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.