The Contract Consultancy Affair
Contract consultancy is like having an affair, just with middle-aged blokes who probably like golf.
The Contract Consultancy Affair
I spent three years working as a consultant on two complex IS programmes. It was the first time I’d done the contract consulting thing. It involved working away from home for the full period. While I’d lead projects and worked on projects before the majority of them had been part of the organisation I was working for as part of an internal transformation effort or for clients.
This was my first extended experience of working within ‘the project’ framework as the primary, unifying entity with no business as usual activities within the organisation itself.
It’s Like An Affair
In many ways, the experience is like having an affair. You build up some semblance of a second life, like those sales blokes you hear about with a second home on the road. You actually spend more time at this second life than you do your main life. In this case four (sometimes five) days away from home and three (sometimes two) days at home.
You spend a lot of time in a hotel. You live in a hotel and the only people who should do that are millionaires living out of top floor penthouses. You go out for meals, a lot. You spend all your time with people other than your wife.
The only difference is it involves no sex and the time is spent with middle age blokes. They probably also like golf.
A Bounty of Reward Points
Consultants take reward points seriously. You collect them with a passion. You’re not paying for the rail tickets or the hotels rooms so the benefits are free. It’s a sad day when one loses your British Airways Platinum membership. It’s like Xbox Achievements that are worth something. The typical consultant lives in their own little MMORPG when it comes to reward points.
Maximising your reward points is key as it is free money. I was getting the plane up and down but the payback in reward points was rubbish. While East Coast threw points at you like confetti, as well as rewarding you handsomely for delays. Get delayed on the plane and you might get a sandwich for it. On East Coast you got 50% of the ticket you never paid for if the train was delayed for thirty minutes. The points meant you got a free first class return for two every three weeks. You also learn that people jumping in front of trains is more frequent than you ever would have thought. You don’t overly mind as you’re comfortable, can write, watch a film, etc, and you’re getting more money back on your tickets.
Then there is the hotel, in this case a Crown Plaza, part of the InterContinental Group, which becomes an exercise in looking for the multiplication offers to double, triple and even quadruple the points earned. It’s a bit like those combo moves in a fighting game, just without the jingles, loud proclamations and the massive graphical multipliers complete with ‘dinging’ gold and then platinum.
At first, this all seems bit ridiculous and obsessive, which it is, but you soon realise it is one of the few benefits of working away all the time. They’ve been invaluable and they’ve facilities many a trip which is a sort of compensation for working away. They contribute to making your time ‘at home’ more valuable by being able to do things without generating large costs.
A Lovely Prison
The majority of hotels aren’t really designed for you to spend fourteen months in them. You’re pushing it at fourteen days and for the majority they’re designed for much shorter stays. These aren’t exactly Disney Resorts you get to stay at.
Everything becomes way too familiar. The slow operation of the lift doors. The fact it’s the middle lift you have the highest chance of being trapped in or it being broken. The ‘recently broken’ Jacuzzi despite it being in that state for a year. Avoiding the rooms with the noisy, old air conditioning. The little things become automatic, like checking whether you’ve got the chocolate biscuits or the god awful Stem Ginger Cookies when you return from work. I got raisin and ginger biscuits for a while and it was very disappointing.
At one point, there was a small currency going on in the project office for those who liked Stem Ginger Cookies, you may also find you don’t have to purchase certain bathroom products for years.
You do become institutionalised, as despite the familiarity you don’t really want to change hotels. The last thing you want is to book too late and find yourself in a different one. At least in the first case it was one of the better ones allowing for a year of just walking into work every morning. In the second project we eventually lived in a gorgeous farm cottage that is, oddly, very easy to miss.
Eventually, you begin to see the signs you’ve stayed there too long. Room service begins to add the Green & Blacks ice cream onto your room service order semi-automatically. The bar staff provide your drink before you open your mouth, especially if you don’t drink alcohol. Your fellow consultants start to specify the room they want..every week. At this point you know something is not entirely right.
Brag…Then Brag Some More
There was a time I was going to the US a lot. There was probably 1.5 times a year between 1998–2007. One of the things I noticed was the typical format of the introduction from our colonial brethren: name, where you live and where you worked. It was always the last one that got me. They seemed to put prominence on it.
What are the chances of recognising where the person you are speaking to works? We don’t all work at Cisco, Google or General Motors? Surely most people in the US, like most people in the UK, work for companies most people would not recognise? When you’ve had an exciting career in growing SMEs or small companies you’ve essentially worked for companies most people have not heard of. Possibly, the only people who asked it where people who worked at a Global brand!
Consultants have a set introduction. You don’t even have to ask it, it just sort of flows naturally.
Typically, when you meet some consultants (and only some) for the first time you will receive a barrage of global brands they’ve worked for and the high flying things they’ve done. You don’t know them at all, but you’ll get there name and then, before anything else, you’ll know the global brands they’ve ‘touched’. The urge to do this is in direct, inverse proportion to what they are assigned to do on the project they are working on. There is nothing worse than the first 30 minutes speaking to a consultant who believes his current task is below his abilities.
There is a reason for this, it comes from finding yourself in high-powered situations in which you have to establish your credibility..fast. I also realise I could learn something from it as I probably don’t beat my chest enough. At the same time, it is about context, and sometimes it just sounds very..desperate, especially when it isn’t asked for and the conversation isn’t one in which the sell is required. I think my argument is, when not used appropriately, it has the opposite effect and diminishes engagement rather than enhancing it.
The Project Life
There is certainly some advantages in working purely within the ‘life’ of projects. This is especially true when the project is the primary structure as you’re not part of the ‘containing’ organisation. Well, the good ones anyway, and both of them qualify, even if the second did get quite stressful. You meet new people. Your network grows. The challenge is always radically different or different enough. It’s a set time scale. Then you get to do it all again. It provides a focus.
It is liberating being free of the business as usual aspect of a typical job. I’ve been lucky in that the majority of my roles have not been ‘death by business as usual’, but a project environment frees you from it completely. In turn, you do lose the reward that comes with transforming an organisation over an extended period of time.
They always have a strange adrenalin rush. You’re working away so there tends to be substantially less pressure on working long hours for periods. Let’s face it, from a certain point of view, you might as well be in the office?
When it works the team ethic is brilliant.
I realise it’s not always like this. Projects can be an exercise in malicious, Dilbert level insanity that actually verge on damaging your health. I’ve been on the odd one of those. Yet, when they work, the purpose and the feel of a team of highly skilled and knowledgeable individuals coming together to break the back of a complex challenge under tight timescales is…exciting.
What you lose is the ability to see through long-term organisational change and live and breath an organisation and see it transformed over the years.
The Consultancy Approach
There was a period when I was a bit confused about what I wanted out of my career. I became a bit obsessed with obtaining roles that involved managing large departments, primarily because that seemed to be the only high paying ones.
This proved frustrating because I don’t have a focused career history of managing ever more people. I also came to recognise I probably would not have enjoy managing a ridiculously large group of people.
I don’t mind collaborating with or managing high calibre teams or individuals that challenge me but the thought of having responsibility for a traditional, very large department with all the HR issues that may involve is not something I’m 100% sure I’d enjoy. I’ve always had roles that were consultancy focused, if I was Head of IT the role largely took the shape of being a consultant just with a set client base. If I was working in commercial software I was a consultant around a product or products. In all cases a consultant sitting between the business, technology and processes to embed change so the organisation can do new, different and innovative things.
It’s no surprise I enjoyed being a consultant. It has the perfect mix of theory, practice and actual implementation and rolling your sleeves up, etc. It is a role that nicely mixes how something should be done, with what is going to be done and then actually doing it. It’s creative, design and change focused with healthy doses of business analysis, project management and stakeholder management. It also involves dealing with people, which is always a good thing.
There is also a saying that ‘you are the average of the 5 the people you spend most time with’, and while I’d not take that literally there is a lot of truth in it generally. It’s at the core of what separates people from different social backgrounds, for example. It was also one reason the cohort theory of the MBA experience works. Working on a challenging project, with clever and dynamic individuals delivers the same thing. It can be a natural environment for raising one’s game in innumerable ways and being allowed to do so and that is good.
A consultancy-based approach works for me. I enjoyed working in an environment where it wasn’t so much specific, narrow skills that defined you but the ability to define, frame and solve a problem because you can bring a wide set of skills to the problem.
Bring It On…Again
Hard to say, I’m in a permanent role at the moment that I’m enjoying immensely and I have no intention of moving on from any time soon. I’m also aware my contract consultancy experience was very much linked to the core, high performing team I did the two projects with. The typical contracting life of doing 3–6 month contracts in different organisations with different people isn’t for me.
In the right circumstances I probably would. As I’ve indicated, working within the framework of a project is exciting, working in different organisations makes life more interesting, the consultant approach works for the way I approach work. I’m also lucky in that working away isn’t that bad as I’m comfortable with my own thoughts and we don’t have children.
It provides opportunities to be challenged and be rewarded for it.
