The Roche Report

On the flight home from the UK, I watched 3 episodes of Being Serena and found myself enraptured by it -- not for the production value or story line really, but because I found it fascinating watching her talk about several of the things that I have struggled with myself (and written about on this blog) like traveling for work, how to be the best at what you do while being an awesome parent, when to stop breastfeeding vis a vis your work demands. It's easy to put people like Serena Williams into an "other" category of "she has so much more ... than me so it must be easier for her" (Insert whatever you want into the ... - resources, talent, support, etc.). And yet, as many of us noted based on her recent US Open win, many of it is harder for her. For example, if anyone else was in back to back major finals, they wouldn't debate whether or not the person had come back; in fact, that could be a career achievement for many! She said two things that really reso

I haven't posted much in the past month because I have I spent the past number of days and weeks working on two very important presentations / efforts. The entire experience has crystallized (or crystallised, because we had to use British English in the presentation, and that, in itself, was an experience) what incredible work that a solid, well-oiled team can do together. My story about this experience starts with the presentation itself. In a former role, I led a deal team, a large part of which was responsible for helping our IBM teams present in a more innovative and engaging way. My task on one of these two efforts presentation was to do just that - figure out how to create a story that both somewhat made sense in terms of what we were presenting, when we were given a list of essentially randomly organized questions to present. Accordingly, when given this challenge to tackle, my first call was to someone who I've done this with a bunch of times (hi Aaron!), who