Hey Guys!
Hope you have had a good week!
It’s fast coming up to three months since I started in my new job as a Corporate Counsel at FIS in our Merchants Solutions business.
Since we have formal quarterly review conversations with our line Managers at the company (the next set of which are scheduled in the coming weeks) I would like to prepare for that by setting out a few of my thoughts here.
I’ve split this out into three sections:
Key numbers
What has gone well
What hasn’t
I hope you will be able to indulge me!
KEY NUMBERS
58 Legal Documents…
...assigned to draft, review and/or negotiate by 31 Business Development Managers (BDM), Relationship Managers (RM) or Partner Managers (PM).
The 58 number relates to assignments that are made when a BDM, RM or PM makes a formal Legal Document Request in FIS' CRM system powered by SalesForce.
The 58 number does not take into account informal side queries received, for example, via our in-house chat system (MS Teams) or over email.
comprising:
21
Non-Disclosure Agreements drafted and/or reviewed, of which 14 have been signed, 6 are under negotiation, and at least three required issues lists (i.e. as opposed to marking up directly in the document, these lists or, more accurately, tables, make it easier on our team to set out and negotiate multiple legal issues in a document).
9
Merchant Service Agreements drafted, of which two have been signed, one has been agreed and is awaiting the merchant's signature and three are under negotiation.
3
Payment Facilitator Agreements drafted, of which one has been signed and two are under negotiation.
1
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) reviewed and signed.
2
Introduction Agreements drafted, both of which remain under negotiation.
22
Ancillary documents (which are documents that amend the terms of the formal agreements) drafted. These include pricing amendment letters (9), security letters (3), accession agreements (3), variation agreements (3), variation and accession agreements (3) and a bank account settlement letter.
6
"Ready" Calls moderated, during which 21 new merchant opportunities have been put forward by BDMs, including a discussion of the business model for each merchant presented and the risks from legal, onboarding and solutions perspectives.
4
"Risk Review" Calls moderated, during which five higher risk merchant opportunities identified during Ready Calls were explored by our regulatory compliance and strategic partnerships teams.
39%
of my time, on average, over the past four weeks have been spent on 'Collaboration' tasks (emails, chats and calls and meetings) with the remainder (61%) free for focus.
What has gone well?
Establishing myself in the new role:
Over the past three months, while it has not always been smooth sailing and with plenty of peaks and troughs in motivation and confidence, I have done my best to make sure that each new day was better in some respect than the previous, whether that may have come from learning a new negotiation strategy for our documents, finding out about a nifty process that makes my job less white-hair growth inducing, keeping to an inbox-zero approach at the end of each day (for the most part, and happy to say that this is still going strong!) or just having a good conversation with someone new in the organisation.
Ultimately, as I pointed out in Issue 2 I am just a tiny peanut in this behemoth of an organisation so I would say the most important thing I can do in my job is simply to assist my colleagues in the best way I can so that they can achieve their own goals!
Nothing more.
Gaining a detailed understanding of core legal documents and other ancillary documents:
Ok, so despite what I said above it’s important that that I know my stuff so I can justify my salary!
Over the past quarter, I think I’ve built up a pretty solid (but far from complete) understanding of the documentation that our team needs to prepare, review and negotiate Monday-Friday.
That said, I believe anyone can do what I do in this job and the critical things here for me to do the job well/better are:
(i) recognise that the best way to learn…is to simply DO;
(ii) quit pretending that I know the answers when I don’t, and when I don’t know say so, buy some time, and follow up; and
(iii) pick up the phone MORE than using email to clarify instructions - a call is almost always better.
I’ll try to focus on these this quarter.
What hasn’t?
Understanding of people and teams:
I don’t think I’ve been as proactive as I could be in reaching out to various people to strike up conversations and therefore build my understanding of the business, the various teams and ultimately my network.
I could very well drum up an excuse that it’s been a 100% work-from-home arrangement and I don’t bump into people the same way I would in the office - for example, at the staff kitchen, printers, etc..
But I know that’s not an excuse at all, given this has been the default mode of work for nearly two years!
In fact, because everyone is now accustomed to virtual meetings it is arguably easier to cold-email/send a chat message and set up a videoconference than it is to set up, say, a coffee chat. Plus, there is no travelling time to get to a cafe! So easy!
In my defence, I do still feel a significant amount of imposter syndrome, particularly when I am interacting with members of other teams that talk about concepts that I am not entirely familiar with.
I think that has contributed to my relative inertia, and it’s something I am trying to address on my own, for example by going through our internal learning materials for those other departments.
I spent most of today doing exactly this - going through our “Enterprise 101” slides covering our product offerings. Even so, these were simply slide decks with no audio explanation, and I was completely stuck on several slides.
Rather than leaving the questions lying around to be revisited some other day, I’m trying to use this as an opportunity to break out of my inertia by firing off an email to the learning and development admin seeing if I could set up some time to discuss the slides with a relevant person in our company with the appropriate expertise.
And more generally for this quarter, overcoming imposter syndrome is something that I can help myself with more by asking for help on more occasions (with good reason and intent of course!).
Becoming more disciplined at work, but more lazy outside of it
I was actually reflecting on this with my life coach during a session this week, and I lamented that I felt that I was becoming lazy with my life outside of work.
For example, I skipped an entire week of piano practice.
I ran less.
I played tennis less.
I was less energetic and each time I felt a burst of motivation to do those hobbies for some reason I kept being drawn back to an almost OCD-need to finish my task list for the day job.
While that gave me satisfaction, I really felt like I was drifting away from my initial promise to myself when I took the job - that I’d still prioritise building “identities” for myself outside the day job.
Or phrased differently, keep a relentless focus on building a sense of SELF worth as well as net worth.
My life coach and I spent the majority of our one hour session working on this, and hopefully I’ll do better this quarter at being more disciplined with life outside of work.
In reflecting on this, I recalled a passage I heard quoted somewhere by someone recently (exactly where I can’t remember, and I originally thought the quote came from Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, but upon…Googling…the internet seems undecided on this).
Regardless of who actually said it, I think the quote is beautifully simple and true:
Imagine life is a game of five balls that you manipulate in the air trying not to cause one any of these balls to fall.
One of them is rubber, and the rest are glass.
The five balls are represent: work, family, health, friends, soul.
It will not be long before you realize that work is the rubber ball.Whenever it falls, it will jump back up again.
The other four balls are made of glass. If one of them falls, it will not return to its previous form.
It will either be damaged, bruised, cracked or even scattered.
…
Manage your work efficiently during working hours, take the time to be assured of your sincerity, give the necessary time to your family and friends, take appropriate rest, and take care of your health.Excerpt (slightly edited) from teamblind.com
If you made it to the end of this, as always thanks so much for reading and I hope there was something in here that you could relate to!
Have a great week ahead!
David
Thanks.
Sincere and honest article.
This topic brings back memories. Work performance evaluation and goal setting each year were my least favourite activities. It's worse than cleaning the shower (which is the chore that I dread the most). They are a necessary evil for an organisation, particularly a large one. They need tools to manage the equity of their hundreds and thousands of employees as well as ensuring that the company's directions are being followed.
Unlike personal goals which involve doing things that inspire you, move you and mean something to you; corporate goals are about achieving someone else's goals, and well, profits. I wish I had understood this blatantly obvious difference. It sounds really crazy but I didn't. I drank the kool-aid and put emotions into my work goals as if they were my personal goals and then wondered why it never felt good.
Real performance management is done on a day to day basis with a supervisor that you manage to develop a good relationship with. It is in the (mutual) feedback and discussions with someone that you trust and respect that enable personal growth and career development. It is where the best work is done. This is also where a bit of luck comes in. Alas, you can't choose your family, neighbours and who you work with.