Friday, July 11, 2003

Follow the Money, continued.........

Except there was one small thing: I could not get a job doing this kind of work to save my life. I was 28 but I looked 21, and I had no work experience outside of the mental health profession (nonetheless, some of my early clients prepared me very well for later ones--see note below). However, I could get corporate work doing that which I had done in my many moments of anxiety/boredom: playing with numbers. I was hired as "consumer research manager" in a large bank, and given my generally high level of anxiety/boredom, I was pretty good at it. Within three years I was a division head, managing the whole market research function and calculating away with reckless abandon. I still wanted to do organizational consulting, but in the mean time rather enjoyed crunching numbers.

Fast forward to 1994: I finally do get a job at a firm where the focus is on organizational consulting......And discover, in doing the work, that ignoring the numbers in a business is a bit like trying to help a family have better relationships while ignoring the economic engine upon which they depend. How silly.

No comments: