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In my role things are viewed from a global perspective, my responsibilities are often considered a share service and impact all Canon America Business Units and subsidiaries. communication become critical and collaboration drives the success of the efforts. We leverage tools such as teams to capture information and develop project plans, we also keep active calendars to sign up for events and coordinate how we will represent when in person.
The goals is to maximize the benefit for most with shared resources, making the process cost effective and efficient.

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The World of Diversity and Inclusion is consistently evolving and emerging trends can affect projects in the incubation process. We often need to develop multiple plans for approval and prepare to switch gears when necessary. Analyzing risk, resources and creating a clear deployment plan is often the foundation to building a flexible plan.

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My example is not entirely of the digital era - but in general on the Evolution within my department. With this evolution came new processes/systems and responsibilities for each member of the team.

The merger of our Marketing groups from NY and IL provided the perfect opportunity for change. And even though how things would settle were uncertain, that gave way for a chance to build something better. A new distribution of responsibilities allowed for a role to be split among different groups instead of all falling on a single person. And that means we can handle part of the responsibly across multiple products instead of just one. Ensuring there is a back up to go to in case the main contact was unavailable. Personally this also provided the opportunity for me to move into uncharted territory for me (Display Graphics) and train a new representative in the portfolio I was accustomed. Change will happen, and it is how open minded we are to it that determines the potential of that change.

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Collaborating with my team, regardless of position/rank has been critical to develop a mutual understanding on how our new team operates as a whole. (We went through a merger of the Marketing teams last year, and the transition was slow going) We stand more unified, and clearer on responsibilities from continued effort to collaborate on the best way forward. From the digital perspective this meant more virtual meetings because half of us are in NY and the other half in IL. Being able to utilize the digital tools through teams, and Kapost (marketing collateral creation site) as well as updating and merging our content on our Marketing websites. Both internal and external sites. If it was just one person taking on this burden it would be overwhelming - but as a team we can break it up and tackle it together.

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In this technology age, tradition often does not stand up to evolution. We find that contemporary methods to achieve objectives often save time cost and resources while accomplishing the same or greater goal.  We can learn from tradition or be rooted in tradition, but evoluton is often necessary, especially as a tech company.

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Contributors come from different perspectives, the digital era we are in allows the playing field to be leveled. It also allows communication to occur on a much more rapid pace. Feedback can be shared from all over the organization to lead more creative ideas to be considered.

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By directing our attention towards innovative and groundbreaking concepts, we can push the boundaries and achieve significant advancements. While incremental changes have their value, because this is sometimes a more effective way to measure the most effective changes, by encouraging a culture of creativity and exploration, we can unlock new possibilities and drive larger more meaningful change in our endeavors.

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Agile thinking involves breaking down the effort into manageable tasks and regularly reviewing all evolving elements. It's beneficial to explore available digital tools that can support the cause. However, it's crucial not to introduce excessive tools into the pipeline without sufficient justification, as it can complicate the process and hinder productivity.

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Launching new software like Kokomo entails inherent uncertainty, necessitating an embrace of change and evolution. It is a very different type of product from any products that Canon has launched before. Adapting to unforeseen challenges and variables is crucial in this uncharted territory. By fostering an agile mindset and remaining open to experimentation, evaluating and enhancing internal processes to achieve our goals, we will continue to evolve and improve the results of the business because the team is constantly learning.

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When creating new products, it is crucial to experiment with various approaches to determine their effectiveness. Additionally, it is important to establish both firm and flexible deadlines that align with the business's objectives. While processes serve a purpose, it is not always advisable to blindly adhere to them solely because they are mandatory. Instead, we must assess the requirements and ascertain if the process genuinely contributes to the overall endeavor. Testing cycles can potentially be conducted concurrently, and redundancies should be reassessed for possible elimination.

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Part of my role is to assist our research team with their projects and experiments.  There are a number of times where their goals need to have a plan to implement it, or need a quick turnaround to address an unexpected problem.  To do this, we have to work on brainstorming ways to create a functioning test, or alternative ways to avoid an issue

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We have had been using an piece of software that was starting a number of years ago, and have been haphazardly increasing in functionality of time.  Due to this, it was challenging to make any large changes because it was unknown how it might affect other aspects of this software.

To address this issue, I rewrote the entire software with a planned structure and added in new functionality that we were avoiding due to the complexities of the former software.

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As an engineer, there are a number of tests needed to assess the feasibility of designs and potential design deviations. Having conversations with the manufacturing team and the technicians, we are able to rule out certain paths and plan out how to create and tests others

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I recently had a dealer who was not trained on a machine and had to work quickly in getting the exceptions that we needed for end of the half.  We needed their order in and shipped by 6/30 in order for it to count towards their baseline target.  It took a lot of effort from a lot of different people to have this exception approved.

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We have been tasked with setting up CPP dealers under the BICG group of dealers.  We have had done anything like this before and have had to pivot and make changes as we go.  The process is getting better, but we are still working out the kinks.

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Being in BICG Sales Planning, one of our main initiatives this year is to open new dealers in areas that are weak.  The process that it takes to open a new dealer can take months.  We are working on streamlining the process so that it is more automated.  We are still working on it, and are definitely looking at the outcome of shorter turnaround time then the process. We are including all different departments of Canon to see how best to achieve it.

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I believe sometimes it's hard for Canon as an organization to adapt to the idea of focusing on breakthrough ideas as opposed to small incremental changes. Although we are slowly becoming more progressive, there's still more we could do.

When I first started in my position, I was very timid and held back a lot. However over time, I realized that not only wasn't helping my career progression, it also wasn't helping the Company either. I have learned over the past few years to find my voice and speak up about things that matter to me in my role. While planning for our strategic events like CES, IMM, 2HKO, if I feel a certain decision isn't the right one, I have learned to speak up about it. If I have an idea of something that's not really traditional for Canon, I say it anyway. We can all do our part to take more risks and push the Company to evolve.

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I have always had a hard time with uncertainty. The unknown has always scared me because I like to be in control of the things around me, however I know that that is not always realistic.

I'd like to push myself to go more out of my comfort zone and allow to welcome change, especially in the aspects of my role of planning internal events as change is pretty frequent and things rarely go to plan. It would be beneficial to adapt the mindset of just because things don't go to plan doesn't mean I have failed.

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One of the major responsibilities of my job is being a sub-leader in Canon's participation in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). I am tasked with bridging the gap between the divisions that are being showcased and our creative agency to ensure our vision comes to life to drive business for Canon. It was hard to adapt at first because I was not familiar with how some divisions operated from a process standpoint, I was only used to what I knew from my own division and our KPIs. However, when I began to let go of that and adapt to other division's viewpoints, I was able to see the bigger picture. In return, I was able to more effectively communicate with our creative agency and assist in bringing that vision to life for our business units. The cross-divisional collaboration has only helped me learn and grow.

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We have a report that we work on for about 3 weeks out of the month. Instead of doing the same thing over again, I created a process that carries over all prior data and pulls in information from other reports. This process was adapted by my entire department. This was not a same change, it was a breakthrough idea.

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My prior management team held me back. They did not take my advice or allow me to add any value to the team. All of my ideas were shot down. When the new (current) manager came in, I was a little distant. I did not let him in. I said nothing. Once I got comfortable and he gained my trust, his leadership help evolve my career at CFS.

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When CFS added a new process to terminate the accounts, the focus was on the outcome and not the process. The process was long and seem very difficult to understand. The process was not appealing and caused for a lot of employees to shy away from learning the process. By focusing on the outcome and not the process, I was able to set weekly meetings with the direct people that were able to walk me through the process one - on - one. After the processed was learned, it wasn't really as difficult as It seemed.

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I call this, "How I got into the Training World"

Some years back (I will not confirm nor deny if cars were using unleaded fuel but they certainly were not electric), I was working in Retail in a management path. I was asked if i would be interested in joining a pilot program for in-store trainers that was going to be run out of the corporate headquarters. There were no grand plans for the program, it was to be temporary to assist with the multiple store openings that were occurring and eventually fading away. To participate, I would have to abandon the role I was in at the moment, knowing it meant I may not get the same role back and in the same store when the pilot program ended. Naturally, I was hesitant but I was also intrigued by the idea of helping to get new store personnel on solid footing to succeed. So I took the chance and it changed my career trajectory forever. The program was temporary, it lasted six months, however, at the end of the 5th month, I was asked to become part of the corporate training staff. I never really looked back.

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Along the lines of my write-up for Focus on outcomes, I believe true change requires big swings. My continued effort to get the leadership team thinking about revamping our current practice of training before authorization and moving more to how we best can incorporate training as a necessity to ensure quality service without hindering or potentially slowing down a sale is an example of this topic.

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In the service training department, technicians are required to complete training on products before they are certified to service the product, and before their dealership is authorized to sell the product. This creates a demand for easily and quickly accessible training programs.  During curriculum development, we had long established timelines for courseware development. Over the past few years, we have seen the timeline shrink drastically. To ensure we are not a hinderance to the sales process, we have adapted a new curriculum development style.  Whereas we used to subscribe to the A.D.D.I.E. model, we now are more agile in our approach, preparing the best possible draft of a course within the time given, with the understanding that the course design is more iterative, and we may need to update the course over time in more of an agile fashion. Thus, I no longer think, new course, I have xx weeks to build it, instead, the mindset is now, product launches in 2 weeks, here is the type of course I can build in that time frame and here is how I will get it done.

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In my role, I am responsible for creating service training materials that prepare technicians to install, maintain, troubleshoot and service Canon devices in the field. A certain level of technical expertise and expertise with Canon product is critical in ensuring our courseware has the proper contents in the proper context to meet this goal. My development background prior to Canon centered on "Soft Skills" such as Leadership Development, Communication and the usual cluster of HR -centric training topics and as such, i did not have the level of expertise necessary to develop technical training. Early on, I relied heavily on collaboration with those team members and external partners who did have the expertise so that we could build the best possible courseware. This is something that I continue to do today, even though my level of expertise with most of the products that I develop courseware for is now at a level where less collaboration is needed. Further, part of my responsibilities is to "train-the-trainers" on how to facilitate my courseware. I find when doing so, I get more buy-in, and a better end product, when I make those sessions more of a give and take. I tend to learn from them, as much as they learn from me and because of that, I have solid relationships with the colleagues, teams and instructors that I work with on for course development.

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As a member of the service training team, we are always focusing on providing necessary education and information to our dealer partners. Our long-standing process for service technicians is they must pass certification training on our products before their dealership is authorized to sell the product. However, we are a sales company and with multiple products launching around the same time and with inventory levels of existing product tending to run low, we need to accommodate the end goal, the sale, by getting dealerships authorized to sell our product in a much more expedient manner than in the past. With this outcome in mind, we do what is necessary to get certifications in very short windows. These adjustments include providing auto-certifications where appropriate if a tech is trained on a product that is very similar to a new product or providing differences training in the form of short online courses or downloadable documents as appropriate. In recent conversations, I have suggested to my leadership team that we re-examine our authorization process. Since the sale is paramount for a sales organization, maybe we need to identify and remove any hinderances to the sale. This conversation was not as openly accepted at first, but I am seeing a change in thought above me as there is serious consideration regarding how to incorporate training into the authorization process without running the risk of losing sales.

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In my role, I have actively engaged with both the legal department and DIS to identify and resolve multifaceted issues related to new products being launched. In the past, issues related to new products were solved by a specific group, either legal or IP. By working together, not only have I learned from other stakeholders but have worked together to generate solutions to a particular problem. This changes the idea that problems need to be dumped into other people's laps when that problem appears not to be directly related to your role.

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Being an intellectual property attorney, there are many ways to protect a companies IP. Within the Canon family, filing for patent applications to cover products and technology is the main way this is achieved. Now, with the new business acceleration groups and the post-COVID projects, some of the intellectual property is best protected in ways other than patents. I have begun advising management and business that certain innovations are better protected as trade secrets which prevent others from understanding what is behind the curtain as opposed to filing patents which require complete disclosures of how things work.

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In my role as patent counsel, I am responsible for generating and filing patent applications to bolster Canon's IP portfolio. For many years, this would involve structured meetings with engineers to obtain the necessary information to be included in a particular application. But, with DIS switch to agile development, those processes are no longer practical so I was forced to develop a new manner of interacting with DIS to get the information needed to ensure that the outcome, a strong patent application, was the same. In doing so, I learned new ways to obtain the information I needed.

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Being able to allocate our financials to different CUSA channels and make assumptions of what the most relevant and useful allocation metrics should be has become an increasingly important topic of conversation. This year I revamped our allocations by challenging the relevancy of the metrics that had been in place for years. This action resulted in more accurate financials and allowed my group to more easily answer financial questions from CUSA subsidiaries.

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Being able to allocate our financials to different CUSA channels and make assumptions of what the most relevant and useful allocation metrics should be has become an increasingly important topic of conversation. This year I revamped our allocations by challenging the relevancy of the metrics that had been in place for years. This action resulted in more accurate financials and allowed my group to more easily answer financial questions from CUSA subsidiaries.

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In my role at CFS , I am only one of three analysts in my department. Time management and collaboration/open communication between us is key during busy periods. There are some processes or findings that I would like to demonstrate to the other analysts in order to cross train them, but sometimes I hesitate on reaching out due to fear of adding more to their plates. I need to change this mindset and focus on the benefits of cross training within the department. 

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In my role at CFS , I am only one of three analysts in my department. Time management and collaboration/open communication between us is key during busy periods. There are some processes or findings that I would like to demonstrate to the other analysts in order to cross train them, but sometimes I hesitate on reaching out due to fear of adding more to their plates. I need to change this mindset and focus on the benefits of cross training within the department. 

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It’s important to accept changes and adopt to new process and technology. My team is working on a project to switch the current manual process building KPI using excel, to a Data visualization software. There are obstacles in the migration process and requires great effort to overcome, but it would make the job more efficient and beneficial to the team in the long run.

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One of my jobs in the Logistics Trade Compliance team is to monitor the additional China duty impact on the Made in China products, I can see that business trends can be greatly impacted by just one incident. This make me realized the importance be able to adopt the changing market, and not to make decisions solely based on past business patterns.

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My role as one of the Company's in-house lawyers is to help the organization to mitigate risk. The key is to remember that risk is often unavoidable. Accordingly, I look to understand my client's business needs and goals in recommending a range of options and outcomes, rather than to prescribe specific solutions. I don't want to be seen as an advisor who instructs the business on what to do, but rather one who seeks to educate on the law and potential risks and who will collaborate to achieve the best results.

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In my role within legal, I recognize that my role is to support, and hopefully not hinder, advancement of Company goals.  In this regard, I try to give recommendations for various ways to achieve the desired outcome, recognizing that my views as to the "best" way, may not be the best for my stakeholders.  The key is the outcome; we can often collaborate as to how to get there.

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One of my job responsibilities is issuing Requests for Proposals ie: bidding out projects/programs that are either new or have contracts that will soon expire. Depending on the project, the duration from issuance to award is typically several months. No 2 projects are alike and learning to think several steps ahead to foresee any potential issues is critical. We create a process/schedule for each project but also must be flexible and take in stride any curveballs that come our way from the bidders or stakeholders. At times, we have to revise our plan depending on the proposals we receive and re-evaluate next steps to better suit the situation.

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When working with new departments in the company, each has their own process/system and from an outside perspective, it can be frustrating at times as it can be seen as a delay or seemingly having to take more steps than necessary. Recently, after seeing more of the inner-workings of my own department's HelpDesk that fields varying requests, I've refocused my mindset to appreciate what goes on behind the scenes instead of solely on the minutiae of my own role. Shifting to the attitude of “helping you help me” is beneficial to reaching the best outcome for all.

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Our group oversees the annual insurance renewals for Canon, USA; one of those renewals is Property insurance.  Canon, USA has approximately 8 owned locations and in excess of 250 leased locations.  Each year, we email all of the individual subsidiaries (and groups within those subsidiaries) to request values (building, machinery & equipment, fixed assets, inventory, rent, etc.) associated with each of their properties. Bear in mind, that some subs share a presence at certain locations and thus, each of them reports their individual values associated with same.  Additionally, there are some values that we obtain through reports we run in S21.  Then, all of the reported data, along with the data from several reports that we run are aggregated into one master spreadsheet.  The process is manual and extraordinarily tedious taking many days/hours to complete.  Unfortunately, there is no centralized repository for this data - and it would be extremely beneficial to find a way to use our existing resources to somehow centralize the data and potentially be able to run a report each year that extracts that data.  It is our hope/intention to find a way to have this breakthrough idea (for our dept) come to fruition.

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If the change is unexpected, I try to take a reflective approach. I assess the impact of the change, summarize any potential problems and generally I attempt to implement a solution that works with the change. As someone who is extremely routine driven, I have made a conscious effort for over a decade to shift my initial reaction of anger, annoyance and resentment to curiosity and finding the positive. I believe in transparency and I think it's very important that all involved understand the motive behind the change.  For example, the change may add an extra 10 minutes to my process, but it could have freed up 2 hours of someone else's. Understanding the full impact of the change brings perspective to the situation and helps to mitigate negativity.

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In the tax department we do a lot of work that is similar but not exactly the same throughout the year.  The old way of this process led to multiple workpapers that all did similar things, but where completely different.  We decided to completely revamp the entire process where we use the same template for the multiple different uses, which allows us to spend more time on the actual work we are completing and not formatting and updating the individual workpapers.  This have saved us countless hours.  It took multiple iterations for it to work as intended, but we are a lot more efficient now.

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I feel that is better to hear the viewpoint of your coworkers and see their actions play through, successful or not.  I will have my own idea in how things should happen, but that doesn't mean it's the best way to accomplish something or that we can't get to the same goal a different way.  I like to make suggestions along the way and gain their feedback, but I would rather a coworker try something and maybe not reach the final destination then just tell them what to do.

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Working within BICG Procurement, my team has been tasked with new products to manage that none of my team is familiar with. We have been managing the same products for years so this is a curveball for the group. As a collective group, we have all been going through growing pains on how to treat these new products (very different than what we are used to). To put it bluntly, in many cases we had to "throw away the playbook" we had and come up with new concepts and ideas to improve the management of these new items. It has been stressful and exciting at the same time.

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One of the hardest part about branding is NOT being the logo police. Unfortunately, there are guidelines created by CINC. I hate to be the one to say no, or call out business units that the Canon logo is used incorrectly. However, by enforcing these guidelines allows for consistency in the brand as well as strengthen the brand image. I try not to be as strict and try to work with business units so that not only do they follow Canon guidelines but are also able to follow through with the plans and initiative.

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I handle our Sharepoint Intranet but I also handle anything and everything Canon branding related. With so many requests coming through for approval, trying to navigate approval processes can be daunting. One way to help elevate that is using PowerAutomate to help with auto responses and approval processes to help streamline my process. The same can be said for Can Am News articles. Templates were created to help production more efficient as well as our time.

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For Kokomo, we wanted to challenge the typical QA requirements and release cadence typically seen at Canon. We released Kokomo in an early access manner to get quick feedback and release new versions up to 2 times per month. In previous projects such as MyCanon, our releases only happened once every 6+ months.

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With the person that reports to me, I actually collaborate more with her than put anyone in charge. I feel like its more effective since we can always learn from others as well as they can learn from us. I find it keeps an open dialogue between us and it has been a successful way of doing things and has her step up more with ideas and isn't shy to speak up.

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Change is consistently happening with our jobs so we adapt to the "updated way" as much as we can. I try to keep an open mind and embrace it as much as possible. Change is not always a bad thing, but it doesn't have the best reputation

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Some strategies that I would like to implements are
~Keeping an eye for opportunities for change

~Understanding both the benefits and the risks of new technologies

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When I became the platorm lead for our Unified Desktop, there was a lot for me to learn and the developers also had lots of questions about how the business uses the tool that I could assist with.  We had daily stand up meeting to discuss our current sprints, and the meeting turning into a lot of knowledge sharing and also coming up with the best approaches to implement enhancements and fix bugs.

Champion creativity

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| With moving to a new platform for our lease accounting system we implemented a lot of manual process, the business approached IT to re-automate/implement automation for all of the requests that come from our customer portal.  We thought that this would be a major win for the business as there was no major blockers as to why we could not put some automation in place.  we rolled our all of the automation in phases but have successfully automated all of the customer functions.

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Being under Marketing Technology and Communication, we are broken up into 2 teams - Creative design and then Marketing Technology. Instead of just focusing on my current tasks and processes in my role on the Team, I looked at how even though I am under Marketing Technology, it would be very beneficial for my current role to understand graphic design more. I ask to learn from the Creative design team so I can increase my creative skills in programs such as Adobe inDesign and Illustrator. Learning their processes, the whole time I kept focusing on the outcome - being able to grow my skills which has helped me be able to jump in on new things to help my team - such as creating Open House Flyers or creating videos for promoting events, and so on. But, in addition; the outcome focus has been knowing I can help BOTH teams which puts me in a unique position to understand the way two different teams operate. When the Creative team is short-staffed or assigned alot of priority projects, I can now always help them which benefits them meeting deadlines as an outcome.

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For the T.I.E. Program, we are collaborating on different teams with my Team's focus on giving Employee's a safe space to have their ideas heard. I volunteered to be a Team liason who basically helps as a Team Leader with someone else. So I helped facilitate collaboration by getting members of different teams to come together weekly to get a detailed presentation together which myself and the other liason presented to Management. We are waiting on feedback from management still about our proposal, but I really took the role of pushing collaboration and team effort to get the presentation where it needed to be for this particular program. It was awesome to see how working outside your normal team with people of all different skills, how you can come up with great ideas that can really impact the company.

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Currently, in Marketing Technology I am charge of something called CSAtv - this is where we have TV monitors in different branches throughout the U.S. and I post Corporate content such as Breaking News, Promotions, etc. for CSA sales people to see. I always setup monthly meetings with the company Skykit we use the solution to implement CSAtv and always push to see new technology/updates. Currently, because of that - we are pushing to change so CSAtv is not just Corporate content and now is also content on the Branch level. I created a training video and I am slowly allowing for change to give branches the ability to post this content with Templates I created for them. I have been nervous they will adhere to Canon's branding standards, but now that I did a training, created the Templates, and I helped a branch make posting their own content successful; this new territory will really make CSAtv a more personalized experience. It was awesome to see the branch I walked through these changes welcome a new hire and send me a picture of it on the TV display.