My Favorite Mistake — 105: The Time Value of Life: Andrea Jones on Taking Years to Get Over Feeling Like a Failure

Consultant with two degrees from MIT

Show notes: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake105

My guest for Episode #105 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Andrea Jones, founder and principal at her firm Andrea Jones Consulting.

Andrea Jones has focused on efficient and effective Project Management and Change Implementation forover 20 years.She also loves process improvements, and has a natural instinct to always seek a better way to execute work.

Andrea began her career at Intel Corporation, as a Process Engineer, and grew to love the use and analysis of data to make actionable recommendations.

Andrea has an MBA from MIT Sloan, an Engineer Masters from MIT, a Masters in Chemistry from the University of Oregon, and a Bachelors in Chemistry and Japanese from the University of Oregon, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

In today’s episode, Andrea shares her “favorite mistake” story about how she took a buyout from Intel, but then “felt like a failure” because “they didn’t find a role” for her. Why did it take years to get over the “emotional baggage” and what did Andrea learn from that experience?

We talk about that and other topics including:

  • “The time value of life”
  • Part-time consulting work models for moms (and for dads)
  • Is it a mistake to not want to manage others?
  • So hard to keep working moms in the workplace
  • Might not have all the answers when we go into something
  • Treat it as an experiment and “fail fast”?
  • Admit failure, accept reality
  • Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game
  • Do organizations crave certainty?? Do our brains?

Find Andrea and her firm on Social Media:

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/favorite-mistake/support