paradigm shifts. Without his advice, I could not grow from a first line manager to a director. Wayne looked at me with his signature smile, “Let me tell you my version of the story .” My heart was racing; did I remember our meeting total differently? Wayne was an architect at a large software company 20 years ago. He once talked to a Sr. VP and his mentor at this large company. His mentor said: “Wayne, there are three bodies of knowledge for each person: 1. The knowledge you are aware of, and you know it very well and apply it in your life daily 2. The knowledge that you are aware of, but you don’t know it well because you have no interest, desire or capability to acquire it 3. The knowledge that you are not aware of, you never knew such knowledge existed. You wi...

We either leisurely or are forced to make decisions or choices each day. Each decision or choice points to a different path, defines our future and influences people around us, subtlety or profoundly. Using programming language, life presents us with sets after sets of “if else" statements. We could very well come from the same place in our lives (i.e. classmates from the same school). Each outcome of the “if else” sets us apart. Over a long period of time , we become vastly different people. Therefore, some of us become restless when it is time to make decisions, others are afraid of the consequences of their choices. Recently, I had an enlightening conversation with Dan Pritchett, EBay Fellow and CTO of Rearden Commerce. He was the first person ever who clearly separated decisions and choices for me. He said, “Choices are made based on pure facts, based on adequate supportive information; it is a purely analytical result. Decisions are made based on partial facts, partia...

My long lost friend May called me out of the blue yesterday. Three minutes into the conversation, we talked about life. Life is made up of events. Although individual events seem accidental, woven together they form relationships and experiences which impact how you feel about yourself. In that sense, nothing is accidental. Everything intertwines impacting your future life, ultimately creating your present and future life experiences. May joked that there are two types of people in the world. One type creates stories and the other listens to stories. Story creators are full of surprises and new initiatives, their life experience is exciting. Listeners get excited just observing them, wanting to be included in these stories. At lunch time, I was five minutes early and while waiting for my friend I noticed a table with four ladies talking and laughing. What a happy table! I could not help notice that one lady was radiant with happiness and excitement. That made her so beautiful and...

Many people would say I am a process junky because of my extensive experience at IBM DB2, and many years of practicing sophisticated software development processes to build large scale mission critical enterprise software. The perception from people who don’t know me well is their perfect reality. Indeed, Elizabeth is a process junky on paper from afar. People who know me well see a different Elizabeth, who has a passion for innovation. Research, innovation and creativity inspire me, and fuel me through many “boring” days and activities. Without innovation, one would never paint the most moving scenes and objects; one could never build killer apps. Without innovation, the iPhone would never reach our palms. Well, can we build an iPhone without any process? Despite the many birth defects the iPhone IV born with, it went through very strict processes to achieve such consistency, friendly user interface and it is a piece of art. When I go to an empty parking lot, I can zigzag whateve...