Wednesday, October 01, 2008
The trains run on time
As you all know I’ve started a new job at a consulting firm. It’s not a trivial place. It was formerly Anderson Consulting before its partners broke away from Arthur Anderson in a disagreement over sharing revenue. It seemed like a foolish thing to do as “Anderson” was associated with tremendous “name equity” in the business world. (Arthur Anderson was an elite finance, accounting, and consulting firm.) But when the Enron scandal broke that brought down Arthur Anderson, it couldn’t have been more fortuitous.
Then comes me. I basically began my career in derivatives at the Chicago Board of Trade, went to grad school for a masters, before starting my real career at Mercer, another consulting firm. I was working on primarily labor-related work as an analyst/senior analyst for quite some time. I left Mercer for a PhD program that I dropped out of. I found myself recruited by marketing folks and head hunters to apply those skills to the marketing arena.
Since then I’ve held more senior-level positions in rank-and-file corporate America: MMA, iQor and Saks Fifth Avenue. For me, these places were boring. The thrill-of-the-hunt of getting clients, pressure to have successful projects, and doing great work with high-caliber people work were simply not there. I longed to get back to the consulting area.
About a year ago along comes Accenture wanting me to join them as a manager (two steps away from partner). I’m finally hired and start there three weeks ago. Thought I was told that the “trains run on time at Accenture” I naively took the job.
I was immediately staffed on my first project with an Accenture team that geographically spanned San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, India, and Athens (yes, Greece) and with a top client. A little coy, I tended towards my analyst roots by looking at data, etc. One week into it (opening night at the Met) the situation was made painfully clear to me that I needed to step it up. The entire project was now my responsibility: Coordinating people, directing consultants and Senior Managers internationally was my problem. “I think I need to pump the primer here!” the partner on the project said to me “Your job is to make this happen – it’s been a week.” OK. . . I didn’t realize that was all on me.
So the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself in a very different place from where I was during my Mercer days. 70% of my 11 hour day is spent getting my arms around the big picture by shoehorning myself into clients’ minds, directing colleagues and in the details of data collection and empirical analysis with Greece, the US and India. My analytical and economic skills are of little service to me now. It is my job to coordinate everyone and ensure things are delivered on-time and on-budget.
I think I’ve got a hold on it now, but for the first two weeks I’ve been beside myself figuring out how all this will work will get done. I’m feeling a bit better but can’t help but be concerned about what the partner on this project is thinking of me. Certainly, it hasn’t been graceful, but I’ve managed to keep things on-schedule while getting up to speed on everything else.
“The trains run on time at Accenture” and that, for me, means little sympathy for being a rookie.
Then comes me. I basically began my career in derivatives at the Chicago Board of Trade, went to grad school for a masters, before starting my real career at Mercer, another consulting firm. I was working on primarily labor-related work as an analyst/senior analyst for quite some time. I left Mercer for a PhD program that I dropped out of. I found myself recruited by marketing folks and head hunters to apply those skills to the marketing arena.
Since then I’ve held more senior-level positions in rank-and-file corporate America: MMA, iQor and Saks Fifth Avenue. For me, these places were boring. The thrill-of-the-hunt of getting clients, pressure to have successful projects, and doing great work with high-caliber people work were simply not there. I longed to get back to the consulting area.
About a year ago along comes Accenture wanting me to join them as a manager (two steps away from partner). I’m finally hired and start there three weeks ago. Thought I was told that the “trains run on time at Accenture” I naively took the job.
I was immediately staffed on my first project with an Accenture team that geographically spanned San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, India, and Athens (yes, Greece) and with a top client. A little coy, I tended towards my analyst roots by looking at data, etc. One week into it (opening night at the Met) the situation was made painfully clear to me that I needed to step it up. The entire project was now my responsibility: Coordinating people, directing consultants and Senior Managers internationally was my problem. “I think I need to pump the primer here!” the partner on the project said to me “Your job is to make this happen – it’s been a week.” OK. . . I didn’t realize that was all on me.
So the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself in a very different place from where I was during my Mercer days. 70% of my 11 hour day is spent getting my arms around the big picture by shoehorning myself into clients’ minds, directing colleagues and in the details of data collection and empirical analysis with Greece, the US and India. My analytical and economic skills are of little service to me now. It is my job to coordinate everyone and ensure things are delivered on-time and on-budget.
I think I’ve got a hold on it now, but for the first two weeks I’ve been beside myself figuring out how all this will work will get done. I’m feeling a bit better but can’t help but be concerned about what the partner on this project is thinking of me. Certainly, it hasn’t been graceful, but I’ve managed to keep things on-schedule while getting up to speed on everything else.
“The trains run on time at Accenture” and that, for me, means little sympathy for being a rookie.
# posted by otas : 8:16 PM
