Finally got the munchkin down

Night Owl

Finally got the munch kin down. It is not a surprise that he is as much of a night owl as his father and mother. Both of us have a tendency to whittle away the late night hours on odd projects only to be begrudgingly awoken in the morning. What a rude awakening.

When I was an independent consultant one of the freedoms was being able to work at odd hours of the night. That was a good thing when I had the ability to get sleep every so often. I thought it would also be a good trait to have when I had a kid. “Well” I thought to myself, “at least I am used to being awake at night.”

It turns out that my late night tendencies did nothing soften the blow of only getting three or four hours a night. I would just lay down and as I was getting into a deep sleep would hear that small squeaky cry which quickly turned into a shrill scream (for milk).

Told you so!

A few years back I broke out of a partnership I had with three other people in Helena Montana. I broke away because of some disagreements I had over the direction of the company. Primarily, I felt like they were taking advantage of their one client and were doing nothing to improve the relationship (they, actually took the relationship for granted like it would always be available to them). There was one member of that “Partnership” who felt like he needed to control the whole company (i.e. a control freak). Which would have been fine had he any practical business knowledge and/or any kind of usable leadership skills (both, for this weak soul, are in short supply).

I left that partnership and was immediately hired away by the (previous) consulting firms one client. From there, the relationship to the one client deteriorated badly as the client now had the ability to resolve issues without being forced to use the consulting firm. That was before the IT leadership of the client changed due to a large merger.

The new IT leader showed up and interviewed my old consulting firm. Instead of jumping at the chance to resolve any upcoming issues and work with the new guy, they followed the path of self-indulgence and decided they could play coy thinking that he would go away. Unfortunate for them, the new guy stayed and needless to say the relationship with the client worsened.

Helena is a small town. On a good day there might be some 30,000 plus people in the area. So there are very few employers in town and no big company presence. The client was part of a big company (the one billion dollar propane division of a 10 billion dollar natural gas company). So, this was about the best gig in town to have when it came to IT consulting. Any IT consulting firm (slash “partnership”) of sound mind and sound business practices would have done anything to ensure that the relationship with such a lucrative client stayed solid. But not this one.

I mention all of these because today it I found out that the company is liquidating the equipment within its office. Out goes the servers, the monitors, and the fancy white-boards that they put together by hand. All of this wonderful stuff is being sold and all of the people once employed are all now gone looking for new work.

It is pathetic, really. That one man could bring down an entire company simply because he could not grow the company away from his own personality. What really happened is he felt threatened and would not consider ideas outside of his own. As time went on his attitude got worse and it started to pull apart the relationship with the client (and blinded him from being able to improve the relationship).

I feel somewhat sorry for the people that stayed with the company. But what a bunch of suckers, really. They could have seen this failure coming and either gone out on their own or been emboldened enough to stand up to this guy. But I guess blindly following somebody is easier than trying to think through finding new business and making the most of current opportunities. Which is what I did and I am now more successful than ever.

I know one thing. I have a job and they don’t. When I come home and feed my young son and sit down to read a book, I know that having that job is one of the most important things in the world. My dedication to myself is how I partly give a better world to my son.