I have been trying to determine what exactly I did wrong at Intuit - why couldn't I make it work there, be happy? I think, had I stayed in Tucson, I would have achieved career "happiness" eventually. Personal triggers were the ultimate reason I chose to leave, but I have still been bothered about what I considered a less than successful stint.

In the end I believe it comes down to risk - I was not taking the level of risks that I normally do. This may sound backwards, but for me, it's what works.

I was out of my comfort zone personally, and it translated to work. I am a creature of the northeast - I grew up near Boston, had a summer camp in New Hampshire growing up, went to college in the Fingerlakes region of New York. My favorite place in all the world is the British Isles. And there I was, in the desert. Now, the Sonoran Desert is beautiful. The people in Tucson are friendly. But it's bloody hot. And there is little precious water - river beds, in my book, are meant to have water in them. All year. At least enough for a bath! I had left all family behind, save my husband and children. We had to depend solely on each other, as we had no support network. So, no family, few friends, no trees or rivers or blades of grass in which to find comfort. Yes, these things are in Tucson - but not the ones I was familiar with. I was very surprised that I had such a reaction to my environment, but I did.

I thought I had done my homework on my new job. There are always factors you can't predict. The woman I wanted to work for ended up leaving the company before I had my first anniversary. I could have used that time to step up and fill the void, but didn't. I had spent months working with her on positioning our group for success. I had been playing it safe - trying to help as she struggled to keep us on track in a constantly changing, passive-aggressive workplace. And I was tired. I can trace a cycle now through my life, all the way back to junior high, of my life high's and lows. My year and a half in Tucson was a low. I didn't fight. I didn't take chances.

I know that behaving outside the rules can work - my best collaborator, Kevin, loves to tell the story of our first brainstorming session together. Our team had been charged with building a new Knowledge Representation system for Enterprise Search. This new guy had been put in charge of an otherwise self-nominated team. He was "I.T." We were librarians. He was from Tucson (!) most of the rest of us were from New England. He was a database guy. We were about card catalog-type metadata. We were having trouble gaining a shared vocabulary,

We were working with an easel pad, and he had sketched out some ideas. They sparked something in me - something that was moving very quickly through my head, which I needed to get out of my head before I lost it. I asked if I could take down his page - he agreed - but I couldn't find anywhere to put it quickly, as the easel was in the middle of the room, surrounded by tables, not walls. I dropped it on the table, and it immediately fell off, but I had already started sketching my own ideas. I didn't mean for it to fall, but it did. It was rude, but it broke the ice. It was not acceptable behavior - this I know from the scolding I got from the other team members. To this day he tells of how I trashed his ideas. And to this day, he is the person I most want to work with. We work best when we work together. And together, we took risks - skunk works projects, working on our own time. Doing what we believed to be right, even if it wasn't approved. Prototyping using our wits and what we could beg, borrow, or steal - open source tools were critical! It was exciting and interesting and made us successful.

I'm now back in the northeast, at a company that is considered fairly conservative by the media. I've spent my first months trying to learn the rules, bending them only occasionally. I'm done. I want to be successful in this new role. I know the players and the challenges. My personal needs are being met better than in Arizona, so I'm feeling a bit more confident. And so tomorrow, my rules will be changing. Wish me luck!

:)