Socks are visible

Right then.  Are you ready for this?  I have a LOT to catch you up on.  Sometimes I think my life is measured in reverse cat years, as so much seems to get jammed into a short space of time.  I don’t blog for a week and everything changes.

So, since my last blog post on Santacon, I traveled to Chicago and started my new job at Takeda!  Now, I generally will not blog about my job as talking about work stuff on social media is fraught with potential pitfalls – I don’t ever want to do a Justine Sacco (for any of you unfamiliar with the story, click here: http://mashable.com/2013/12/20/justine-sacco/ – story’s end? her ass was totally fired).  But, as I sat down last night to write this blog post, I figured just describing my first week at work, the folk I’d met and the excitement of all the preparations for my impending move to Japan would be perfectly fine.

Its funny how your life can completely change in the blink of an eye or the click of a mouse.

My first week at Takeda (I started Dec 15th) was completely brilliant.  I flew to Chicago late Sunday night, and was going to be in the Deerfield office Monday through Wednesday, doing all the HR onboarding, training stuff, IT stuff, paperwork (so much paperwork) and then as many meetings with as many members of my new team as I could cram into the three days!  It was bloody FREEZING – the morning after I arrived, it was FOUR degrees!!  FOUR degrees, I tell you!!  That is really quite chilly, especially after having flown in from Californian sunshine of 65 degrees!   Nonetheless, I caught the free shuttle bus from the hotel to Takeda’s campus to report in for Day One, bright and early at 8.45am!  Takeda is literally a stone’s throw from the Hyatt but – both given the weather plus the fact there are no sidewalks along the busy freeway, walking there was not a viable option.  There were about 5 or 6 of us all sitting waiting in the lobby, and I was very impressed by how nice the facility was.  Its very light, airy and modern – three identical office buildings with lots of glass and high ceilings basically stuck together in a row.  Handy in that the meeting rooms, loos, coffee rooms etc are in exactly the same place on every floor in each building, so once you’ve learnt the layout, you’re set no matter which building you’re in.  For a directionally-challenged person such as myself, that’s a cool bonus.

Anyway, Day 1 pretty much consisted of back-to-back training presentations from all the various folk we needed to hear from (payroll, IT, security, HR, health and safety, etc etc) to get ourselves set up in the Takeda system.   Got my new ID badge and was pleased that – for once – I happened to be having a Good Hair Day when it was taken.  At last.  One piece of ID where I don’t look like the living dead or that i’ve been submerged, decomposing, at the bottom of a lake for a couple of weeks.  It was really quite refreshing.  I like this company already.

After all that malarky was done with, I finally managed to make it up to the temporary office that had been reserved for me, up in building 2 on the 3rd floor.  An office!!  I had an office again!!!  With walls and a door!!  (my euphoria was short-lived, once I learnt that the Tokyo offices are all open-plan, so my rekindled romance with non-cube corporate living would be, sadly, short-lived.  Well, maybe..).  I had a number of meetings scheduled with various folk, but even before my first official meeting, I was extremely impressed by just how warm and welcoming everyone was.  Asking for help to find the copier room, this random chap not only showed me the copier room, but then also introduced me to several other folk on the floor – just because they were there, and I was a new hire.  Someone taking just a few moments out of their day to make me feel welcome, not because they had to, but because that was part of the culture.  So, overall, my first impressions have been extremely favorable – and were borne out in all the meetings I had with various people.  To a tee, folk were friendly and extremely happy to welcome me onboard!  The meetings were more introductory ones, rather than detailed work discussions, but I certainly left Chicago with a MASSIVE stack of files and presentations to read over the Holiday Shutdown.  Yep – in one of those blissful “I couldn’t have planned this better if I tried” moments, my first full week at Takeda was then followed by the two week company shutdown, where the offices close and everyone buggers off until January 6th!   And I was getting paid for it!!  Of course, my plan was to take one of those weeks off to relax and recharge after what has been, by all accounts, a pretty stressful year and then take the second week to start to read through all that stuff, so that i’m fully prepped about my new compound and the diabetes market and would be ready and raring to go on January 6th.

Or so I thought.

One of the more exciting and fun meetings I had was with the relocation specialists who would be handling my transition to Japan.  I’d spoken a couple of times with the lady who had been assigned to handle my case, and we’d chatted for a bit so that she could get to know me a little, my personality (poor thing) etc before then talking about my specific relocation needs.  I was delighted to hear that Takeda were going to match my 2 bedroom apartment here in San Francisco with a 2 bedroom apartment in Tokyo (yey for visitors not having to sleep on an Aerobed!) and we started talking about potential neighborhoods and key requirements.  My relo lady also connected me with the local relo folk in Japan, so they were also in touch, starting to co-ordinate and plan the itinerary for my home-finding visit!  It was all incredibly exciting – and very real!  My tickets were booked for January 2nd and I’d be spending the first 2 weeks in Tokyo, then flying back to Chicago for meetings on Jan 20th, then heading to NYC to meet with my agency the last week in January, before finally collapsing back into a heap in SF at the end of the month.  The legal folk who were working on my Japan visa had also been in touch, so i’d sent them some initial paperwork and documents, and would hear back from them as to how long it would take for my Japan work visa to come through.  Around 6 weeks was the estimate, putting my final, Oh My God I’m Really Leaving SF for Japan date at early February.

Now, as part of the relocation package (which, again, they do a very nice job with), there several things  – other than simple finances – included that are intended to help with your transition.  One is for language tuition, up to 120 hrs, so I definitely signed up for that.  Another service offered is for a day of “cultural training”, to help you understand better some of the cultures, customs and protocols involved with living in Japan.  Its an all-day, in-person one on one training session with a consultant and its intended to help you thrive in a new culture, both from a personal and a professional perspective.  Because I was flying out to Tokyo on Jan 2nd and would be meeting my team the first couple weeks, I wanted to try and squeeze in the training before I left.  Its just so different, that any and all knowledge and insight beforehand was going to be invaluable.

So, that’s how I found myself yesterday – on Boxing Day no less – working through lots of various exercise with Keiko-san, to help me decode how Stuff Gets Done in Japan and how people think, make decisions and do business.  As we worked through each section, I had to reflect on what my objectives were, or how I thought about things, or my leadership style, or what was important to me as then the basis for comparing that with how my Japanese colleagues thought, felt or acted.   As I got started in the day, I was asked to write down what I wanted to get out of the day’s session.  Here’s what came to mind:

• to understand basic protocol and courtesy so that i don’t offend
• to understand how best to be effective in my role within the context of the Japanese organization
• to feel confident about my transition