Tracey (only the second person I know who spells her name that way) and I have worked in Equifax in our past lives. We left the company at around the same time. I knew she had moved to Nashville but did not know much more than that.

Fortunately for me, she was gracious enough to give me some time for coffee this morning in between her busy schedule. (She runs HR for an international division and has crazy hours).

I got to learn about her life story which has taken her from Iowa to Georgia to Colorado back to Georgia to Tennessee and she thinks will get her back to Georgia again! Unlike most of my intersection points, we talked a lot about topics from our professional lives.

Specifically, we discussed the potential long term challenges in Work From Home culture. We both seem to think that employers and employees alike have not quite fully fathomed the long term effects. We discussed onboarding challenges, how to inculcate the feeling of belonging when the whole employee base works from home, how does performance evaluation change and how does one go around building culture.

It was a great discussion and learnt a lot from her!

We also talked about her trips to India and thought we should do a trip together one of these days. Together with our common friend – Hunt Jackson.

“Before, I let you go, Tracey – I have my usual question – what have you learnt from life that I can learn from?”

“Travel”

“Travel?”

“Yes, travel as much as you can. To different places and countries.”

“Because there is so much of the world to see?”

“Yes. But more importantly, there are so many different people to meet. Learn from different perspectives, cultures and ethos other people have. Without that, we become frogs in a well incapable of understanding the larger perspectives in life”.

Travel, it is then! Hunt, if you are listening – we three need to to get to India sometime soon!