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Planned Reaction

Nicholas Ashford, 23, Joined in March ’08

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley”
Robert Burns, To a Mouse, 1785

Three months in with Capgemini and I became Stream Lead for my internal stream - Knowledge Management – which was great.

Having spent the previous quarter working within the stream, I had a clear idea of what we want to achieve this quarter and how we need do it so I was confident that the stream would run smoothly and only require well-thought tweaking and minor adjustments rather than a full all-hands-to-the pumps restructuring. As back up, I had set out both plans and a timeline of how it was all going to run, from kick-off to hand-over. So far so good.Of course, life doesn’t work like that! The stream kicked off when many of my team and I were on leave, so by the time we were all back, we were already going to be behind both schedule and reporting. This problem was compounded when, out of the blue I lost my experienced Focus Area Lead for and another member in the same area. The Knowledge Implementation focus area quickly went from 3 people to 1 new person and no lead or experience.

So how did I handle with the crisis-out-of-nowhere? In two ways:

First: planning; before I went away I sat down with the calendar and looked at all my upcoming commitments and planned for. Obvious - but it is very easy to overlook this when you are working hard to make sure that all your external client work is in good shape whilst you are away and contingencies are in place. All your information needs to be in order so anyone can take it on whilst you are away and you need to call in the favours and make sure that people are prepared to cover for you. Teamwork teaches you to share the in the misery of the tough times as well as the glory of the good times. You may be away, but it is still your responsibility and you are accountable upon your return.

Second, in a job as varied and dynamic as consultancy, you have to be ready for anything and ready to respond – you resources could be doubled or halved by the client’s needs tomorrow, and it is how you respond to that change that counts. Be active, not passive – what step can I take to resolve this? Fix it now rather than later, before it gets too big.

You may have the best plans and processes in place, but at some point they will “gang a-gley” and we help demonstrate our worth as consultants in how we respond in those situations.