It’s now been seven months since I commenced in my current role. During that time I’ve faced some challenges as I’ve settled in and started to come into my own as a professional. Here’s five of them.

1. Taking meeting minutes. I’ve taken meeting minutes before and usually take notes in meetings, but I hadn’t done it in a long time, and there’s a big difference between taking notes for yourself and taking notes for others. Just a simple task, but daunting at first!

2. Research tasks take a lot longer. I’m not so much referring to the complexity of tasks, but when I’ve previously found out something for my bosses I’ve just walked up to their desk, had a chat about what I’ve found and perhaps draw a mud map. Now I have to set aside time to think about how I will present the information I’ve found, whether this be a brief, memo, diagram, etc.

3. Hierarchy. I haven’t worked in government before so getting used to processes, layers and bureaucracy had me completely baffled during the first few months. Things have to be addressed in a certain way, to the correct person and don’t forget the ‘sign here’ flags. I was more accustomed to walking into the general manager’s office, for example, let him know I’ve raised a purchase order for some technical documents, that he’s approved it but I need a signature on the supplier’s order form. It was a knock on the door, go in, ‘Yep, there you go, I’ve reviewed the terms, you’ve approved it, may I have a signature?’ It was done then and there.

4. Silence. The building is so quiet! I’m yet to acquire a selection of shoes that don’t make so much noise in the corridors. Everyone can hear me coming. Given I’ve only just come from an aircraft hangar, which had the odd engine testing downstairs, you can imagine this was quite a change.

5. Getting to know and trust a new team. I haven’t had the best of experiences in the past. But I have come out of my shell, and I do have an awesome manager. Happy days.

I’ve also written about my role in an earlier post - Never say never.