Florian Hollender | floho.com » consulting

Busy times, good times!

floho — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:34:08 +0000

Folks,

these weeks have been packed with exciting stuff.
On the first weekend of August I visited Tine in London (she did an internship with WFW). It was awesome! We loaded the two days with all the sightseeing you can imagine, and then some – but all in a relaxed fashion, so it stayed fun. If I could convert them RAW pics on my work machine I would have uploaded them all ages ago… but there were some JPGs, so I can give you a short preview already…. ahhh, no. Uploader doesn’t work probably here. I’ll check that later in the hotel and update the post if possible.

On the work side of life, my project in Zurich is in its final week, and we close it with a big bang – a two day workshop with almost 100 people involved in Lucerne. We spent over a month in preparation, so I am really looking forward to it. With lots of fun comes a lot of work, too – so I’ll spend the Saturday on location to help finish up the documentation and will get back to Hamburg on Sunday, just in time to pack new clothes and get ready for the next week. What’s next? Well, nothing certain yet, but interesting projects on the horizon.

Gotta run, catch you later!

On the way to world fame

floho — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:25:39 +0000

well, not really. Still, I am a little proud to say that yours truly and his suitcase can be found in the current edition of ZEIT Campus, on page 52 and 53. If you always wanted to find out what a consultant takes on a regular week – or if you just want to see me in a suit – this is your chance!

Apart from that, I am well under with work in the last weeks, and it seems to be getting more, not less. I am currently located in Zurich during the week, so if any one of you happens to be there or in the area, give me a shout!

Short and fun week

floho — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:04:23 +0000

This week is really consultant-life at its best. I was in Hamburg on Monday, Berlin on Tuesday, today I am in Aachen and Cologne, and tonight I’ll be back in Hamburg. This means two flights, many short and longer train trips, sprinkle a few taxi’s and two hotels inbetween, and voilÃ¡ – there we are.
Of course, there is still work that needs to be done in between, let’s not forget about that
Tomorrow is public holiday, and on Friday I take a day off, so I am looking forward towards four wonderful days of doing whatever crosses my mind (and Tine’s, of course!). But the day is not over yet… gonna go get more coffee.
Cheers!

Thanks for all the flowers! And… introducing KillerConsultant.com

floho — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:53:50 +0000

Yesterday was my birthday, and I was absolutely flattered by all the congratulations I got – via phone, email, SMS, on Facebook, StudiVZ, even on blogs (by schloon and Fran). Thank you everybody! Of course, I was also happy about the congrats that rolled in today. It all really means a lot to me – good to see that even though the new job really consumes me (at least during the week), you still have not forgotten about me!

The last weeks have been busy – I am on a new project at the same client that will last until April 4th approximately, and of course I’ll tell you where I am heading to afterwards (once I know it myself ;-> ). Besides work and enjoying the spare time, I also set up a new website lately. It is called KillerConsultant.com. It does not have to do anything with the Mafia – that name is explained in the slogan: “Doing a great job while having fun would be killer, right?” (so, in this case, “killer” means “great”). KillerConsultant is a site from a consultant (me, obviously) for consultants… because there is a lot of career-related info on consulting out there, some blogs for fun, playing with the clichees of the industry, but I could not really find a website that is centered around the day-to-day life of consultants. So I made one. If you are interested, please feel free to head over there and let me know how you like it!

Cheers
Florian

(who is totally ripped of by the hotel right now, because they changed the internet connection, and now one hour costs three euros… hilarious. Not.)

Seems Capgemini really is THE company for me right now

floho — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:51:17 +0000

Googling for “young consultants blog” – because I wanted to see if there are people starting up in the profession like me who are blogging – the first entry that pops up: www.capgemini.com. How cool is that?! And, besides, the CTO blog led by Andy Mulholland, our global CTO, is quite a good read. He goes into technology, naturally, not management consulting skills, but his view points are very interesting, and for a corporate blog it is really well done.

Great day. Not.

floho — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:06:03 +0000

While you were sleeping, I tried to remember all the flights I have taken since 2004: My flight stats. I am still missing a LOT of countries… looks like there is still a lot of traveling to be done! (Yes, this is geeky. Go away.)

When it comes to coincidences, luck, karma, whatever your liking: Dopplr.com can help. Last week I already met up with an old classmate because he noticed I was staying a mere 20 minutes from his hometown! Sign up and share your trips with me, so that we do not miss each other.

As you have guessed from my not-blogging the last days, it has been busy. Office Friday does not happen this week unfortunately, though I have been in the Hamburg office last week, even if only for 10 minutes to get me an access card. That almost counts as office Friday in my book.

Today is not the greatest – weather is shite, team leader kindly asked me to do the taxi at 7:30am (leaving the hotel, not waking up, you got that right), so breakfast was nil. Of course I forgot the parking lot-card in the hotel room and had to sweet talk my way out of the parking (with my boss and his boss in the car). To top things off I threw away some notes yesterday (I had worked in all changes that were on them for me)… the notes that my boss now asked me to give him back because there was something he needed on one of the pages. Tough luck. I think I will just pull this day through and look forward to getting back to the hotel, hoping that I do not make any more stupid mistakes today (and that I find an ATM so I can buy some food).

Arrived in the outback

floho — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:31:15 +0000

Now this is the real deal, I guess.
So I took the travel arrangement I told you about at length… in Frankfurt I got a cute car, a Seat, which does sound like a tractor, but it goes quite well. It even has a little Aux-in plug for the iPod, definitely a plus. The hotel is bad. Not really bad, but I got something ten times better for almost the same money in Berlin. The bathroom is not really clean. The curtains are dirty. The floors are dirty. The WiFi does not work. Oh well, I was spoiled in Berlin. Next week: Different hotel.

Workshop with the customer was great fun. It was like in real life! Really, it felt very different from what I experienced with only internal staff. Different topics (obviously), different meeting behaviour. I could not add much value today, as I got to know the topic on the fly, but I learnt a lot. Tomorrow, I hope, I will get some work assigned – not knowing what I will spend my time with over the next month really makes me anxious. Until then, I try to figure out what to do with my free time – come on, it is not 8pm and my colleagues are already in the hotel. Well, they are still working there. And well, it is a great hotel…. you feel my envy? I’ll search for an Aldi now and get stocked on diet coke.

Now that is a plan!

leaving the Institute – new logistical challenges

floho — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:11:34 +0000

Things have moved faster than I anticipated them:
I will be leaving the Institute one week earlier than planned, as the opportunity arose to join a project in its beginning. So from next week on, I won’t be working in Berlin anymore, rather in the greater Frankfurt (Main) area. Greater does mean that I do not simply hop on an airplane and go to Frankfurt, but I then have a one hour trip to the hotel in a rental car…. finishing with another thirty minute commute to the client site from the hotel. In other words: Logistics have just become more challenging.

To start it off, I’ll be attending a client workshop (my first client workshop! Yippieh!) on Monday. Monday morning 8:30. Which means taking the flight on Sunday evening. Which sucks. Fortunately, this is not a regular timeslot for workshops, so that I should be able to leave Monday morning most of the time.

So I will leave the Institute, which makes me a bit sad, I have to admit – because the people here are great, and the general mood is so upbeat, although everybody is working their a** off – I mean, come on, it is past 3am and I am still in the office). Before that, of course, the current assignment has to be completed (this is why I am still awake). Back to work.

This week will be on fire

floho — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:20:43 +0000

Wow, this week I’ll be burning. Instead of the usual two week assignment I now got a job for just five days, and it is a presentation that a VP will give to the CEO of a big company. I better not screw this up.

Have you read some of the free stuff from Tom Peters yet? Did you look into Lawrence Lessig’s book? Boy, it is almost Tuesday. Time to get moving!
Seriously. Look at Fran – she is going for it. There’s energy in the air. TIME TO GET MOVING!

Being full of ideas

floho — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:21:26 +0000

This weekend has been great, I hope you had a great one, too.

From the realms of our awesome living room (honestly, I so love our new apartment!), I “found” Tom Peters, Author, Trainer, “Management-Thinker”. The website is full of content – not just stuff, content! – and he is giving away a lot of things for free, amongst that: His complete Powerpoint-Decks and many PDFs, almost small books/essays. Right now I am diving in this stream of new information, adding books to my amazon wishlist and thinking of ways to integrate those ideas into my daily work. For example: How can I make the Institute (the place inside Capgemini I am working for during my first three months) a PSF – a professional service firm – that makes its customers go “wow”? I am currently working on a new internal print ad, so I might be able to integrate the new idea right now. Read this (also free, also from Tom Peters) for an idea of what he means with PSF. Don’t be put off by the writing style – it is very much like listening to a very energetic speaker, rather than reading a book. But the content, as I said, CONTENT, the flood of ideas, is worth a second look/read. Possibly a third.

I am gonna iron some shirts, then go for a quick weekly review, and then all is set for another great week.