- Posted by jbehrendt on October 1, 2009
Even it it takes longer in Turkey than in the cold countries of Northern Europe, the summer is slowly fading away. Schools and universities have started already in September, people are back from their summer houses, and the summer venues of the famous Istanbul bars and restaurants at the Bosphorus are slowly closing down. Last week the famous "Seker Bayram", freely translated "sugar party" at the end of the muslim fasting period (in Turkish ramazan), was celebrated for 3 days. We used the time to escape to our quiet and beautiful summer spot in Datca, in the south of Turkey, close to Marmaris, and opposite of the Greek island of Rhodos. I planned to work there heavily, since a lot of project and activities is scheduled for October and November - but the weather was so nice, it would have been a crime to waste the last possible days at the beach (water: 23 degrees!), or at night on the terrace (24 degrees), for work. That is probably one of the best parts of being a management consultant - you are your own boss, you decide where and when (nd sometimes, in which dress) to work, and you can use opportunities not available for people being employed.
This, in turn, creates directly one of the main problems you are facing as an independent consultant: All work has to be done in time, your customer is king, and if you have several projects and other obligations at the same time, nobody cares how you handle these tasks simultaneously, and how you manage to keep all relevant deadlines. So sometimes you can escape the daily work and have a nice break (provided you have learned in time to free your mind from business issues, which is, in my opinion, a must), but sometimes you reduce sleep to 3 hours a night and run around like a chicken chased by a fox.
So, after having enjoyed holidays, the last days were rather some of these chicken days. Monday the full day was spent with a customer in Turkey, running 4 meetings from morning to evening - but at 16.00 I had to leave, since at 17.50, around 20 hours after my arrival from the South of Turkey at the airport, a plane for Germany was leaving. Arriving there late in the evening (and having worked on my laptop all the time in the planes, instead of reading newspapers and eating), the next day was full of meetings for a project currently run in Germany. However, one day is enough, so Tuesday night, around midnight, I was back in Istanbul.
Unfortunately, being back at night does not protect you from work obligations. Next morning at 9.00 a business breakfast with a customer was scheduled at Ritz Carlton, for which difficult issues needed to be prepared, and for which two of my partners already had a meeting - and a dinner - with them at Tuesday when I was in Germany. Consequently, after arriving at home, I was on the phone for nearly two hours with them - 2.00 AM in the morning is always a nice time to discuss issues in detail. The good part is that, afterwards, the only remaining urgent work was checking and answering the last 50 mails that had come in, so at 3.00 AM I finally went happy to rest.
Enters Wednesday, after a very short break. 9.00 the business breakfast took place, 11.30 I met my account manager to visit an association with which we are planning to give a seminar on "Restructuring for Strategic Growth", at 13.30 (goodbye lunch) I had an emergency meeting with some project team members in the office, about a project that was in trouble, and afterwards at 15.00 we had extensive meetings to review the status of, and prepare the final report for a restructuring project we are currently running. Fortunately, this was finished already at 20.30, so after arriving at home, I had five quiet minutes with my 4-year old daughter at home before she felt asleep. I would have liked to do the same, but no way - again, work until 2.00 went on.
It is not always like that, but sometimes it can be, and, being a management consultant, you should not only accept but even - to a certain degree - love it. I worked a long time in academics, but exactly this part was missing - the phone was quiet, no meetings, just thinking, writing, reading, thinking, writing, etc., in the end producing something a very small number of people was really interested in, and an even smaller number understanding it. In management consulting, if you are lucky, you can get the best of both worlds - business challenges, a busy and high-profile lifestyle, "meaningful work" in terms of people being interested in the outcome, and on the other hand quiet days for research, and for developing solutions that add value for your customers and satisfy your intellectual desires. However, it is very much possible that you do not achieve this at all, and that you find yourself in a position worse than what you had before when working as an employee, or being an academic. In the next weeks, I will try to share my ideas and experience about this with you so that you avoid mistakes I have made. Keep on reading.
