The Roche Report

I wanted to do a little series on my favorite pieces of advice that I have received in my career, and I thought that I would start with one of the pieces of advice that I rely on the most. When discussing mentorship with someone who I ironically consider to be one of my mentors, she said that she didn't really like the idea of having "just one" mentor. Instead, she suggested the idea of curating your own board of directors. The concept is: much like a company needs a range of leaders with different backgrounds to provide strategic direction, each of us needs a range of advisors to help point us in the right direction. Your board of directors may change throughout your career as you have different roles, different needs, different challenges - and as you develop new relationships. Unlike the traditional "mentorship" model where you seek out someone whose career or style you might want to emulate, in your board of directors, you might have people who you work fo

My first week back I wrote about  feeling like I was jumping up and down telling everyone in IBM-land "put me in, coach!" Johnny laughed and told me that I needed to be patient and that before I knew it, I would have more on my plate than I could handle... ... boy oh boy was he right. Do you ever have one of those weeks where you are just tired? Where it doesn't seem like you can keep your head above water with all the asks coming your way? Where work / life balance seems like a bit of a joke -- and nothing that you can do can shift it in the right direction? I'm having one of those weeks. I had one last week too. And looking at my next two weeks, I know I'm going to have them again for the next two weeks. Some of this has to do with the amount of work that I have to do - and some of it has to do with the amount I am traveling; I am still pretty committed to doing day trips as much as I can, but that makes for a very long day - and also throws things a bit o

"I don't feel like a superhero, I feel like a Mom who has a career." I was reading an article this morning about the FTC Commissioner who has an 8 week old daughter who she takes to work with her and it made me think about how we all find a different way to reach balance in our lives. Several people have asked me recently how I've found the balance in being back at work / how I've found "having it all." And the reality is this article really articulated several things that I've been thinking / feeling recently. Balance First, with respect to balance, in some ways, I've found "balance" between work and life to be a bit easier than I expected. The reality is that Charlie NEEDS so much that it is not an option to not pick her. It's not like I can tell her to feed herself and put herself to bed. But, the reality is that the balance is also not so easy all the time. For example, Charlie has been sick almost every week that she