Hello I'm Back!
It's been a long time - but I'm back!
Hello everyone, firstly an apology if you've tuned in for some amazing SAP technical know-how. Not this blog! Today, I want to say a big "HELLO, I'm back" to all the friends in the SAP and online world. I've pretty much taken a 3 month break from being online - especially joining in with the SAP online world. I've left the company I used to work for and have started (today) with another company (Discovery Consulting - @DiscoveryConsul on Twitter). In the meantime I have spent the time with my family. It has been summer here in Australia and I've been the stay at home dad during the summer holidays. It has been awesome!
There are few thoughts I'd like to share from being away from the madness for a while.
Perspective:
What is really important? Having just spent the last few months 24/7 with my 4 year old daughter I'm pretty convinced what is really important! Project deadlines and multi-million dollar budgets are certainly very important, people being paid on time and correctly is very important - but for all this there are bigger (and smaller ๐ things in our lives and the lives of our employees/employers that are equally - if not more important. It is important to remember that going away for a conference that discusses the very latest technology means days away from the family. This doesn't mean that I'm never going to leave the family and do my own thing from time to time - it's just that I understand what is important to me and makes me happy.
Change:
Change is inevitable, and will be disruptive - but unless managed it will be much worse. Change happens, happened a lot in even the few months I've been "away". My daughter started long days at kinder - 5 days a week - that's a big change for a little girl. She, however, is loving it! The teachers were/are very good at managing this change and had sent out info packs about the kinder programme, even sent a beautiful handwritten note with sparkly stickers on it a few weeks before the start of the term. My daughter was excited. Still a bit unsure of what things would be like, the first week was half days with the rest spent doing fun things with dad. (I've been cycling around Melbourne to just about every adventure playground over the summer with a little girl on the back - still failed to lose any weight though! ) I've seen many, many, IT projects where change was not as successfully managed. There is a whole science and goodness knows how many approaches/methodologies to managing change - so I'm not going to advocate any one above any other here. I'd just like to point out, everything changes - deal with it well and you'll be much happier!
Technology of tomorrow, happening today.
The way that we are interacting with mobile devices is becoming more and more ingrained and part of a "normal" way of life. Even "out bush" where the photos above were taken, we had 2-way radios, GPS equipment, and I'm hoping that for my birthday in a few weeks time I might get a UV sterilizing "pen" so I don't have to boil all our drinking water. The pace at which we are accepting new tech into our lives to make things easier for us is staggering. The pace of change in business technology is also fast - but it does seem to lag a bit - I anticipate in the next year or so we're going to be running to catch up. It's going to be exciting! Which brings me to my last thought.
Passion:
I've been accused of occasionally being a difficult person to work with, because I have a passion for doing what I believe is right. I'm passionate about understanding how things work, why we doing things and making them better. I happy to be passionate about SAP and especially my potential to help others. This short break has allowed me the time to think about why and what I want to do. Hopefully it's all going to be good - and with some luck I can share a little of that enthusiasm with some of you.
It's good to be back, but in some ways as Robbo tweeted it really doesn't feel like I've ever been away!
I work for Discovery Consulting now (the paperwork is in and we're soon to be one of SAP's newest partner organisations ๐ nevertheless - my ramblings are my own and shouldn't be taken as the company line. As I once said - you'd be a fool to listen to me - but I like fools ๐
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