Almost there

1 day left before holiday. I'm so happy at the prospect of having a break, I've already packed my bags tonight. At work it's been a very busy week. The client has been very good about rearranging meetings for when I have been in Gloucester. However as a result I have had 3.5 days of back to back meetings. I'm exhausted. I do however feel that I am within striking distance of having a clean inbox before I head off for 3 weeks. Bliss.

The other good news is that my project team continues to take shape. Earlier this afternoon I got the green light to bring in two Frenchies from the AIMS group in Paris as of next Monday. They've both worked for me in the past so I am really beginning to get the team I want....no excuses for failure then. There's still a handful of people I've got my eye on and with a bit of luck most of them will be staffed or confirmed on the project whilst I am away.

The other good news is that we have finally got the AIMS bench in the UK down to zero - I'm no longer a believer in frictional unemployment for those economists amongst you! Although in reality it's nice to have a few options up your sleeve when new requests come in, getting everyone out on a job during the summer period just before I leave for holidays....I can't really ask for much more!

Hannibal

From the 'A' Team rather than Hannibal Lecter. The phrase "I love it when a plan comes together" reminds me of my childhood when I used to be an avid follower of the capers of Hannibal, Faceman, BA and Murdoch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_A-Team). No guesses for who I associate with most.

This catchphrase has been springing back to mind quite a lot this week as the new guys start to turn up on my project in Gloucester. Darren, Angela and Stijn all arrived last night. We had dinner together with Nick and Ayan and it was very enjoyable - I am feeling very positive about the future and this project. It seems many of them have made contact with each other even before arriving on the project, so I think we're set for a great team atmosphere. The other good news is that I am starting to feel a bit more comfortable about going on holiday - my fear that everything will freeze during the month of August is diminishing as these guys arrive. All we need now is a bit of the French Connection - hopefully that should be addressed with a few new arrivals next week.....

Swerve Ball

Today's been a roller coaster ride. The high and the low point of the week. The high point was definitely managing to have dinner with one of my oldest school friends who now lives in Stockholm. He works for a wonderfully interesting company called Spotify http://www.spotify.com/en/. It's nice to see an old friend doing well and doing something really exciting. On top of that he has a wonderful family who really liked my "walking walrus" present.

The low point was ringing the other guys in the RFP team after dinner only to hear that one of the Senior Executives had thrown us a swerve ball 24 hours before we're meant to finish the response document. Not good. My experience over the last 7 months is that you always get something out of the blue in the last week. We had got until 8PM on Thursday night and I thought we'd escaped. Unfortunately not. A new Senior Executive was thrown into the fray and he decided that everything had to be re-done. I'm here with the other guys in the bid team (Adrian Hillary and Thierry Grima). We've got on really well over the course of the last month, but the final throes promise to be gruesome.......oh, and on top of that I've still got my banking project and opportunity, my transportation client and a new pharma client....I haven't had time to follow my own advice this week unfortunately. Roll on 3 weeks of vacation!

Saying Thank You

I was thinking about how busy I am and how it's nice to be appreciated. I hope my efforts will be recognised properly by the people who I work for. August in Accenture is when we have "Tell Day" - i.e. when we formally communicate peoples' annual rating. Although I am not eligible for promotion, I am certainly hoping that my supervisors make enough of a fuss to make me feel they are genuinely appreciative of the stupid hours and huge numbers of tasks I am doing. We'll see....

Turning that around.....I must make sure that all the guys who are joining my project team in the UK have the same feeling of gratitude from me over the next few months, because I think we've got a spell of real hard work coming up between now and December. It seems this blog is becoming my personal to do list! :-)

Not enough hours in the day

Whisper it quietly, but despite the macho culture that can be witnessed at Accenture, I have to admit that at the minute it's just too busy; a Swedish RFP, a UK banking project to run remotely, organisation of a group of 50 people including their staffing and transfer requests, internal bureaucracy such as organising travel plans and doing time reports, an opportunity at a Dutch bank and another one at a transportation company in the UK. It's not very sensible and my days are starting too early and finishing too late. Apart from the physical tiredness, what really frustrates me is that you can't give things the attention they deserve. As a result you risk disappointing people. In my opinion disappointing people is worse than annoying them by telling them you can't do something up front......in fact the mere process of writing this is proving somewhat therapeutic. Maybe I should listen to my own advice - I think I am going to try and work out what I can hand over or refuse to do to try to make life a bit simpler.

Will you still love me when I'm 32?

I'm not even thinking about getting to 64 yet! It's been a tiring week. 3 days in Gloucester, 1 in Paris, and a final one working from home that's just about to finish once I've completed this posting.

Ever since I was a young lad I always had my work and my sport. Even after I stopped playing football seriously I needed to do some other form of physical activity - hence the dull as ditch water running, and the more enjoyable horse riding. This has always helped me remain more or less healthy - e.g. I typically tend to avoid winter colds and sniffles, have never had any adverse reaction to any foodstuffs etc. However I now wonder if I'm beginning to show my age....on Tuesday night I managed to have an allergic reaction after having had, wait for it, a glass of chilled water. I also have to make a conscious effort to ensure I don't confuse the solutions for my Swedish Telco RFP, my Gloucester banking client and my UK based transport opportunity. Maybe I just need to take fewer planes and more holidays.

The over-riding memory of the week however is definitely the fact that I've started to secure all the people I want for my new project team. I've not managed to get everyone, but I'm managing to dig out some really good guys. I think we'll be up and running at full speed by mid-September once I'm back from my holidays. Let the games begin!

On a completely unrelated note, I forgot to mention that last week I went running one morning and stumbled across the central train station in Stockholm. For regular followers of the blog, you'll know about my fascination with such places. Just for the record, I would say that a Swedish railway station is in between that of a Finnish one (quiet as a morgue) and a London one (deafening cacophony).

Status Update

Day 3 on my new project completed. The overall message is positive. Day one was meeting some key clients. Day two was an all day planning day (I was extremely happy to have arrived before they did this exercise because I have to deliver it), and day 3 was, "right let's get the team mobilised". It's going to be a big team - between 10 and 12 Accenture guys and up to around 20 client people. It is the biggest thing that I have ever led, but there are a number of things that are making me feel excited and confident. The first is the fact that it looks like I can get my dream team in - I've secured the first one today and hopefully there are more to come - I never thought that being like Mark Hughes could be so much fun. The second reason is that the client recognises how little they know, and they are very open about their need to be guided in this initiative. I think the omens are good.

Now I need to try and maintain momentum (because deadlines are tight of course) whilst working on the Swedish RFP for the next 7 days. It wouldn't be Accenture if life was simple.....

24th December 1983

I'm 31 and I know the score as regards Santa Claus, but I feel like a 6 year old on Christmas Eve. Today is the first day on my new project. The next 3 years (hopefully) start here. I'm excited and apprehensive about meeting the new client - the initial "client bios" look very good - a bright bunch of cookies indeed. The initial documentation I have received on the project also looks pretty good - there seems to be a clear roadmap and lots of stuff to do. I'm a kid in a candy shop.

I'm keen to understand what's going on as soon as I can because I want to get my team in place before I head off for holiday on the 7th August. My little black book was out over the weekend and the initial response has been good. Remarkably a number of the guys I want are available or coming available over the next few weeks. I feel like the Real Madrid chairman for the minute! I think what I'm really excited about is knowing that I am going to be happy going into work each morning to see a bunch of guys I really like working with. It will be an out of town project for everyone so I think we should have a really good atmosphere too. Despite "Gloucester" not normally inspiring any real degree of excitement in the vast majority of people, I've got my fingers crossed.

My week and the road ahead

By the standards of any sensible person, it's been a busy week. Monday was supporting the Swedish RFP from home. Tuesday was working as an SME at a media client in London. Wednesday was working on the Swedish RFP in Stockholm. Thursday and Friday was also spent on the RFP whilst also trying to be a Dad because Maxime's mum was working away. She's back now and he's still alive so we can count that as success. The RFP is also going well and everything is under control. We're on track and I'm enjoying being on track. Solution done, estimate done, solution delivery approach starting, resource model and legal compliance to do. We've provided the first cut of the numbers to the CSG guys so they are no longer on our backs and off crunching numbers through their commercial models. The IDC is under control and the ball is in their court. Life is good. Maybe I should write a methodology for RFP responses.....

The other big news of the week is that it looks like I've scored myself my next project... programme lead of a big Finance and BI gig as part of the integration of two of the UK's biggest banks. It's all early days, and it will be complicated over the first 6 weeks because I need to close out the Swedish RFP and also go on holiday for 3 weeks, but I have to say I'm a touch excited. Variety is the spice of life and I think one of, if not the, best thing about Accenture is the regular change in projects and challenges. In actual fact, what I am really excited about is being able to build a new team. I miss my Fortis days in Belgium and the team out there. I've already re-contacted a few of them so we're going to plan a comeback tour. The strong likelihood is that we'll need to supplement these guys with some other new faces, so I'm looking forward to creating that new dynamic again.

A couple of horses to ride this weekend and then roll on next week.....

It's a marathon, not a sprint

All companies have financial years. I suspect not all of them have such clear annual performance evaluation processes. Although I fear that more people will be disappointed this year than usual, the advantage of having such a process is that it helps you keep a clear perspective on things; if you've had a bad year then it's perfectly acceptable to get it finished in August and then start afresh, rather than getting dragged into a negative downward spiral which might happen if we didn't have such a clear break between each 12 month period.

Regardless of my final rating for this year, things are quite clear in my mind; I am in month 11 of 12 and I am waiting impatiently for my 3 week holiday. I am exhausted and looking forward to the break. We are actually in Toulouse this weekend at the house of my sister in law. I slept a full 8 hours last night and have then had two 2 hour siestas during the course of today and I'm about to head to bed now - not a comment on the company I promise you! For the first time in our relationship, I think today is the first time I've slept more than my wife in any given 24 hour period. My wife likes to say "you can't cheap sleep". Maybe she's right but today has certainly served to remind me that longevity in Accenture requires people to be able to recognise that your career is a marathon and not a sprint, that each year you need to take your holidays, and that each (performance) year is a fresh slate.

Accommodating Swedes

The advantage of doing RFPs for 6 months is that by the end, you pretty much know what you're doing. This is proving beneficial for the latest RFP for the Swedish Telco. My initial telephone calls with the Swedes have gone well and for the minute everything is hunky dory. They seem to be listening to my advice and agreeing with a lot of what I say. It's almost eery how happy they seem to be, and as a result I smell a rat - you tread a fine line between visibility and exposure you know. Anyway, I shall not look a gift-horse in the mouth and we'll continue to try and hit all our deadlines. It will be interesting to see if my way really is the right way (or if I should be on the highway!). More anon no doubt.

8th

The French Show Jumping stuff went pretty well at the weekend. We finished 8th out of 35 which is pretty respectable all in all. I rode ok but thankfully I was in a team with 3 other (pretty) French girls who all rode particularly well. At least they didn't hurl rotten tomatoes at us when we got back home! Getting back was a bit of an adventure - the event ran late on the Sunday so it meant a rushed journey to the airport and I even travelled back home in full riding gear including boots and show jumping jacket. Most ridiculous but at least it made the air hostesses smile.

The Swedish RFP has started in earnest. One month to wrap it all up. After 6 months of this type of work I know exactly where we are going, but even then, I'm looking forward to having a break. We've had one of my very good friends from Accenture Amsterdam staying with us in France, and I have to say that seeing him has made me quite envious and I'm now really looking forward to my holidays in a few weeks time. With the travel and late nights, RFPs tend to be quite tiring so it will be good to have a break. With a bit of luck I'll come back to a new project in September too.

Long time no speak

It's been a while since my last posting. This lapse can be attributed to a number of factors....Maxime's baptism (yes he is a real person not just a fictional figure), a hardware failure and the final throes of yet another RFP.

Having to cater for and host 35 people at home is one of the most tiring experiences I have had. Admittedly we (I) could have started planning things more than 1 day in advance, but it was tiring nonetheless. I spent my whole Sunday answering people's question about where to find sugared almonds and rose wine, whilst worrying about how untidy the house was becoming (remember earlier personality disorder). Getting a flight to set off to Helsinki on the Sunday evening was exactly what I didn't need, but that's the job I suppose. The good news is by the end of the day, the wee man had been christened and everybody had eaten as much Tiramisu as they could (key performance metrics for all baptisms in my family).

As for the hardware failure. Quite simply PointSec is the spawn of the devil. Our encryption technology for all laptops is great in principle, but when it prevents you from using the standby or hibernate feature of the laptop it's more than frustrating. A full boot every time is ok if you're sitting in the office and have to do it once at the start of the day, but when you're constantly travelling, waiting 5 minutes for XP to work out where it put all its configuration files each time is enough to make you want to kill an air hostess. Stupidly I did use the "hibernate" feature once and as a result it made PointSec fall over and my whole laptop unusable. Thankfully I had done a backup 3 weeks earlier but trying to frantically courier laptops between France, London and Finland was an administrative overhead I really did not need as we moved into the final stages of the Finnish RFP.

The project in Finland has been very busy with lots of many late nights. However what has been nice is that because we've been down selected, we are able to get lots of access to the client to get the information we need to fine tune the solution. I've spent large spells of most days up in the Nokia offices with a range of clients. A far cry from your typical blind RFP stuff with a single Q&A session before final submission. It's reminded me that what I really enjoy about this job is listening to clients to try and understand what they need and what they want. My role has been more client relationship person and requirements gatherer rather than solution architect. It's made a refreshing change.

As for my personal pipeline...it looks like it could be another RFP in Sweden for the month of July with the possibility of a longer term role in FS in the UK starting up gradually over the summer which would take me to the end of the year. Sweden in July has certain attractions I have to confess....:-) In the more immediate future, it's the French National Show Jumping Championships this weekend so I'm looking forward to representing the south west of France up in Paris at the Haras de Jardy.

Magic Slippers

My wife grew up in the south of France, I grew up just north of Newcastle. I am sure you can understand that there is a slight difference in climate between the two places. Basically that meant that I grew up with carpets and she grew up with tiled floors. Given the fact we have a well balanced relationship we therefore "decided" to have tiles throughout our house. Unfortunately one of my other pet hates in life is walking bare foot on cold surfaces. Therefore I always make a point of taking the slippers from the hotel room each week to make sure I don't have to walk on cold surfaces at home during the weekend. I am sure that all my friends and guests to the house have the same pet hate (this is not the case), and as a result I typically thrust a pair of "Radisson SAS", "Sheraton" or "APEX" slippers into the hands of people who arrive at my house. I've had to travel a lot this week (too much), but it's been a bumper slippers week. I've been away 5 nights but take back a haul of 6 pairs of slippers (you must always check the cupboard because they often leave a second pair there). Extremely small and scant consolation for being away from home, but I'm just trying to look on the bright side. I'm off to the airport now and can't wait to get home.

Running scared? Running bored more like.

I hate running. When I used to play football we had to run but it always seemed like there was some purpose to it (i.e. needing to be fit enough to kick a pig's bladder into an onion bag). When I stopped football I thought that would be the end of my running. After a brief flirtation with chess and tiddlywinks I realised that I was fast becoming a couch potato. I then decided to get on a horse, but it quickly became apparent that this was a sport to be done sitting down. Hence I dusted off my old trainers and started slogging around the roads again to avoid becoming a slob. Generally it's a real pain, but for a short spell in the early morning sunshine in Helsinki today, it was decidedly enjoyable. That short spell lasted about 47 seconds. Not bad for a run that totalled 30 minutes.

Two personality disorders are better than one.

They say that married life is about resolving problems as a couple that you wouldn't have if you were single. My personality disorder is that I need things to be nice and clean and tidy. My wife's personality disorder is that she is extremely conscious about getting value for money. You see then that neither is a major problem on its own. However this weekend highlighted what a dangerous combination the two together can be. My wife refuses to let me throw out old shoes that I no longer like nor wear. I cannot bear to see these sad shoes gather dust and become dirty. The net result is that I spend half my Sunday afternoon every couple of weeks polishing shoes that are never worn. I don't know why it was only this weekend when I realised what a significant waste of time this is.

3 is ok, 4 is stupid

The number of countries any one person should visit in a day. I started the day in Paris before a flight to Helsinki. I then had a flight to London. I had done this trip last week so I knew what I was in for. I had not however anticipated a diversion to Amsterdam. 6 hours to get from Finland to the UK rather than the alloted 2.5. All of that following a delayed flight and a mere 4.5 hours sleep on Sunday night....I don't think I'll be winning any beauty contests tonight. I have other random ramblings but I will keep them for tomorrow....including my selection for the French National Show Jumping championships...I'll be representing the Aquitaine region in the first weekend of July in southern Paris. More anon...

Zen. 1,2,3,4,5......10

A relatively poor client meeting, a 3 hour train journey afterwards, a laptop whose wireless switch no longer works, a broken power pack, a smoker's room at the hotel, a broken handle on a suitcase and a London tube strike....it's enough to make your blood boil. For some reason I am managing to remain relatively sanguine about it all. Maybe it's simply fatigue.

Thankfully things are going better at the Finnish client. It looks like I will be spending the next 3 weeks out in Helsinki apart from a couple of random trips to London e.g. for the AIMS banding meeting. Basically I'll be writing a contract for application management services and how to transfer from an incumbent supplier to Accenture. I know absolutely nothing about this (or maybe slightly less than that), but looking on the bright side, at least the contract does not need to be in Finnish.

Trust the master

When one suggests in an earlier posting that you have learnt from your mistakes, then you might be setting yourself up for a fall (quite literally in the case of show jumping horses). Although I actually think there is a difference between understanding your mistakes and then being physically able to put into action a remedial course of action, thankfully I had a "clear round" on Sunday (basically when you don't make any mistakes or knock any bars off their perches).

The other thing that was quite clear was that I am lucky to have a very good coach. It's good that he says don't do "that" and it will be ok, and when I don't do "that", then it is ok. If only everything in life was as simple! Trust in, and respect to, those who really know what they are doing!

I am now off to Helsinki and Weymouth for a couple of client orals. Fingers crossed that we'll get some decent projects out of it. More anon no doubt.

Making mistakes

The jumping of horses was not great yesterday. I had my worst result in a long time.

Two things came to mind as I cried over my split milk. The first is if you are going to make mistakes then learn something in the process - thankfully I did that yesterday. Secondly, people traditionally say that only a fool makes the same mistake twice. In general I would agree, although without going into oodles of technical detail, what yesterday taught me was that you can learn different things from your mistakes depending on your level of experience. I am a more experienced rider than I was a year ago. As such the analysis of my mistakes yesterday is more in depth than any understanding of the same mistake I would have had 12 months ago. Translated into work terms....a Senior Executive's analysis of why we might have won or lost a RFP bid is probably more to the point that the junior consultant in the bid team, or quite simply the reason why it is managers or consultants who are asked to impact assess change requests.

I suspect this was totally obvious to everyone else, but reality only really bit yesterday. Going back for more today.....let's hope I don't make the same mistake because I don't think I've gathered much more experience since yesterday, especially after a couple of pints of Guinness last night.

Raspberries, baby vomit and life

Lots of random, irrelevant and pretty insignificant things passed through my head today...

Sunglasses: I've never really worn sunglasses. I now have a super pair of sunglasses and I really like them - they also make driving in early evening sunshine very enjoyable.

Stereotypes: My wife has just got her new car - a Nissan Qasqhai. My little Twingo pales in comparison. I shouldn't mind....I don't really like driving (even with sunglasses) and I am never at home. My wife works with horses and drives a lot. But still, isn't it the woman who has the little car. Sounds sexist I know.

Raspberries: Long live the summer and fresh fruit.

Babies: How do they grow bigger when they seem to vomit greater quantities of food than they actually consume.

Life: Do old people get sick of living? I remember my Granny saying to me she was ready to go. Maybe this is difficult for younger people to hear because we've still got so much living to do. Will I get bored of living at some stage?

There you go; unrelated and meaningless twaddle.

Signing off

Another RFP done. Timelines were tight, but regular communication, clear responsibilities and treating people like mature responsible adults has ensured that we've got this one in on time. It looks pretty good too. Seems like the insurance RFP wasn't a freak event and that the nightmare RFP before that really was just a blip......let's see what the outcome of each of these bids is. Orals for this one are next Tuesday, the 9th June.

Hurrah for the pound

Many of you know that I'm a true European (read: highly mixed up individual). Therefore you can imagine how important the GBP EUR exchange rate is to me given the fact I am based in the UK but spend a lot of time in stroppy France. I'm delighted to see the pound climb to the heady heights of 1.15 EUR today up from nadir of parity in January. I'm not sure if this is a long term resurrection (history suggests it should stabilise around 1.30 EUR), but it does make things a bit better for me. Although on the other hand it does actually mean I will now have to repay a rather large debt to my wife (it was premised on the exchange rate hitting 1.15 EUR). There you go, another life lesson, every blue sky has a grey cloud lurking somewhere!

Newcastle United

The last 10 days have been so hectic that I’d completely forgotten to mention the relegation of my favourite football team, Newcastle United, from the Premiership to the Championship. They were indeed worse than Hull City and Sunderland on the last day of the season, but in honesty the problems run deeper than that. My view: if you change your manager 4 times in the same season and run your club like a soap opera, then you get what you deserve.

Football matches and indeed league titles, like our Accenture projects, are not won in a heart beat. Although you do need a couple of star players, most success is built on day in day out activities that ensure the foundations are right. In Accenture language this is called “Business Operator”. In honesty it’s not really interesting, but it’s essential e.g. finding out who is staffed where and when people are rolling off their projects. However as you become more senior, this type of activity becomes increasingly important.

I think there is a similar lesson that holds true in life more generally. You’re probably better off being likeable but average, rather than an obnoxious know it all. Or as my Glasgow Granny would have said (of my Uncle Ed no doubt), you’re better off being born lucky than rich. Unfortunately Newcastle United was neither.

Good morning Vietnam!!!

Unlike the vast majority of people in Accenture, I'm not one for ridiculously late nights. I am much more of a morning person. We're now entering that period of the year that only serves to reinforce this lifestyle choice. Waking up in the summer morning to see bright blue skies was always a joy. The prospect of a warm and sunny day always puts a spring in my step. When you add in a happy gurgling little baby at 7.27AM each day, then this only adds to the happiness. Just a shame I suppose that I have to spend another Sunday writing a different RFP response and sitting on calls with the IDC. Grrrrrrrrr. At least I managed to ride a couple of horses yesterday.

On a different note, happy birthdays to our AIMS friends in France (Mickael Gaborit - yesterday) and Norway (Willy Koulichev - today)!

A good night's sleep in store

I couldn't resist a second posting today.....I've now arrived in Cork ahead of tomorrow's meeting. I've checked into my hotel. All pretty standard fare so far - gym, bar, non smoking room, internet connection etc. However I have to confess that it is the first time I have never had to worry about potential noise from the neighbouring rooms....I can say that safely because it is the first time I have stayed in a hotel that has a graveyard as a back garden. I peer out of my large bay window and all I see are rows and rows of tombstones. God bless Ireland. Here's to a quiet night's sleep for me.

Health facist pays tribute to Subway

My Dad has been known to call me a health fascist. He takes the time to enjoy life in the south of France. He sups bubbly blond beers, savours fruity red wines, eats fine cheeses and nibbles dark chocolate in the early evening sunshine, all the time lamenting that I'm a bit of a fitness freak and asking me where it all went wrong.Therefore I am sure he will be happy to hear me give maximum respect to the fast food chain "Subway".

The reason why I am paying homage to them is not actually because of their new range of "Extra Greasy Cut Your Life by 10 Years" sandwiches, but it is actually because they provide a free internet connection in Bristol airport. As I wait for my flight to Cork in Ireland, I was slowly losing the will to live in an airport that can only be described as a poor man's Stansted. However it was Subway that has provided me with the vital link to the rest of the world. On top of that, I consider the fact that there is a power socket sufficiently close by as nothing less than divine intervention.

So therefore the moral of the story is not so much as junk food is actually not that bad, but more, I can't survive without an internet connection. The other piece of good news is that this internet connection this afternoon has ensured that I don't have to sit in the hotel this evening and do the day's emails....that way I can get to the gym and go for a swim! Long live Subway I say.

7,76....2,00....0,00....0,00.....0,00......7

I'll not bore you with the details, suffice to say that the jumping this weekend went very well. The official version is that I was 7th in the regional (Aquitaine) championships at Amateur 2 level. Basically my horse was top class and I made one mistake (on the first day) which cost me dear in the final classification on Sunday. In football parlance you could say that I achieved a Championship play-off place and if I hadn't made that mistake on the last obstacle on the first day, I would have secured an automatic promotion place. Apart from that, we had glorious weather and I managed to spend some quality time with Sandie and Maxime in what really is a beautiful part of the world. Now I'm enjoying the bank holiday sifting through 150 emails and washing three sets of white jodphurs. Glamourous n'est ce pas?

Long live drug dealers and murderers. And horses of course.

I'm feeling much more upbeat this morning. Maybe it's due to spending the evening with some old friends last night who are barristers (it's always interesting to get a different perspective on life); maybe it's because the sun is shining in London; or maybe it's because I'm off to Bordeaux for a few days to jump some horses. Probably a combination of all three.

Last night was especially fun because one of my old friends had had an excellent result in a 3 month trial that finished yesterday. He was rather full of himself and therefore great to be with. As he was sipping his champagne my wife called. I explained to her the festive mood we were in. In an effort to understand the situation she asked if we were really celebrating the fact that my friend Dominic had managed to keep a drug dealing murderer on the streets rather than putting him somewhere safe for 12 years. When you look at it like that I suppose......

Another one, two, n, bite the dust

It's a day of mixed emotions. Various things are racing through my head as a result of different lunches, emails and conversations.......so apologies if this posting seems somewhat disjointed.

The past: Is definitely over....the end of May is when a whole swathe of Senior Executives will leave the firm. The first farewell emails are coming through. In consulting you get used to seeing this type of mail, but it seems sort of different when they come from Senior Executives who you know have been around longer than you have had hot dinners. Maybe I should be more ruthless and think fantastic more slots at the top....but I have to confess that is not my initial reaction. They are cutting muscle in many areas and in those situations maybe it's not a good idea to be at the top just yet.....

The future.....is going to be a lot of frustrated people if the firm doesn't manage expectations carefully. I've just heard today that in at least one group in one geographical region, that not all of the Very Top (VT) analysts will get their promotions. VT accounts for the top 5% of people. If these guys are not getting the promotions then it's really not good. How do you motivate your top performers?

The future as a Senior Manager.....I attended a business lunch today. I was lucky enough to be sitting next to the top people who ran the recent bid at the insurance company. It's always interesting to chat to this type of person because it allows you to see the next step on the ladder. My conclusion was that professionally Senior Manager activities and Senior Executive activities are very similar in many regards. Conclusion - if you don't like being a Senior Manager, probably not worth hanging around to make Senior Executive. For those people who have that reaction, thankfully they have made Senior Manager a "landing point", although it seems a bit odd to rush up the Accenture ladder to get to one step before the end and then say, "actually it's not really for me lads". On the upside, one of those senior people owned three racehorses - so it's not all bad at the top!

Life really does just go on and on......After I got back to the office from lunch, another Senior Manager sat me down and talked to me about his exciting pipeline of opportunities in insurance and how I would need to help him. He was obviously (naturally) oblivious to my reflections and emails of the day, and it just reminded me that the whole organisation just continues to grind on and on.....New faces working on slightly different ideas. I suspect the word "evolution" is better than "progress".....

Something much more fun!

The last posting was a bit heavy. Check out the following link for a bit of light relief:

http://demo.qlikview.com/AJAX/MP%20Expenses%20Analysis/SH05.htm

You can use this tool to check out all of the expense claims made by different UK politicians. Much more fun than a missed promotion!

Timely box ticking

It's that time of the Accenture year again - performance evaluations. It's always a touchy and thorny subject so I will try and jump in with both feet and smash a few myths. I've been here for over 9 years so I've seen my fair share of evaluations, ladderings, banding meetings etc. I think the main things that I have learnt or would share with people are:

1. The process is fundamentally flawed but it's as good as we can make it (for the most part). Consulting is subjective and depends a lot on the luck of the draw - whether or not you get drawn with a client and project manager who like you and your work is often not under your control. Furthermore no two roles are ever identical so therefore you are obliged to compare apples with oranges. The process tries to take this into account, but it can never be perfect.

2. That missing a promotion doesn't mean that you a failure as a human being. My baby boy Maxime is almost 6 months now. This last 6 months has flown by. Promotion cycles are also every 6 months. If you don't make it in September, the following March isn't really that far away. However if Maxime was still the same size in 18 months time, then I'd start to worry - i.e. if you miss your promotion 3 cycles in a row, start thumbing your little black book of contacts. It's perfectly normal to miss the odd cycle largely because of the next point....

3. That generally, you're up against good people. Make no bones about it we're not the Andersen Consulting of old. However the people are still generally very good and on top of that, they work like dogs. Everybody thinks they work hard and it is difficult to compare, but when you start navel-gazing because you've missed a promotion, don't forget who you are up against. Burton Albion have had a great season in the Blue Square conference, but I still think they would get tonked if they represented England at the World Cup next year.

4. That your time will come. This is the timely bit in the "Timely box ticking" title. You can have the hardest C1 role in the world and execute it better than anyone else could, but a C3 is the man next in line to get promoted. It's like Hull City on the final day of this year's premiership season (check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/table/default.stm) - their place in the premiership is theirs to lose. The C3's promotion slot is his to lose - only if he does a bad job will the C1 (Newcastle United) get a look in. Therefore the overall advice is sit tight, do your job and understand when it's your turn to be Hull City.

5. Linked to the previous point is the box ticking bit in the "Timely box ticking". If you are Hull City, understand what you need to do - if you're a C3 then understand you've got to have shown that you can lead a team. Regardless of which level you're at currently, the basic rule of thumb is that you need to show that you are already working at the next level up e.g. an analyst must be seen to be doing the work of a consultant. Don't forget the bigger picture - this is how Accenture gets its pound of flesh out of us all....

6. That you need to have effective representation. Unfortunately because it is a subjective world out there, doing a good day job isn't enough. You need to make sure that the person who is going to represent you in banding meetings is well prepared - give that person the information they need to tell everyone else about the good job you've done. Alex Ferguson telling Fabio Capello that Danny Wellbeck is going to be in his World Cup squad next year - now that's effective representation.

7. That if you miss a promotion, are hugely annoyed and decide you want to jump ship as a result, then make sure you've got something to go to and that your CV will still look sensible. Leaving to sit at home for 6 months is a bit daft because jobs are not falling off trees at the minute. Additionally leaving after only 18 months in a company at a junior position looks odd. Think of 2 years as a minimum amount of time to spend in any one company.

8. The final point, which is in no way meant to justify everything, is to try and think about performance evaluations and promotions from a firm point of view. This helped me to take a step back and put a lot of things in perspective. Promotions to Accenture mean they have to spend money (your wages). It also makes it more difficult to sell you to clients because you cost more (why do you think there are fewer Senior Executives than Analysts on a project). On the other hand, Accenture has to make sure it keeps its best people happy and motivated through money (dollars) and recognition (e.g. celebrating performance points). The firm spends it life trying to get this balancing act correct. And of course, there are times when it gets it wrong.

Phew, that's all a bit serious (and very long)......normal service will be resumed tomorrow.....

Rainman

Whilst I was calmly doing something, no doubt my Accenture emails, my wife was gently seething and curdling in the corner of the room. At the height of this recent fit of French domestic rage, she turned round to me and said, "if you were even just a shade more intelligent then you would be autistic". This was the nicest thing she has ever said to me, and I think it annoyed her even more when I told her that I took that as a complement and sought to give her a kiss.

Therefore I was fascinated by a recent article in the Economist (April 18th) about autism and extraordinary intelligence called "Genius Locus". Apparently you need three things to be autistic; impairments in social interaction and communication with other people (a "theory of mind") and RRBIs or "restrictive and repetitive behaviours". The other good news for neurotypicals (i.e. non autistic people) is that anyone can become autistic in anything if they practise the repetitive action for a mere 10,000 hours. Anyway I will not bore you further with this, it was just my musing for the day.

Form is temporary, class is permanent

I'm not referring to Tevez or Man Utd's victory at Wigan last night, more referring to Accenture. My faith has been restored a little bit during this RFP with the insurance company. It is looking more and more like my previous RFP experience was a blip and that normal service is being resumed. We're now doing a "page turning" exercise to spot minor issues a whole 24 hours ahead of the final deadline. Magic.

I had a very enjoyable evening last night with Nick Millman and Mark Duffy. A couple of pints and a super Thai restaurant. However it must have been a potent mix of Guinness and Coconut because for the first time ever I dreamt about this blog. I actually dreamt that I had met Jacques Chirac and that I needed to write up my account of our meeting. Given that he is one of my least favourite political figures (vying for top spot with Silvio Berlusconi), this was a rather worrying development. I think Chirac was to the forefront of my sub conscious because I had heard on the radio that Sarkozy's ratings had dropped to 36%, but that this was still far in excess of Chirac's worst ratings of 16% - a nadir that suggests that sometimes form may actually be permanent.

Deliverance

This is neither what I have received nor what I asked for....it's more to do with late evening working....https://www.deliverance.co.uk/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 Although I am now working on a different RFP (this time for an insurance company), the take out food comes from the same place. It's pretty good stuff it has to be said.

On a more serious note, what's nice to see is that we are working hard on this RFP, but it's a completely different kettle of fish to the last one. Much less stress, much better organisation, a clear plan on where we're going. Funnily enough we're well ahead of schedule and already talking about how to prepare the orals session next Tuesday. My faith is somewhat restored......now they just need to give me a WBS element.

Apart from that London is still London, and still very different from my quiet little train stations in Helsinki. I'm still staggered by the need to deafen myself when listening to my iPod as I walk in the street just to hear something above the din of buses and motorbikes. We have the AIMS Q3 Community Event tomorrow so I'm looking forward to catching up with you all tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have a chance for a pint afterwards too.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Another one of the things I have learnt is that my favourite letter is "z". I think that this may explain one of the reasons why I spend so much time in Biarritz in France, and also my inexplicable liking of the Basque language despite not being able to utter a single word of it. I am also looking forward to getting a lot of Z's over the next few nights now that this RFP has finished, although 5 month old Maxime seems to have other ideas at the minute.

For those of you who are regular followers of the blog, you will have realised that the RFP I have been working on has been one of the worst professional experiences that I have had during my 9 years in Accenture. Thankfully one of the other key things I have learnt during all that time is that the company constantly throws up lots of new opportunities, and that your current status quo is always only ever temporary. Even tonight I've had a request for a 3 month project in South Africa and another email asking me to be sure to go to a conference in Berlin. It's always important to remember the big picture when you're up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I suspect that is probably the real reason why I personally haven't left yet.

Linked to that is a fond farewell to two old friends and key guys in the group who will leave tomorrow. Shane Groeger and Jon Crenner will enjoy their last day with us tomorrow after over 9 years in Andersen Consulting / Accenture. I for one am terribly sorry to see them go - the company will be all the poorer without their skills and charisma. Good luck lads.

Quiet as a Finnish railway station

Doing this blog forces me to learn a few things about myself. One of them is that I now realize that I actually really like train stations. You only have to ask Shane Groeger about Munich train station to understand that this love affair is not a new phenomenon. As I was out running this morning in Helsinki I stumbled across the central train station at the start of rush hour....you could hear a pin drop. It was like a British university library in the summer time. I was really quite shocked at how serene it was. The good news is that my life now looks like it might be as quiet as a Finnish railway station for the next week or so. The RFP response and 18 hour days hell is over, I have one conference call to do tomorrow, and then it's a few days of holiday. I have to say I'm looking forward to the impending sleep, seeing the family and riding a few horses.

The other good thing about Finland was that the Accenture team decided to roll out the big gun for this client presentation…so I got to spend the day with Royce Bell (much more fun than Francois Bayrou). Royce is a real card and I’m a big fan of his direct style. I ask all the questions you should never ask, and he gives me all the answers he should never give. A very enjoyable experience! It’s also the first time that I’ve heard a Senior Executive say to his Finnish hosts that they really shouldn’t criticize England because it was they who originally came to rape, pillage, and essentially populate our little island. Their response was a worrying mixture of cheeky grins, stunned silence and hand rubbing.

Just call me Ricky

Ricky Hatton that is....http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/8028250.stm That's how I feel after this RFP. Another full weekend of work, but hopefully today should be my last involvement.

However no rest for the wicked just yet. I'm off to see my friends in Finland for a couple of days tonight and then I'm definitely taking a few days holiday at the end of the week.

More anon, but I just wanted to let you know that I now see the light at the end of the tunnel...even if I think that what I see coming is just the headlights on one big fat juggernaut with my name written all over it.

Self Fulfilling Prophecies

It is my firm belief that as you get older your personality doesn't change. In fact your personality traits become more and more pronounced. Linked to this is my realisation that you also spend more and more time finding reasons or examples of things that justify your instinctive positions or beliefs, sort of "marking your own homework" or "reverse causality" if you like.

I have a tendency to be very open with people – rightly or wrongly, I rarely play my cards close to my chest. However this is not because I am some sort of goody two shoes, it is more to do with the fact that I am extremely forgetful. Lying and giving half truths requires a great deal more effort than being open – I am really no good at remembering what I told who when. Furthermore being an economist by background I am very aware of information asymmetry so I much prefer to give everyone the same data!

As such, I am glad to see that this RFP, which has been run on the basis of concealing information and only releasing data to certain people at certain times, is not going as smoothly as one might hope. Apart from feeling hopelessly tired and exasperated, I also feel happy because this experience has taught me that trying to remember at 1AM in the morning why you only told one senior executive about one change and not another change, and why another senior executive has different information, well, it’s just a bit of a mess really. 48 hours to go and counting, although my bank holiday weekend is looking in grave danger……I need to get to bed. Goodnight campers.

Hobnobbing with the stars

I feared the worst as I reluctantly dragged myself from my bed this morning to go to the airport for the final week of this RFP. Imagine then my surprise then when my journey was punctuated with a very pleasant 1 hour and 15 minutes travelling in the company of Francois Bayrou. For those of you who don't know him, he's the French equivalent of the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg (who he was actually going to meet). He was a very pleasant chap who is famous in France for breeding race horses. No surprises for guessing that our conversation focused on equine rather than political subjects as we took the Stansted Express into London (both travelling in second class I'll have you note). For those of you not up on French politics here's a link...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francois_Bayrou. It's a funny old world. Needless to say my little ray of sunshine was thoroughly rained away as soon as I stepped over the Old Bailey threshold.....another late finish as my hotel bed beckons.....

The Final Countdown

Those of you who know me well know that there is little in life that can sap my will to live. Unfortunately the RFP I am currently working is doing just that. Thankfully in the words of the great Swedish rock band Europe, it's the Final Countdown. We need to get the submission ready for Friday and then I will definitely be looking for other things to do. It's been a thoroughly unenjoyable experience but I've learned a lot about how not to do things - there you go, looking on the bright side already! Anyway, "bon courage" for the new week as my French friends would say - I think I am going to need it....

Mad as a box of frogs

I'm all for exercise but I think I would rather spoon my eyes out rather than be a London cyclist....this is largely because I think it is a fate that has already been meted out to most Black Cab drivers....as I criss-crossed London yesterday I was astounded that my taxi didn't kill anyone as my driver juggled no less than three different pairs of spectacles at high speed (sun, reading and normal). I always enjoy coming to London although I think I must spend too much time in the countryside in the weekend because I am always astounded by the noise and pollution. On the other hand, I have to say that given the choice I would like to be able to "enjoy" the smog a bit more at the minute - we are working ridiculously hard and there is little of it about when we get out of the office around midnight.....but before I get back up on my soapbox I'd best get my nose back to the grindstone.....

Teacher's Note: Must do better

I have to say I am a bit angry with myself. I've managed to get through the whole winter without a cough or a sniffle but today I feel physically awful. I have a runny nose, I'm bunged up and whilst I slept overnight someone has quietly inserted a razorblade into my throat making swallowing a joy. Working a week of 17 hour days back to back and not being able to go for my morning run is definitely not the right work life balance for me. What is more frustrating is that it could all be so different (see posting from earlier in the week). At least the sun is shining this weekend and I'll get out and ride some horses tomorrow. That should hopefully help bring things back into kilter.

Apart from that, the good news is that there still seem to be a steady flow of opportunities coming our way and the bench is down to around 11% so that's all very pleasing. Once I get over this hump at the end of the month things will hopefully return to normal. I can then start to spend the time required on some other bits and pieces - there's even a nice little data migration opportunity in Paris which sort of tickles my fancy for some strange reason. More anon....

Let the Dog see the Rabbit

It's been a frustrating couple of days with some sickeningly long hours. We're working on an RFP response for a C&HT client and what it's taught me is that what looks like being a very well run affair can actually be stifling in terms of excessive interruptions and status meetings. Doing the actual work takes second place to jumping through hoops and meeting artificial internal deadlines. Trying to grab an hour here or 30 minutes there is not the way to think through or design a solution and even less of a reliable technique for writing a coherent response document.

Thankfully things are looking better today and we are moving ahead. There you go, moan over. Well not quite actually. When going down to the canteen for lunch in OB, I was accosted by an excessively sun tanned young man offering me sweets. My 18 months in Belgian has taught me to be wary of such people, but basically he wanted to tell me about our great new desk booking policy. Personally I think it is another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy and more of a pain than anything else. Needless to say we didn't agree on this point. We disputed the point until I was sick of chocolate (3 sweets) and then I left. On reflection I think I owe my willingness to openly whinge to complete strangers to my French wife. 7 years ago I would never have thought about doing such a thing (although I would probably have still taken the chocolate albeit more sheepishly). Such whingeing is just not British, stiff upper lip and all that. Anyway, I suspect I need to watch this developing characteristic for fear of being labelled a hot head in mild mannered Britain.

My slightly ruffled feathers were smoothed thanks to a lovely lunch with 4 AIMS colleagues - Gana Bhat, Vikas Sindwani, Sai Chin Li and Andrea Sulzenbacher. They really are a nice bunch! You really are a nice little group all in all.

Watership Down all over again....

I wouldn't like to be a chocolate Easter Bunny at this time of the year. After not having eaten chocolate for 6 weeks during the period of Lent, I am now on the warpath and ready to devour any little cocoa/furry animal as of tomorrow, Easter Sunday. Happy Easter to you all and enjoy the time with your families - I know I am going to be savouring every minute of my chocolate induced indigestion.
STOP PRESS: One other piece of great news is a new baby in the group - Duncan Slater's wife has delivered a fine specimen yesterday called William James Stewart. Congratulations to the Slater family!

And they're off......to Paris

The waiting is finally over. The RFP that I've been waiting for for a number of weeks finally arrived late last night. It was only page 49 that sent me to sleep last night in the hotel. The excitment of it all ensured that I was up again at 5.30 to finish off the document appendices. In honesty it's an interesting request that is going to try and take a tactical solution and make it strategic. I won't bore you with the details but the good news is that it is very similar to parts of three other responses I have done in the last 4 months. Control C and Control V are my new best friends.

I now find myself in Paris at the end of the day. I'm here to speak to two clients tomorrow; one about MDM in utilities, and the other a tactical reporting solution in the music industry. I've got quite a bit of variety in my work life at the minute - it makes me think I should have ventured out of financial services years ago!

The other good thing about being in Paris is that after having spent 4 years in the Paris office, I have a number of good friends here. Tonight I will stay with my old china Thierry Grima who is a manager in the AIMS group in France. I didn't think I'd have time to do a posting tonight, but I managed to find a few minutes because he is sitting here next to me preparing a presentation on configuration management for his client for tomorrow morning. I don't think he'll be finished for a while yet! Accenture seems the same the world over - even his wife sounded like mine at times....."Thierry, answer me when I talk to you please.....what sort of company is this that you work for" and other such remarks (although my wife rarely calls me Thierry).

Dog Chases Tail. Life begins at 9.

What a day. Many would say I've been productive and I do like days where you clear hundreds of little items off your to do list. However I do hate days when I start my real work at 9PM. Thankfully I don't have too many days like that and thankfully I am waiting for my wife who will only return from Paris at midnight tonight, otherwise it would have been another, "your dinner's in the dog" evenings.

As regards the week overall, it's been successful. I've been up to Finland and I think I've managed to help a bit and put them on the right tracks. The bench has remained stable. I've managed to do all the group status reporting, and I've even managed to speak to a few of you on the phone. The next four weeks don't look to be a stroll in the park either - I start a major new RFP on Monday for 4 weeks whilst trying to keep 4 other clients happy too. Next week will see me visit two of my French clients and I may have to go back to Dublin some time soon as well.

As for the group in general, there are also other bits of good news floating around - Davide's orals in Dublin went well and we've been short listed there. We're expecting an RFP from a pharma company next week following my chat with them at the end of last month. We're also signing the contract on a major deal we won in January so finally we'll see the greenbacks roll in.

I have to say that at the end of yet another week doing RFPs, I'm looking forward to Easter. Apart from the fact that I can start eating chocolate and drinking Guinness again, I've also got a 3 days show jumping competition in San Sebastien in Spain so I'm looking forward to that immensely. Just so you know, I'll be in London next week Monday to Wednesday. I'll be in OB but let me know if you want to catch up. I should also be spending a fair bit of time in London over the 3 weeks after Easter too so don't hesitate to give me a shout.

30 Concurrent RFPs isn't that much fun

Just a quick late posting for the day. Helsinki is fun. The AIMS team is fun. The food and beer is pretty good. However responding to 30 poorly written RFPs is not fun. Just when you think you've got a solution for one RFP, you then realise there is unnecessary overlap which negates half of what you've just spent the last two days writing. I've never seen a client as fragmented and disjointed as this particular one. Thankfully today has been a productive (albeit very long) day. What today has taught me is that even in an extremely complex environment, if you can't explain in a few words what you are trying to do, then what you're trying to do is probably too complex for it to work. Those of you who know me know what I think about the importance of communication; these last few days has simply gone to confirm my initial beliefs. A simple idea explained clearly is worth a hundred better ideas explained poorly.

Far from home

I have just arrived in Helsinki and I feel far away from home in more ways than one.

Obviously wife and child are far away in the south of France at the minute, but it's the northern chill stepping off the plane that struck me tonight. I think back to my roots and the days of growing up in Newcastle and heading off to the Quayside and Bigg Market for a pint or three in a short sleeved shirt. What the hell was I thinking? I would hazard a guess and say that it would now be physically impossible for my body to accept such reckless treatment. As I got off that plane all I could think was, "where are my gloves and bobble hat". Macho O'Brien from Newcastle has long since bitten the dust.

I was also struck by something else today. I was pleasantly surprised to see that although I haven't had an internet connection for most of the day, the world did not end. In fact, I was actually pretty efficient and had some very useful conference calls. A couple of calls have even spawned further business trips and hopefully AIMS projects in France (C&HT) and Ireland (Products). More anon.

The only other place I would have wanted to be tonight is in Brussels. It is a city that holds a special place in my heart after having worked there for 18 months. Tonight sees the end of the Accenture contract on which I was worked. There is a big farewell do and I was sad to miss it. Hopefully Laurent, Bert, Francois and Jason will do me proud and have a pint for me.

6 week order book

In the days when we used to be a private company (the days of Andersen Consulting), the senior folk used to tell us lowly analysts that the order book only went out 6 weeks, hence the reason why they needed to try and sell new contracts every day. That has obviously changed slightly with the onset of long term outsourcing contracts that we're now so fond of (guaranteed revenue streams keeping Senior Executives and the markets happy). However after having been working on a number of RFPs since I left Fortis earlier this year, I have been reminded of how precarious our business really is.

In addition to that, I was also talking to a couple of non AIMS SEs recently; one lamented the fact he was going to have to make cuts simply because clients were taking too long to sign on the dotted line; the second complained about needing to identify 6-7 senior managers in his group and the negative impact on client relationships that losing these people would inevitably have on his practice. As much as I am all for short term targets in support of an overall strategic goal, (and obviously KPIs and dahsboards to support this because I am from AIMS), I think this is clearly a sign of the "now now now times" in which we live.

Moral of the story: multiple I suppose, including having to lie in the bed you've made, but possibly the most important is to be staffed, and to constantly try and learn new things in which you're genuinely interested. More on that last point either tomorrow or Tuesday. I am travelling to Finland to see one of our favourite clients tomorrow so I won't have a connection for much of the day. I'll be in Helsinki for most of the week working on an RFP response that will involve AIMS guys from all over Europe including the Nordic and ASG regions amongst others. A good experience which will hopefully have a happy outcome - that one's due in on the 22nd April.

What I want to be when I grow up....

I don't know how many of you are aware of SI&T's Managed Delivery programme. It's been running for a year or so but has been focused on Senior Executives and Senior Managers. It seems to be taken fairly seriously - it's the first time I have seen Accenture award "internal certification" in all my time here. I know they are planning to roll this out more widely, but for all of those of you who aspire to be considered as competent delivery managers of technology projects, then I encourage you to get a headstart and start reading some of the materials.....here's a link or two to get you off the mark.

https://kx.accenture.com/ProcessService/Pages/SITSADL.aspx and https://methodology.accenture.com/core_sol_plan_sit/#meth.sol_planning_si/guidances/roadmaps/SP%20for%20SI%20Home_ABE897B7.html

Let me know if you need more information. Also let me know if this scares/bores you to death and prompts you into making a radical change to the direction of your career :-)

Big Brother says the future's bright, the future's BI CCs and MDM!

The future's bright but my copy and paste skills are not...I've just lost my longest ever posting. Don't ask. Let me distill the key points from my endless waffle......

1. You're a good bunch of skilled people. I've more or less finished my round of introductory phone calls and I'm impressed with what I've heard.

2. The pipeline is looking good, much better than January. We've already won some deals e.g. Vodafone. We've been short listed for others (there's a big deal where Davide Corda is flying the flag for us in Dublin in orals next week). We also continue to be invited to speak to clients on a range of topics e.g my visit to a pharmaceutical company earlier this week in the lovely Macclesfield....

3. Everyone wants to talk about BI or IM Competency Centres or Master Data Management (MDM). They are oh so very sexy at the minute it seems. So if you were wondering where to direct your AIMS career....there's your answer.

4. Another bit of good news - we currently have zero analysts or consultants on the bench. The last consultant, Simon Burnett was shipped off to the capital of glamour...yep, you guessed it, Newcastle. He's off to work for HMRC. He only spent a week on the bench so it's really good to see that we are managing to get people back out working quickly. I need to start looking at the manager situation as of tomorrow!

The future's bright but this evening is not. Good night all, until tomorrow.

Information Newsflash 4

Admittedly an article more about content management than BI or EDM, but still very interesting all the same for a number of reasons e.g. the fact that an IM vendor is Britain's biggest software vendor, the resilience of software vendors in the economic downturn (especially IM vendors), the fact that a business publication such as the Economist is talking openly about structured and unstructured data, and the fact that Autonomy was initially funded by a drunken loan agreed over a pint in a pub.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13185883

Will you still love me when I'm....er....69

Either reassuringly or worryingly (depending on your point of view), I was thinking about you lot whilst reading a couple of articles in the Economist this weekend.

First, the long term navel gazing article - the business section profiled Ram Charan. A 69 year old who is a one man band consultancy. He started out working in a shoe shop in India and is now a trusted advisor to numerous CEOs throughout the world. Quite simply, do you really want to be a consultant at 69 - he racked up 500,000 miles on planes last year and gets clean clothes couriered to him by his executive assistant. Not sure if that's really what I'm after - in fact I'd be happy if my wife just did more of my ironing.......Read the full article at http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13183962 for those of you who subscribe to this publication.

Slightly less philosophical was the second article, "What can banks learn from the clean-up after the telecoms crash of 1997-2003". I thought this might be interesting for those of you who aspire to work in FS, and for those of you who are working at phone companies (a large number of the group). Conclusion: "For telecoms, the glamour and infamy were followed by mediocrity. Banks are still staggering about in the limelight, but the same fate surely awaits them"....The full article is at http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13185901. Interesting because it might help us understand how long before we can expect to do some decent work in FS again.

Let me know by mail if you are interested in reading the articles but don't have access and I'll read it to you over the phone with cookies and a glass of warm milk.

Would you like fries with that sir?

After having given a bottle of warm milk to a 3.5 month old baby I’m now sitting in McDonalds doing my final emails of the week due to a dodgy internet connection at home. Given the fact that I am in France for the weekend maybe “would you like fries with that” should be “voulez vous des frites avec ca?!” (Just for the record, and contrary to popular belief, the French call their chips simply “frites”, and not “frites francaises” or any variant of that – you see they’re not really that arrogant after all….).

All in all it’s been a good week. We’re on the verge of getting our bench down to a very handsome size – with a bit of luck Sai Chin Li, Neil Dsouza and Amit Shah will all start new projects on Monday. We’ve also had our first transfers to Australia confirmed……now there’s a way to change your life if ever there was one. My work has been going well, and preparation for my workshop for AstraZeneca next week is almost complete. We’re also expecting a couple of big RFPs in the not too distant future and I may be back off to see my old friends at Nokia in Finland in 10 days or so. So all in all much to be positive about! I hope you all have a good weekend and speak to you next week.

It's good to talk

Finally I'm back home after finishing my course in Belgium. Although it was 3 days well spent with copious amounts of mirth and Belgian beer, I'm happy at the prospect of sleeping in my own bed tonight.

I'm also happy that I've managed to speak to most of you on the phone over the last couple of weeks. The intention is to speak to you all to get to know you a bit better so if you haven't received a call yet, it's on its way! Although I'm beginning to see that the role involves a lot of administration, the up side is definitely getting to speak to all of you as well as getting a better view of the upcoming pipeline of work. There is still some industrialisation of certain processes to put in place, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm getting things under control.

Good night all and thanks to Laurent Dalard and Jason Selling for organising the last few days in Brussels.

The world is even smaller than I originally thought...

And that's got nothing to do with VR!! I'm still sunning myself in Brussels at the Solution Architecture course and I've stumbled across a couple of old AIMS friends here - Erwin Vorwerk and Rob Aaldijk - the BI and PCM leads for AIMS in the Netherlands. In fact the Dutch have invaded Belgium by storm this week - 8 of the 15 people on the course over 7 foot tall, rude, pragmatic and look like they've been smoking copious quantities of soft drugs.

There are actually quite a few of you based on international projects including Adrian Hiliary in Norway and our perennial traveller Andrea Sulzenbacher who is on her way to South Africa now after recently finishing a stint in Singapore. There's much to be learnt from different cultures and it's often quite different from working in the city in London. Register and then check out https://www.globesmart.com/portal.cfm to understand how best to work with people from different cultures (the way the world and our company is going; if you haven't worked with an offshore delivery centre yet, it's only a matter of time).

From Information Builders to Skill Builders

Today's epistle comes from sunny Brussels. I am doing the mandatory SI&T Solution Architect course. I have to say that apart from a single one day course I attended recently, I find the quality of Accenture training courses to be very high; much improved when compared to the courses I used to attend a few years ago. This one has started well so fingers crossed that the standard is maintained for the next two days.

This course has the added advantage of being in Brussels, where as you may know, I spent the last 18 months working for Fortis Bank. I also assure you that it's pure coincidence that it is St. Patrick's Day tomorrow. I'm off for a small "warm up event" with some former clients and team mates so I wish you a pleasant evening and don't look too early for tomorrow's posting!

Information Newsflash 3

Check out this link from Information Builders to access the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms. Again you may need to register to access it: http://www.informationbuilders.co.uk/about_us/analysts_reports.html

I am guessing Information Builders must have come out of it fairly well if they are publishing it on their website, but hey, it's probably worth a read if you consider yourself a Business Intelligence professional.

In fact you should all know that there is an even easier way to access all Gartner content via myresearch.accenture.com. I will prepare a short communication about it soon, but if you can't wait that long, then give me a ring and I'll explain how to get it straight away.

Side splitter

Thursday finished off well with a visit to the Comedy Store with my counselees and a certain Shane Groeger. Some of the acts were positively hilarious but unfortunately I don't think I will be able to weave many of their jokes into my next presentation at an AIMS event or upcoming client workshop. You can be assured that if you hear me mention "language dwarfs", "Wayne Rooney's brother" or "the dunk of optimism", then you know I've stolen the material. Catch me in a calm moment offline and I'll happily share the references with you!

It's a small world

It's been a funny old day. I've spent time in the QVS and FCS offices today and bumped into some old faces that I haven't seen since my analyst days of yesteryear. I've even bumped into old faces that have left the firm and just happen to work in the neighbourhood (John Masters for those who know him). Just goes to prove both the old maxim that the world's a small place, and the less well known but equally valid saying, "when unstaffed it's good to hang around the office and go to the cafe to buy dolly mixtures and jelly beans". The other good news is that I'm beginning to get a handle on who's in the group, who knows what, plus what the demand pipeline is looking like.....more anon. I'm in the middle of doing mid-year reviews with my counselees. Happy campers so far. The next one is due soon so I'll sign off here.

Information Newsflash 2

Here's somebody who's been punched a lot more than me recently....Bearing Point...check out the report at http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=lcUS21734309 Note that you might need to register for this news source but well worth it to understand why one of our niche BI competitors has come a cropper...

Punch Drunk

The Punch Bit: Yesterday's SI&T Call - it went ok; I exited the call slightly bruised and battered but nothing more serious, this week. Mr. Oates is looking for a significant reduction in our bench (he includes people on training and vacation in the overall bench figure). We need to get it down from 24 odd people to 5-8. Lots more work to be done and extra pressure on us (including myself) to get out on chargeable roles. Don't hesitate to get in touch with me or Kelly if you having trouble finding a role.

The Drunk Bit: I'm really looking forward to seeing some of you in the pub tonight. Don't forget, low (no) budget and high mirth content at The Ship, 3 Hart St, as of 6.30pm with a bit of luck.

What a feast! Cue Indigestion and Contentness.

They say the early bird catches the worm. If that's the case and if I were actually a bird, I would be suffering from a heavy bout of indigestion right now. For some reason I'm up ridicuously early - the worms wouldn't know what had hit them.

For someone about to enter the "Jeremy Oates Lion's Den", where many a man has met a gory end, I'm feeling rather chipper. The Lion's Den, otherwise known as the "Weekly SI&T Scheduling Task Force Conference Call", happens every Tuesday morning at 9AM. The call regroups a single executive from every CSG and Growth Platform to explain their bench and share ideas on how to get people back working (think Oates = market maker armed with pick axe). Despite being something of a "voyeur" on the call last week as John made his parting appearance, this is the first time I go it alone. Strangely, I'm feeling rather upbeat, although they do say ignorance is bliss. My confidence is due to both our bench being slightly lower than last week, and because I feel I have all the necessary information at my finger tips. For that, my thanks go out to Kelly Ann and Sanjay Patel (a highly impressive, no nonsense SE who really knows how to manage his stuff for those who don't know him).

If your correspondant survives the morning ahead, I'm sure there will be another posting soon enough. Keep busy and as an old friend of mine likes to say, "work harder".

Pandora's Box

I hope you all had a good weekend. I was delighted that the rain held off for the show jumping yesterday. Overall everything went well, although I narrowly lost out by less than a second to a 70 year old ex French Olympic rider (Dominique Bentejac). At least I still have time on my side.

Handovers are essential but it's only when you start flying solo that you really see what needs to be done. With John diving in Mexico and completely unreachable, I've started to look under the bonnet in more detail....hopefully we'll manage to get a few more of you off the bench today and back into the swing of project life. My next major task will be to get a clearer view on the different roles out there that we need to get staffed....matching demand with supply if you like.

It's actually the first time in 9 years that I've been on the bench so it's giving me an interesting insight into this part of company life, (as well as giving me more time to understand exactly what I need to do to replace John). I also intend to use some of that time to start making contact with many of you. A process which will probably take a at least a few weeks given the size of the group. More anon....

Information Newsflash 1

Apologies for a second posting in the same day, but I couldn't resist. Talking to clients about the latest features of the next release of a software product rarely cuts the mustard. Talking about real world events where data plays a key role tends to resonate much more. In this blog I will try and help make you more "real world information aware" with the odd random post like this one. Check out.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7927487.stm

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing here?

Although I've promised Paul Stainsby (AKA "The Delinquent" to his close friends and family) of the AIMS Newsletter a more in depth interview, here's a quick starter biography....

Despite not being a believer in the ethnic nation, I am actually the holder of both Irish and British nationality. I originally hail from the North East and have been in Accenture for 9 years. I have spent time as a member of the London, Paris, Manchester and Newcastle offices. As you can see, I've basically done a round trip. The only slight issue is that on my way I picked up a French wife and child, meaning that I now spend my time between my native Newcastle, the south of France and wherever my project work is....

My greatest achievement in life was avoiding being staffed on the NIRS project as a new analyst,(as a Newcastle lad graduating in Politics, Philiosophy & Economics from Oxford, it was a bit of an obvious choice for the firm to try and send the Geordie back to where he came from). I joined the Resources CSG and have been working with "data" ever since. I left the CSG as a C2 to move into the GTC Business Intelligence group in France. Despite the rumours, my decision had nothing to do with the fact that the Resources CSG was being run by a real rogues gallery including Royce Bell, Nick Millman and Will Gatehouse.

I've been back in AIMS UK since 2007 but I continued to work in continental Europe, notably in Belgium with the the well known sharp dresser and loveable Davide Corda. I'm currently finishing off a couple of RFP bids, understanding what I need to do in this new role, and waiting for some big projects to come through so I can get myself off the bench.

That's probably a rather large bite sized chunk so I'll leave it there. Have a good weekend all; the start of the French amateur show jumping season is on Sunday so I'll go and have a crack at that. Until next time.

The First 100 Days starts here

As we both commence our new assignments, I think there are already a few differences between me and Barack. While he's launching his $825 bn stimulus plan I'm battling to get some budget for some informal introductory drinks next Wednesday. I also hope that the PCM guys are going to be nicer to me than the Republicans are being to Barack. There are however a few similarities e.g. a successful handover. John Adams has done a sterling job and F&PM's gain is our loss - all the best for the future my friend!

The purpose of this blog is not only to keep in touch with you all in a semi-informal bite-sized way, but also to give you a little insight into who am I, what I am up to, and where I see us all going together. Speak to you tomorrow troops.