Getting sorted

1/9/2015

I'm quite blown away by the many lovely responses I got to my farewell emails from all over the world. Unbelievable! Thanks to all of you!

Ran some errands in the city in the late morning and enjoyed a fantastic coffee at StandingRoom Only (SRO). The guys at SRO have been my favorite place to get a cuppa on the way from (at times horrible) meetings (aka beatings) from the demanding consultants on the last projects back to our office. Unbelievable how a good cup of coffee, a bit of sunshine and a short walk can reset your mood after some verbal abuse.

Caught up with Rache afterwards, one of the supervisors of my legendary site team of my last project, and we spent several hours having a lovely, uninterrupted conversation. What a treat such a conversation is, no mobile phones, no intruders, and both persons fully focused on the present moment, taking tangents in all directions. Rache has been looking after everybody extremely well on site and given support to many people who were having a hard time in the Pilbara – and that was often way outside the normal working hours and her normal day job. People like her, while often overlooked and in the background, are essential to make a site of up to 100 people work.

I might have mentioned it before but I'm happy to repeat myself: I had such an amazing team on the last project site. They were very different individuals but generally pulling in the same direction, and pulling very hard and strong. Together, we've made the near impossible possible. Kudos to all of them, and all the support that I could muster from the office in Perth and Leoben to get us through this mission.

Been musing about it with Rache today, I think what got me into project management were the fantastic experiences I made at MCI during my studies with the people I teamed up there. Especially the team consisting of Simon, Werner, Herbert and me was always destined for greatness. Why? Because we were all fully involved, responsible and passionate about what we were doing and had complimentary skill sets.

What I found out at work though (managing far bigger, multicultural xx million dollar projects) was that not every project team is a team and not every environment is conducive to get the best possible performance out of a team. On the contrary, many obstacles were placed in our paths due to different factors (corporate structures, shared resources, lack of decision power, politics, and many others) which could not always be overcome or circumnavigated as well as I would have liked it. Steep learning curve though!

Tomorrow I'll be heading over to Brisbane for a few days, and will catch up with a few people there. Happy days!

Some photos from the iPhone from the last week:

Somebody else discovered the same beach that I have on that big canvas print!

That looks like hard work

Interesting marketing

The generous Squire - the watering hole that we visited last week, with Alex, Harry and Martin. I remember having had many a good drinks there, when I still lived in East Perth (usually followed by a visit to Tiger Lil's

The characteristic Australian thong's tan

Alex's race bike with the leathers that look asleep on the bike