While there are no typical days, I have decided to describe two different days to capture the experiences of both a client centric and office centric day.
The days all start the same when the alarm goes off at 5:15 am and I get up and begin to start the day. After the normal personal routines are complete I make a pot of coffee, grab the phone to see if anything important has come in while I was sleeping, take the dog out, get the paper, feed the dog and settle down for 30 minutes to read the paper and review the events of the previous day. If there is something pressing on the e-mail front I will respond before heading in to work. While this routine varies a little when traveling, it is usually only missing the dog…
Upon arriving in the office, I check the calendar and prepare for the day’s events.
At 8:30 am, I have a one hour meeting to discuss the Asset Management processes that are currently being developed internally within netlogx, discussing the possible alternatives and comparing against business requirements.
After that meeting, there is a small one-hour discussion regarding the new laptop encryption process that we are investigating. We run the system through a few scenarios that show how the system should work. That meeting ends when I receive an e-mail asking me to review the documentation and comment on a potential response in a potential client Request For Proposal; this process takes about 90 minutes as it requires some investigation and Googling to find additional information.
At 12:00 pm, there is a meeting to discuss data provided by a client to be presented at the upcoming client presentation (this was originally scheduled for 10:30 am). This meeting lasts until 1:00 pm. We have a 1:00 pm conference call with the client as a touch point to make sure that everything is prepared for the upcoming meeting. This meeting takes just about an hour.
The next three hours are scheduled to complete the tasks defined for the client meetings. Meeting participants included Project Managers, Principal Consultants and Project Coordinators all being assigned tasks to complete prior to the Client Presentation. By the time we are finished it is well after 5:00 pm and everyone heads home. Once the commute is complete there will be one or two more checks of e-mail to make sure that no one has identified any emergent issues.
A Non Office Day…
The evening before, after having traveled 4 hours to Michigan and getting checked into the hotel, I grab some dinner before reviewing the calendar items for the following day.
The day starts as any other day, just no dog to walk. We are scheduled to provide facilitation services for a large group for the State of Michigan. The presentation materials have all been worked out so we are ready to go. We arrive an hour early at the facility where we host the group (8:00 am) to make sure that everything is set up and ready to go. We pay attention to all details; Pens, Sign-in Sheets, Name Placards, Agendas and Slide prints. The participants start arriving about 15 minutes before the scheduled start time and we attempt to greet everyone as they enter.
At 9:00 am we get started by introducing ourselves to the group and kick it off. There are about 45 participants in this group and the two facilitators (Melanie and myself) are ready to lead them through the defined process. This process takes about three hours and we need to tag team throughout the process to keep everything moving. It is a little bit of a challenge because of the diverse personalities in the room, but that’s what they pay us for. Being mindful of everyone’s time, we move the meeting along so we can end promptly at 12:00 pm. After the meeting, there is a 30 minute debrief on how the process worked.
After the debriefing, we pack up and Tina, the Coordinator on the BPR project, and I head to the next meeting. When we travel to this particular client, we try to schedule meetings together, if possible, to reduce travel time. We arrive at the state building downtown at about 1:20 for a 1:30 pm meeting. This meeting is to do a Business Process Review of the Provider Relations process for the State of Michigan. We spend about two and ½ hours facilitating, reviewing and documenting the process with the client. When the meeting is over, we pack up our stuff and head back to Indiana. Luckily, Tina and I rode together and we are able to review and document during the four-plus hour drive back. We get back home around 9:00 pm and spend just a few minutes reviewing e-mail that came in while we are traveling. Hopefully, there shouldn’t be much as we travel with a Mobile hotspot and have internet connectivity all the way back. At this point, it is time to decompress, get some sleep and get ready for the alarm at 5:15 am.
Quote: The constant variety is the most interesting part of my job – Tabitha Soren.
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