That was the week that was....

Yes, yes I know it was last week but I wanted to get some pictures (below) of the view from the 41^st floor.

So off I went on Monday all suited and booted (well, shiny shoes) and headed up to William Street to start my new role as a Management Consultant. It is really strange typing the job title as I don’t see myself as a consultant as yet but I suppose in time.....1^st thing to tell you about ...the lift, oh my god the lift. Now I know a lot of you will have been in lifts before etc etc etc but getting in a lift that goes ground to floor 25 non-stop in a little over 10 seconds is something that I am not used to and having chosen a lift that was empty I went ground to 41^st in less than 30 seconds. So as lift door opens I take a deep breath and gulp, not because I’m nervous but because my ears needed to pop having just done the lift journey. So onward and inward...

Having booked in at reception I was told to take a seat and someone would be with me soon.....so I walk away from reception towards a window where there is a seat and am greeted by the most spectacular view.

Eventually I am joined by another newbie and we wait for our impending fate.

The first week flew by and was over in flash. Itinery as follows :

Day 1 –Start with two other people both consultants, one called Caroline and the other Peter who incidentally was late on his first day ! . We were met by a couple of existing consultants but given that it was over a week ago now I cannot for the life of me remember what they were called.

Following a whistle stop tour of the 41^st , 42^nd and 43^rd floors (I feel a nose bleed coming on). Floor 41 is where all the staff work apart from those consultants who are on site elsewhere obviously. Floor 42 is really just half a floor but it is where the staff “cafe” is located including a number of IKEA type red tables and trendy seats. There are huge built in units containing all manner of goodies including beer, wine and champagne but we were told that after 5pm on Friday’s is the only time for booze. The 43^rd floor is just one big room that is used as a meeting room with panoramas of the city to two sides.

One of the first things that hits you is that there is minimal clutter around and on the desks. Everything has a place and its place is typically behind a cupboard door that has a cunningly hidden handle on it. There are about 60 people in the office split between the various functions that you would expect to find such a finance, IT , HR etc etc.....there are however others that differentiate the business from others (more of that in a min).

So following the whistle stop tour we headed out into the city to grab a coffee (via the nose bleed lifts) at a trendy little cafe bar on Little Collins Street. The consultants got life stories from each of us before we headed back up to the 41^st floor (pass the Kleenex please).

And so down to business, for the remainder of the day we met with around 25 people from various areas who do various roles. The most interesting of these people were the account directors, the guys who will be sending me out on assignments. There are a number of different account directs covering various specialities such as government, finance, health, media, mining and defence sectors of the market place, I’m sure there are others but for the life of me I can’t remember. For each and every one of these people I met, I had to do a 30 second or so speech about who, where, why and what I was all about. The finance account directors in particular seemed very interested in what background I had, in fact one of them asked to speak to me about an assignment as soon as I had some time (blimey!)

That was pretty much me for the rest of the day, meeting various people and telling them my life story, before finishing at around 4:45pm

The only other thing to mention is that we got a cloth shopping bag type of thing which contained the obligatory leather folio a corporate cap and corporate water bottle.

Day 2 (Tuesday)–Induction Training. Other consultants joined us from various offices having flown in from Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra to start 3 days of induction. There is not a lot to say other than we did various management type of challenges and tests in an attempt to get us working together, the usual sort of thing. The biggest problem with the day was that due to sales conference scheduled for Friday we were doing the 3^rd day of induction on the 1^st day.....very confusing. I was just about to leave when the finance account director from yesterday pulled me to one side to discuss a problem down at ANZ Bank that he wanted me to look at.

Day 3 (Wednesday)–We were joined by yet more people (Technical consultants) to do what should have been the 1^st day of induction. Once again the usual type of thing such as branding, how to act as consultants, how identify opportunities when on assignments, and generally how an employee of SMS should present themselves.

Day 4 (Thursday)–Which was day 2 of induction but the last day of the course and the numbers reduced down to the consultants from Day 2. The whole thing is by now a bit of a blur having had such an intense 3 days it was hard to raise ourselves for more meet the people and how we work sessions.

Friday. – Off leash and ready for anything.......but with no assignment. So there I am sat on the “bench” waiting for an account director to come and ask me to head out into the field. In the meantime I have to update my CV on the central office system as that is what’s used to select and send me out to clients. I also have to update my personal development plan and my personal intranet page. The meeting with the account director from Tuesday had resulted in me arranging a further meeting with an existing consultant who is placed at ANZ Bank on Collins Street. So 3:30pm sharp and I’m in another coffee shop across the city discussing a problem at the bank......more on that in the next few days.

And that is pretty much the first week. I will update you all on the culture etc during the next few days, but as I have now managed to partially solve the problems with putting pictures on the blog I have some more pressing tasks to do ........

And I am not in the biggest building