Like a ‘Tale of Two Cities’, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. On Monday morning my week looked pretty quiet, with a few internal meetings and some business development activity – but mostly it was the calm before the storm. The start date for my new project had been moved out until the beginning of December, leaving me with a couple of weeks without too much hectic activity.
Mid-afternoon on Monday, I got a phone call asking that fateful question: “Are you busy?” Foolishly I answered truthfully, and the next thing I knew I was writing a £4m bid to help develop the business case and approach for a large multinational company to implement shared services across their organisation. It was a combined bid with our US practice, meaning that the normal chaos of a bid was compounded by working across geographies. And the client (very cleverly, I must add) wanted a response by Friday – saying that if we had genuine capability in this area and a good understanding of their business based on our history of working with them, a week would be more than ample to respond. (NB – for those not familiar with the consulting bid cycle, something of this magnitude would typically have a turn-around time of 4-6 weeks).
So it was all hands on deck, scouring the organisation for our best experience and people. I saw a week of midnight finishes ahead of me, and thanked my lucky stars that Aude was out of town – weeks like these don’t make me the friendliest guy in the world. Though I faced a lot of hard work, it’s exciting to be involved in a big bid like this – even more so when it’s your name in lights, and the chances of us winning were good.
Until we looked at resourcing it – though we had the skills to do the job, the right people were all engaged with other big clients and couldn’t be pulled. There was no chance we could deliver the work at the quality we wanted to, in the timescales allotted. So at mid-day Wednesday, we ‘no-bid’ the project – and as quickly as it started, it stopped. My quiet week was back.
For my sins, I’ve been made our “quality champion” – acting as a corporate good-egg and championing our new risk management process. I was tasked with “making risk management sexy” but let’s face it – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Or as we prefer to say around our office – there’s only so much polishing you can do to a turd. Good or bad, risk management will never be sexy.
We had a big launch event for the new risk processes (I know – woo hoo!) yesterday, and we were all drinking champagne by 4pm. One glass of champagne turned into “Who fancies a quick pint” which, in turn, became “uh oh – my last train leaves in 15 minutes.” Not exactly what you need when you’re leaving for a weekend away and haven’t packed anything. I packed this morning, but God only knows what’s in my suitcase. At 5:30am, I can barely brush my teeth. If I’ve packed two sweaters, a can of soup, and the cat, I’ll have exceeded my own expectations.
But after this week of ups and downs, the most important thing is that I’m whisking off to Paris for the weekend to catch up with Aude, who’s been in France all week on business. I’m writing this on the excellent Eurostar service from London, travelling at 300km per hour through the French countryside, drinking a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and eating pheasant terrine. There are worse ways to travel.
Finally, a brief update for Aude’s mother, who claims that the only news she gets about her son is from my website. I was in Canary Wharf on Thursday for a meeting and had time to have a quick lunch with Jerome. I can confirm that he is alive and well, eating healthy food and still working too hard. He looks like a ghost because he hasn’t seen the sun in weeks, but I suspect that has more to do with living in London than it does with him working in a bank – we’re all a bit pale at this time of year. He sends his love and said that he would love to have a blog of his own, if only he could figure out how to post to it from his Blackberry during meetings.*
* (I may have made the last part of that sentence up)
Right – Paris is rapidly approaching, so I’ll call it a night here. Check back for photos in a few days (unless you’re reading this via an e-mail subscription, in which case the photos will magically show up in your inbox after they’ve been posted!)
