Work woes

So for the most part, I'd say work is going pretty well. I feel very lucky that I have been given this opportunity. It's very rare I think to have a chance like this. To be sent to another country (a cool one at that!) at no real additional financial expense to me personally. Also for a short period of time with no strings attached or committment beyond a year. Besides the personal experience and gain, from a career standpoint it's a great move for me. To do more sales and business development. To train others and share my knowledge in online research. To learn about business in a new region. To virtually build a new market for our products in the new region....

At the very basic level, I am doing much less day to day operational work and much more strategic work. It's a change of pace which is so nice when you kind of get stuck in the rut of the same day to day work. I am also learning the challenges of doing business in Asia, doing business in Japan specifically, the differences in the online market out here, product pricing, sales technique, and a whole lot of other things.

There are many challenges of course. One I've mentioned already is doing business in Japanese. There is certainly a language barrier and it makes things very difficult when there is a need for translation. I'm also responsible for work in all of Asia Pacific which means it's hard to really get a hold of any one market (though I am concentrating on Japan). Operationally things are still a bit hairy. I am working with the larger company which acquired my company which means we are trying to fit or teach our processes into theirs. Sometimes it really is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They are also a much bigger research company so in my opinion, they move so much slower and have more bureaucracy than a smaller company does. That just doesn't work well in the fast-paced online world in my humble opinion.

So the work woe today is that I feel frustrated that I am limited in what I can accomplish given the circumstances. I am working hard and trying to succeed and do well and sell more and make money. The problem is, I don't think they are capable of executing as quickly as I would like. There is a lot of talk and desire for business to pick up and for client interest to grow but realistically someone will have to manage and execute these projects and give clients quality work. I am not confident that they're equipped fully for this yet. I am doing everything I can to help with the project management and client contact and even operational work (which technically I am not responsible for). But I am only here for one year. The time will go by quickly and they will need to learn how to manage these things once I am gone. I also feel bad because one girl here who is a native Japanese speaker gets stuck doing all the translations which I am sure is not glamorous work. Today she was complaining to her boss about it and I can't help but feel bad for her because she has plenty of more important work to do here. I almost wish they could just hire a translator for these things.

So I am not quite sure what I should do, I feel a little stuck. If I continue to push business through and develop clients, my fear is that more work will come in that they can't handle or will handle with poorer quality that it should be. If I don't continue to do what I'm here to do, it's just a waste of my time and company $$.

Well, nice ranting. I'm sure this post was more for my chance to complain than for anyone's reading pleasure. :)