https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZD_f65IoTU

The above is a link to video I recorded in 60 FPS of TLT’s boat this year, styled after Appa.

Last week, I helped work on the TLT boat for Roth Regatta for 4 days. At first, I had originally thought of it as something to add to the list of things I need to do. However, that quickly changed in the last week before the race. It isn’t all about building the boat and disappearing, but rather the teamwork throughout the way. From this event alone, I would posit that for a team to not just be successful but to enjoy being successful, there needs to be a personality amongst each person, to make everything matter.

Just slapping tape, paint, and cardboard in the right way and hoping it floats won’t cut it. Rather, by enjoying the whole thing, friendships are built, and I feel I know everyone better after this. In fact, by now I’m glad I can call the interns and even a couple Senior Consultants friends, and helping with the boat was instrumental in that. (Next time, I should realize that Roth Pond will not mutate whoever enters, and want to help move the boat in the water.)

I would like to reflect on the divide between how I act in a personal sense and a professional sense. I accept there may be existing answers to this question, but still feel it pertinent to ask:

If talking to someone as if they are a classmate or an equal still solves the point of the conversation, why would a person have a completely different ‘customer service voice’?

As of now, after all the shadowing I have done at TLT, my best answer to this is a mix of tradition and reason. Tradition because all customer service works this way, and reason since there are a proportion of people greater than 0 that consider anything else rude. I also believe my view is slightly biased – I put the most priority in solving the problem with the least amount of time wasted, and actually see this as an optimization problem I figure out as I help a person. I have learned through reflection that perhaps my methodology or even manner is not fully congruent to the traditional customer service mantra.

Of course, this is something I might be able to look forward to in the coming years – how these ideas actually pan out. That’s why I like learning – if I wasn’t right on the point, I get a still-large set of data from that: how I was off, by how much, and what the accepted ideas are.