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.