The consulting gig (pt 1)

Finally in all my busy-ness I have time do post a blog. (The dev server is being restarted, :P). Consulting has been what I expected it to be - hard and challenging, lots of opportunity for growth, and being scared as hell doing it. As some of you may know already on my 2nd day I was responsible for developing a training course for a version of our famous 'C' software I haven't even touched - and at that an advanced course. I started off thinking it was a doable challenge to 'prove' myself in the new role, however after a few days I quickly realised I didn't know much at all, upon which i quickly 'managed' the expectation and told the powers that be i simply could not do it nor be expected to, given that in running the course I would be in a situation of the 'blind leading the blind' - which would be a detriment to our company rep. To my surprise the upper-level powers were really understanding and concurred with my thoughts (phew!). Luckily for me the client had not signed the engagement anyway and so the plug was pulled on the dates of which I was to run the course (bigger phew!). The lesson I learnt - if you think that sh*t will start to hit the fan you'd better flag it as soon as you know, because if you don't and the fan ends up getting pelted with sh*t, you've got all the blame to take and no negotiating power to fall back on [Knowing a mentor who happened to be an executive coach whilst I was going through this was a big help :)].....most of you may think "that's easy everyone knows that's what you should do" - however when you're going through it and you've got pressure from all fronts, it's easier said than done.

Since then I've been doing more 'manageable' projects, which are of course still challenging me. So far so good since i'm not stressing out. Next time you hear from me i might be working in Mumbai - some action happening there for our team. Now THAT will be a story.
Bye for now.