Yes, this is me, working. As you can tell from my expression, I was leaving a meeting offering grudging respect to a key, strategic supplier for the deal we'd just struck. But not so grudging that you can't discern a smug awareness that we'd come out on top... despite the supplier believing that he'd had a major coup. The fool.
OK. It's my bathroom mirror. But I'm about to go to work AND I've got a work shirt on. So that counts. Heck, what kind of saddo has a gallery of pictures of themselves at work anyway?
I don't quite have a portfolio career - but I have been around a bit. A litany of jobs in my student years that I'm rather proud of, not least a 6-month stint as a binman, followed by several years on the Natwest Bank Accelerated Management Programme. Hated working for Natwest, didn't realise quite how much so until after I resigned in a fit of pique over the misguided targeting of sales of entirely inappropriate financial products (later vindicated...). Finally managed to fall back into what was always my first love (and academic pursuit), Information Technology. I'm from that bizarre decade of middle-class English teenagers who grew up with the very earliest home computers and went on to forge a career out of geekness and the good fortune to have parents who could afford to support it.
So... spent a number of years doing analysis/coding/managing around 3D-CAD systems in the process plant industry for a US household name (not in a good way), where I met some really, really clever people, travelled the globe and learnt oodles. Moved to managing the teams that developed and deployed systems for document and information management, procurement and project management. Got myself a rare place on the company Future Leaders Programme, only to be told they hadn't quite worked out how to develop 'Leaders' in the IT realm. Then became thoroughly disillusioned with a US Management that didn't really understand the UK, found myself representing a UK workforce in the face of some drastic T&Cs destruction, did a pretty good job on it and left as soon as I could. Ended up in a much more comfortable and fulfilling place, working for a UK company that actually makes things - or designs them, anyway - that we can be proud of (unlike eg any bank that I care to think of). Another collection of extraordinarily clever people as well.
Atkins employs around 18,000 people globally. I had perhaps the longest job title in the corporate IS function: Product Director, Communication and Networking, IT Support Services - but at the beginning of 2013 I was seconded into the Group Business Transformation function, working for the Group BT Director. Atkins saw its strategic future in big, complex, multi-disciplinary, multi-geography design projects - and to execute successfully, it need to become outstanding at the management of design information, documents and process across a complex landscape of locations and contracts. Since this was much what I was doing in the Oil and Gas industry, I seemed a natural candidate for secondment.
Latterly, after some somewhat chaotic internal re-organisation, I found myself without a clear role. Already close to Group strategy and working part-time to head Business Change for the IT function, I took on the not inconsiderable task of facilitating the groups new Deliver Work strategy, designing and running workshops for Group CEOs and MDs to collect around an agreed approach to design execution and delivery. I subsequently chaired the same collection of senior leaders in a steering group that refined the approach over the following twelve months.
A further re-org, on the introduction of a new Group CIO, found me Product-Managing various aspects of digital product design, as the IT function moved to embrace the impact of cloud, analytics and a ballooning horizon of opportunities associated with Big Data. Finding some frustration in the adoption of 'fast-fail' approaches in an organisation with huge and granular P&L focus and constant requirement for business cases, I've decided to take some time out. Atkins and I mutually agreed to go separate ways at the beginning of 2018. It's a good time to get some focus on my girls as they approach GCSEs and complete the refurb of the house we moved into in late 2014 - plenty of this to read about on timmytime. I'm in no hurry to return to the digital world - I'd like to close out some personal projects before I do - but am finding it hard to say no to some of the more interesting contacts I've had. Eventually I'm sure I'll have had enough of house-husbandry and be back at the digital coalface... it's in my genes...
OK. It's my bathroom mirror. But I'm about to go to work AND I've got a work shirt on. So that counts. Heck, what kind of saddo has a gallery of pictures of themselves at work anyway?
I don't quite have a portfolio career - but I have been around a bit. A litany of jobs in my student years that I'm rather proud of, not least a 6-month stint as a binman, followed by several years on the Natwest Bank Accelerated Management Programme. Hated working for Natwest, didn't realise quite how much so until after I resigned in a fit of pique over the misguided targeting of sales of entirely inappropriate financial products (later vindicated...). Finally managed to fall back into what was always my first love (and academic pursuit), Information Technology. I'm from that bizarre decade of middle-class English teenagers who grew up with the very earliest home computers and went on to forge a career out of geekness and the good fortune to have parents who could afford to support it.
So... spent a number of years doing analysis/coding/managing around 3D-CAD systems in the process plant industry for a US household name (not in a good way), where I met some really, really clever people, travelled the globe and learnt oodles. Moved to managing the teams that developed and deployed systems for document and information management, procurement and project management. Got myself a rare place on the company Future Leaders Programme, only to be told they hadn't quite worked out how to develop 'Leaders' in the IT realm. Then became thoroughly disillusioned with a US Management that didn't really understand the UK, found myself representing a UK workforce in the face of some drastic T&Cs destruction, did a pretty good job on it and left as soon as I could. Ended up in a much more comfortable and fulfilling place, working for a UK company that actually makes things - or designs them, anyway - that we can be proud of (unlike eg any bank that I care to think of). Another collection of extraordinarily clever people as well.
Atkins employs around 18,000 people globally. I had perhaps the longest job title in the corporate IS function: Product Director, Communication and Networking, IT Support Services - but at the beginning of 2013 I was seconded into the Group Business Transformation function, working for the Group BT Director. Atkins saw its strategic future in big, complex, multi-disciplinary, multi-geography design projects - and to execute successfully, it need to become outstanding at the management of design information, documents and process across a complex landscape of locations and contracts. Since this was much what I was doing in the Oil and Gas industry, I seemed a natural candidate for secondment.
Latterly, after some somewhat chaotic internal re-organisation, I found myself without a clear role. Already close to Group strategy and working part-time to head Business Change for the IT function, I took on the not inconsiderable task of facilitating the groups new Deliver Work strategy, designing and running workshops for Group CEOs and MDs to collect around an agreed approach to design execution and delivery. I subsequently chaired the same collection of senior leaders in a steering group that refined the approach over the following twelve months.
A further re-org, on the introduction of a new Group CIO, found me Product-Managing various aspects of digital product design, as the IT function moved to embrace the impact of cloud, analytics and a ballooning horizon of opportunities associated with Big Data. Finding some frustration in the adoption of 'fast-fail' approaches in an organisation with huge and granular P&L focus and constant requirement for business cases, I've decided to take some time out. Atkins and I mutually agreed to go separate ways at the beginning of 2018. It's a good time to get some focus on my girls as they approach GCSEs and complete the refurb of the house we moved into in late 2014 - plenty of this to read about on timmytime. I'm in no hurry to return to the digital world - I'd like to close out some personal projects before I do - but am finding it hard to say no to some of the more interesting contacts I've had. Eventually I'm sure I'll have had enough of house-husbandry and be back at the digital coalface... it's in my genes...
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