Celebrating Our Culture Heroes – October

by | Nov 12, 2020

Celebrating Our Culture Heroes - October
9 min read

We are constantly driven to come up with new ideas and techniques to ensure that we provide the best services for our clients. However, some things always stay the same: embracing the company’s core values and celebrating our amazing team members for their contributions.

In October we celebrated Roberta and James from our Data & Engineering team for going above and beyond and demonstrating outstanding abilities in getting sh*t done and being curious & creative. Based on our tradition, we asked them both to offer us a glimpse into the abilities needed and techniques used in their daily work, that help them stay on top of the game. 

Celebrating Our Culture Heroes

Beta

Based ‘in the middle of the jungle’ in Bahia, Brazil; Roberta has been a pillar in the IMWT family for more than 2 years. Besides her ability to look at challenges with a ‘solution’ mindset, the team can always count on her to deliver not only complex tasks within great quality but also a positive and cheerful attitude in any interaction that she has. 

Celebrating Our Culture Heroes - October - BetaWhat is your best advice for ‘Curiosity & Creativity’ in the workplace (to the point of being recognised for this superpower)?

Curiosity is about not settling only with what is at hand, and creativity means transforming what is at hand to solve problems.

When it comes to Data & Engineering, I believe it is crucial not to stick to pre-existing solutions; as much as you have an extensive repertoire, most of the challenges that will appear will be unique and will ask for unique solutions.

Any tips for keeping yourself focussed and delivering great results while working from home?

There are two essential things for me when it comes to focusing.

First, I need music. I listen to music all day, every day. Some songs take me away from work. Others immediately put me in the Flow State – if you don’t know what Flow State is, I recommend you to Google it as soon as you finish reading this article.

Last but not least, sometimes, I need some time off of the computer. When I feel like I’m on autopilot or can’t concentrate, I just walk away for a while – to spend a few minutes with my pets, watching my daughter playing Roblox, or playing with the vegetable garden. This has been the most efficient way to stimulate my focus lately.

Celebrating Our Culture Heroes - October - Beta's Garden

Could you briefly describe your main tasks and responsibilities?

I feel that I am a double agent, as I am involved in Digital Analytics tasks such as reporting and dashboard development for Web Analytics, PPC and SEO projects, but I also play an essential role in the Data & Engineering stream, where I work a little with Extraction, Transformation & Loading (ETL) processes ), data modeling, databases and a little bit of statistical modeling using R.

How do you manage to juggle so many responsibilities and deadlines?

I would say that methods and tools may seem tedious, but believe me: they are essential for productivity. I use Google Reminder to keep everything noted, but many interesting tools can help you keep track of tasks. Finding the best tool for your needs is excellent, but it’s not enough to never miss a deadline. Breaking bigger processes into small tasks and setting realistic deadlines for each task is also very important. When deciding on milestones, also make sure to make your team and the client aware of the project risks and dependencies so that you can manage expectations

James

In case you don’t know James from our previous articles, you are definitely missing out! Besides being an absolute (Head of) Data wiz, we can always count on him for support and top-notch memes. Based on his responses to our short interview below, we will make sure to count on him for lists in the future as well.

For an inside scoop into how he started his remote journey and for his pieces of advice for someone entering the Data world, you can read our interview with him here.

Celebrating Our Culture Heroes - October - JamesWhat is your best advice for ‘getting Sh*t done’ in the workplace (to the point of being recognised for this superpower)?

Anxiety and caffeine. Thanks for attending my TED Talk.

No, seriously, the big thing for me is to clearly have in mind what I’m meant to be working on. If I’m trying to work on three things at once then I’m probably not being terribly productive at any of them, so I need to decide “this is the thing I’m doing right now”.

The last time I answered these questions I was extolling the virtues of list-making, too. I still recommend making lists. Lists are love. Lists are life. 

Any tips for keeping yourself focussed and delivering great results while working from home?

This has been harder with the latest COVID lockdown in Melbourne. I actually moved into a shared office just before the new lockdown with the idea that I’d be more able to focus there, and it’s now been over 100 days since I’ve been there.

I always recommend keeping a clear delineation between work and life while working from home. It makes you more focussed on work and it keeps work from bleeding too much into the rest of your life, which can become problematic. If I’m honest over the last few months I’ve been struggling to practice what I preach on that front, though.

Could you briefly describe your main tasks and responsibilities?

Yeah! I’m Head of the Data and Engineering team, which means I’m responsible for understanding the scope of our projects, breaking things out into actionable subtasks and assigning the right person to perform those tasks. I’m also still “on the tools” myself, which means I do most of the delivery when it comes to data and tool engineering work. I’ve bragged before, but we have a super well-rounded team with Maggie as our data scientist and Roberta as our Data Analyst – they’re both fantastic! 🙂

How do you manage to juggle so many responsibilities and deadlines?

Mostly good account management! Definitely one of the main facilitators is our Client Services Director. Cecilia’s super on top of reminding me what I need to do and letting me know if I’m letting things slip. Everyone should get themselves a Cecilia.

El Phan
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