Roblog

A group at work (what Accenture calls a "community," which is a group of geographically related, if not project-related, employees) was planning a meeting with a "games" portion at the end. There were going to be 3 Wiis (Bowling, Boxing, and Trivia), Bingo (I'm still puzzled why this game was selected), and Pictionary. Excellent! Pictionary is my game.

I've been told that one way that you can identify a personal strength are those tasks that seem fun and effortless for you, but others find difficult or laborious. I've discovered one of my strengths that way at my current project: visualizing concepts, diagrams, or process flows in a presentation or handout.

I've done a lot of process design and communication in my current project, which includes developing the materials for that. Rather quicly, I became the person putting together the presentations. At first, it was just because I knew the material and had the time, but over time I started getting ad-hoc requests to translate someone's scribbles into a coherent, pleasant, and understandable display. I enjoy doing that, so I've never complained.

So now I'm known as the expert for diagrams and regularly get such requests from my team. Yesterday, in fact, my manager came to me with some scribbles, which I converted into some diagrams in Powerpoint a few hours later. That afternoon, he mentioned multiple times how great they were, and how when he showed it to his peers and his manager they appreciated the graphics and thought it really made the concept clear. Personally, I thought this was a little over-the-top for just a couple of Powerpoint slides - it was easy. But I had to remind myself that this is not false praise from him, but a genuine appreciation of something that he finds difficult or impossible to do.

I'm finding it hard to translate "Powerpoint artist" into a substantial item on my internal Accenture resume, but it has lead me to think that perhaps I should seek future roles that allow me to continue to utilize this strength of mine.