A Year in the Life
By Garry Greenhalgh
Nearly a never-ending story.
It was New Year 2001 and with family over from the US I had settled in to a comfortable time of surfing and b-b-q’s when Brent Couper called and asked if I could help out by doing a brief assignment across the Tasman Sea for a client. “They have some problems getting a new continuous processing machine up to design performance and have asked us to help, can you go, won’t take more than two weeks.” said Brent. I said yes and four months later I was still doing the early Monday flight to Auckland, the three hour drive to the site and returning on Friday night to Sydney. The original problem was sorted out in a few weeks but the COO asked me to stay on. “Just go and do whatever it is you do and see what you find, perhaps there are other issues you can help us with. We need to reduce costs.” he said. Well, working with the client we did find some costs and for each of four more years I would spend three months or so assisting the management identify new opportunities to lift performance. All up over the reduction was over $120 million.
The interview.
The phone rang. It was from Brent Couper, again, to let me know that a client of his had moved on to work for a European food company and had convinced them to try Quest’s Strategy into ActionTM. I would be contacted by their Asia Pacific Regional Director for them to determine my suitability to work for them. Later that day the call came. I was to meet the Regional Director and his Finance Director in Jakarta in two days time for an ‘interview’. If I was successful I would be invited to assist them with their strategy at the corporate level, in Europe, then with individual countries in Asia. The interview started at 2pm. By 7pm it was dark and they decided I was good enough. This was followed by a fascinating series of strategy sessions, beginning in Europe, then Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. That was back in 2002 and we have been working with this client since then, not only with strategy, but also including an intensely interesting exercise to help develop new product platforms.
Consulting gets hot.
It is 5am and time for a run. You have to run at that time because by 6:30am it is just too hot. By mid-morning it is 40 degrees and around noon it hits 50 degrees. A cool evening stroll still means a sweaty 38 degrees. Welcome to Saudi Arabia in summer. Our client is a fast growing regional food and drinks company. They are going very well but want to do even better to meet growth targets. We have been working with them for a while now helping them focus and deploy their strategy. Now they want their biggest plant to move forward. Our job is to help them sort out the priorities, get the operating managers heavily involved and reinforce the emphasis on achieving real results through a clarity exercise. Ultimately this meant assisting managers re-write position descriptions in results oriented terms and setting up a straightforward performance management system. We have now been invited back to assist implement a preventive maintenance program and reduce line changeover times.
Always on duty.
I casually mention to a client who has moved to Budapest I will soon be there with some of my family for a short holiday. He says it would be good to catch up. A few weeks later at the front of my hotel I tell my son I will be no more than an hour. But my client wants to show me a few particularly beautiful buildings in the city and with the help of a poorly working satellite navigation system we manage to get lost. No matter, coffee appears, our discussions are useful and we agree to work together again to develop the business strategy for the next three years. I am considerably more than the promised one hour. Fortunately the family decides to be understanding.
The beauty and excitement of consulting stems from the clients you work with, the nature of the work we do and the relationships you develop with colleagues. It is extraordinarily interesting and a never-ending process of learning. In nearly twenty years of consulting I have never failed to learn something significant from either the client, the assignment itself or my colleagues. I don’t consider it work. It’s simply another interesting day.