IN conSULTING!

It was the December of 2007 when I landed into planet Pandora, the Big O and coming from an acquainted background, it didn’t took me much time to connect to my new Avatar – The Consultant!  

I was an “Associate” then and it took more than an year for my company to knight me as one of their “Staff Consultant” (Though it sounds embarrassing than “Associate”, guess the company’s intention behind this awkward designation was to convey the message of having adopted me as one of them!)

And even before I could adjust the back rest of the chair or get my own coffee mug, I was exiled to the far end of the habitat earth to fix a shattered architecture, the kind of environment I had never ever seen before.  There were more issues than the product had features, more complexity than it promised to reduce once implemented. Thankfully, after two months of lots of trials and even more of errors, I somehow sailed through the ordeal along with 8000Kms across Indian Ocean. Guess that’s why Vasco Da Gama called it “Kaap Die Goeie Hoop” or the “Cape of Good Hope”.

Sorry if I sounded little off the topic above and coming back to consulting;  which Ironically is tough as there is not much of “coming back” involved in the profession, and even tougher to be speaking “on the topic” for long!

Still haven’t got my coffee mug, this time I was called “urgently” from my vacation for yet another “critical” assignment in Mumbai (Don’t be amused by the language, I am sure all managers use these important sounding words even while making love to their wives!). Fortunately, this time the manager decided to “brief” us before our mission (And I must tell you, it’s a rare occurrence in here). In the next 8.5 minutes, we had our orders clear from the captain… To infiltrate enemy’s camp, get the intel on the deployment our patrolling party had done, and highlight the weak zones in the perimeter. (In short, prepare an audit report on the work Big O had done before and recommend performance improvements!)


And for the coming week, we did just that; by-hearting our boss’s sentiments. Our report was crisp, our report was tough, and worst, our report pointed back to us! This was when my boss got over his emotions and wiped off all the measured pain-points in the report and left the generic “English” in it for us to explain to the customer, and I learned my 2^nd lesson in consulting!

Since then, my odyssey has taken me to vivid places, projects and accounts. And as per Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it was impossible to map my project with location and my skill set at the same time. So whether it be the ‘JTA crash’ in Gurgaon, or the ‘JMS hang’ in Chennai, my ears have become oblivious to the helpless cries of people who pay for my expenses.

Not sure if this is what is called to be IN ‘con’ SULTING …