One by one, I’ve been filling in the blanks of my objectives in my first six months at Avaloq. I’ve already met with my line manager. Tomorrow, with my functional manager and chapter lead.

Today, I met everyone in the design team — my team in Manila and everyone else across the globe.

It is a challenging road ahead, indeed — especially that I still need to digest everything that has been handed down to me.

This is only the beginning.

Today was sweltering, still. I had the morning onboarding at the balcony where the wind was gushing — and it was far better. During the afternoon, the sun was creeping in so I went back inside the home office.

Let me just synthesize some of the memorable things that blotted in my mind during Minco Domingo’s (managing director of Avaloq PH) welcome message this morning:

• Avaloq helps in the democratization of wealth — it enables the common to benefit from global wealth.
• Protect the psychological safety of everyone by being open to questions — sarcasm and negativity are welcome elsewhere.
• Collaboration, Simplicity, Impact

Of course, these are my interpretation of the signal as it reached me.

Nevertheless, it gives me a glimpse of how the Manila headquarters is being led — and it’s in tune with some of my professional values.

All good, day 2!

I said to a colleague that I felt like I’ve been with Avaloq for more than a year now because of the size of my email inbox. On day 1.

But whoever said that email inboxes couldn’t receive mails on the first day, right? A third of it were warm welcome from my fellow designers in Manila and Zürich.

Excitement fills my mind when I think about what I could learn from them and what I, on the other hand, could impart in the process of collaboration.

I hit the “RSVP” button like a madman. And boy, my calendar for the week magically colored themselves.

And all this is a good thing to quickly embed the organization’s nature in my DNA — and this will enable me to fit in their culture.