Week 3

Week 3 has begun and I am still continuing to be impressed with the calibre of people that I am meeting on the account. This encourages me that the move is a good one and has enabled me to move my career in the direction I wanted. The account has some significant challenges in both the technology and customer spaces but then the latter is generally true no matter where you go with this type of work. Providing a service for a government department is always a complex mix of red tape, personalities and technical challenges.

I got paid this week as well – from my previous employer and from my new employer. That was a nice surprise.

The challenges that I face currently I see as building an organisation that will be able to support;

• The wind-down of the transformation programme and a move to “business as usual”.
• Tighter control over the estate and greater governance with an Enterprise view of the customer.
• Clearer and firmer client relationships.
• Moving into the Value-add areas of the business – BPM, EIM and Application spaces.
• The “WOW” factor

I think one of the other really key things that we need to achieve is getting the Architecture team to think more around the Value Proposition – very salesy I know, but essential to getting customer buy-in as well as account team buy-in. I think once we have that kind of a view then looking at the To-Be architecture will start to make sense as long as we don’t get technology focused.

Let’s see how this goes …

A New Chapter Begins …

Today I begin a new chapter in my life having moved from my previous company – a well known global IT Services provider to a competitor organisation. My offices are based in the North West of the UK close to the account that I will be working with – The UK Department of Work and Pensions. There are a number of advantages to this – now that my gardening leave is over – and one of these is that the office is a stone’s throw away from Blackpool Airport where I first started to learn to fly.

I’ve been here over an hour and I am impressed with the efficiency of the new company and the welcome that I have received. Despite having 81 emails in my Inbox already! I’m sure I will discover the cracks in the very near future but at the moment it is great to be back “in the saddle” so to speak.

The last three months has been a melee of feelings and situations. I have completely gutted my parents house and started putting it back together again. That was a traumatic experience and I found it quite challenging. It was a really destructive process in the first instance but now it feels like we are creating something again. The plasterers were in the house all weekend and have made a significant difference to the way that I feel about the property. I was stunned at what a difference that made to me. Now I’m back at work and can’t really monitor the workmen – I feel somewhat disconnected.

 Anyway … I plan to be back online much more now that I have started work again – it’s a good reflective process to jot down my thoughts. Initial reactions to my new employer are positive – which is a good start!