Season 3: Beyond work

(MBA, Eli Lilly) Beyond daily work, we have world cup. :D

The world cup is definitely a popular topic in Lilly. When you have a talk with Lilly employees, it is easy to open the conversation by starting to discuss on how USA team can beat the rivalry teams.

Besides daily work, Lilly HR encourages us to reach out people from different departments. I usually schedule two meetings with different people in the same day and learn their daily job and department. I think it is a great opportunity for me to go outside my silo and understand what is going on in every corner of the corporate. Talking to 30 people during the internship is my goal. During these meetings, I find most people from Lilly are easy to approach and willing to share their experiences and offer advice. The most benefit from networking with them is to open your eyes to their worlds, for example, you can appreciate what is their urgency now, what is the challenge they are facing, what keeps them staying with Lilly for over 30 years, so on and so on.

I often invite people to go lunch together or grab a coffee in the afternoon. Especially, on Friday, that tactics works much better. People are more than happy to meet you and talk more on Friday. In addition, Lilly also organizes many intern events to broaden our networking with senior leaders. During these events, you will have opportunity to talk to the executive vice presents and listen to their unique experiences with Lilly. This gives us more flavors about the life in Lilly.

The daily workload is a bit heavy for my project because this project is tied to a bigger urgent project conducting by the team. The typical day is like this: 6:30am get up. 6:40am breakfast and read WSJ news on iphone. 7:30am drive to Lilly Corporate Center. 8am check and answer yesterday’s emails and set up today’s to do list. 9am-12am focus on project taks. 12am-1pm, go lunch with some interns or with Lilly colleages. Stir fried pasta and Taco salad are my favorite. 1-2pm back to back meet and talk with people from different departments. 3-6pm continue to work on the projects and attend related business meetings.

The project is close to the end, and hopefully I can add some value to the team by coming up with new solutions to their current issues.