Few Life Lessons From My Unique Career

I am kind of like the Forest Gump of the business world in that I have beeb able to see and experience so much.  I know most of us are like this as well.  I just have had more time to reflect upon my career and the experiences I have had.

Lumber 

I started working in lumber when I was about 14 years old.  This was because one of the local lumber companies in San Angelo (Bowmans) was managed by our neighbor (Mr Woods).  My dad cut a deal with him to put me to work.  I remember it sucked because I couldn't drive a forklift until I was 16 but I could drive my truck to work because I had a hardship drivers license.   This is given to farm boys to allow them to drive before the age of 16 to help with work. 

Bowmans was awesome.  My sr year in high school, I took the class kids took when they didn't anticipate going to college but just going to work.  This allowed me to take just one real class at Central High and work full time at Bowmans during my Sr year. This decision allowed me to meet a complete new circle of friends there that impacted my life - including Nancy via Julianne.  Most of the young people working there all went to ASU, and then me - the high school kid.

Then the new lumber yard came to town and several of us jumped ship and joined the team at Alwoods.  I had a different group of friends at Alwoods and ended up becoming great friends with Troy Hale, who went on to marry my sister Valerie. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, Nancy and I were married and immediately moved to Round Rock where I eventually ended working at McCoy's Lumber Yard in Georgetown, Texas.   Stan Burch, who I was fortunate enough to reconnect with last week, ran a great store and was a blast to work with. Great memories. 

I always had my sites set on graduating from college and joining the professional ranks in the IT world and eventually left McCoys to go to work directly for EDS. Upon reflection, had I just stayed in the lumber yard business I think happiness would have come quicker.   I really enjoyed that life style and have nothing about respect for anybody that has a job that helps the world go around.  Not all jobs need to be fancy, exotic locations, full of worldly travel, and big bucks.  There is a costs of happiness and peace that goes along with all of that.   I have experienced both sides of the fence and the grass isn't greener one one side vs the other. 

I did not follow the typical process joining EDS either.  Nancy and I had a mutual friend, Mug, who was working 2nd shift at First City National Bank monitoring networks and ATMs.  They had an opening and he strongly encouraged me to apply and greased the skids for me.  I completed the First City application and took it down to First City.  Then I found out they had just signed a contract to outsource all IT to EDS.  I was suddenly an EDS employee and my new EDS managers didn't know what I was suppose to be doing because it was their first day too.  

Upon college graduation, I didn't apply anywhere or interview with anyone.  I just went to work full time for EDS.  This caused a few issues with pay and I could have made A LOT more money directly out of college had I gone a traditional route, but what fun is that?  

EDS master plan was to shut down Austin as an IT data center and consolidate to either Houston or Dallas.  I was put on the data center migration team and actually had a lot of fun.  This was also a time when several small banks in central and south Texas were being shut down by the Fed.   One of my dirt jobs with EDS was having to go to these small banks and tag our equipment before the Feds came in and took it during the shut down process.  I had to keep it all a secret but people soon figured it out.  I would walk in a small bank from EDS and somebody would shout "We are getting shut down by the Feds!".  

Lesson #1 (In no particular order):  You never know what opportunities you will be exposed to, or see others have access to.  

In the mid-80's while at EDS, we found out that we were working ourselves out of a job in Austin.  We all started looking for other jobs we could take just stay in Austin.  EDS had warned us that when our project was complete, we would have to move to Houston or Dallas.  Several of the folks found a job working a relatively small company there in Austin call Dell.  I told them they were nuts working for a hardware company started by a kid who dropped out of UT.   I may have mis-judged that opportunity.  Those people that I know went to work for Dell in the mid-80s had a pretty good career.  I owe Michael Dell an apology for even thinking he was silly and sharing that opinions with others.  

Then while at EDS in Plano, I had a good friend and colleague that worked for me.  One day Mark Y came by office to explain he was resigning to take a new job for a start-up.  He was really trying to encourage me to come talk to them as well and indicated he had conversations with them about me and had it all tee'd up.   I let him know that I had a new baby at home and that leaving an established firm like EDS for a start-up was not something I was interested in.   He left EDS and went to work for audio.net .  This was a start-up founded by Mark Cuban and went on to be broadvision.com and then sold to Yahoo for billions.  Mark Y retired again while in his 30's.   Probably mis-judged that one as well.  I now think Mark Cuban knew what he was doing and Mark Y was a pretty good judge of character to follow him.    

Lesson #2 - You Never Know What You Will Find Yourself Caught Up In 

In 2001, I was working for a software company called I2 in Dallas.   I was working with Arthur Anderson Business Consulting out of Houston in setting up an Oil & Gas Supply Chain practice based on our software.  One night in Houston, I was corned over a nice dinner by a few partners from AABC who convinced me that I was meant to be a consultant for a consulting firm vs working for software company.  That software companies come and go.  AABC was celebrating 99 years and getting ready for 100 years.  They offered a compelling package so we I quit i2 and moved my family to Houston to join AABC in Sept 2001.  In November 2001 (or there abouts) the news about the AABC and Enron scandal was all over the news.  I personally wsa not involved in Enron at all.  However, everyone that was came out of the same Houston office and it was a difficult situation to go through.  Especially when it caused the collapse of the entire company and 88,000 great people had to seek new employment because the mistakes for a few.   

I have all kinds of view on Enron and certain a few AABC folks lied to somebody during the process and deserved the punishment they received.  However, to shut down a company with over 88,000 people with the highest integrity was not necessary.   The behavior I saw from the Justice Department gave me a jaded view of that part of our government.  Same with the media.  Knowing what was really going on and then reading what media said was happening was difficult.  Made me really distrust the media, and that distrust continues today after further experiences.  

Double lesson:  You never know what you will be involved in but don't be on of those few that impact the lives of thousands due to your stupid actions.   Integrity can help everyone and lack of it can hurt everyone, eventually. 

Lesson #3:  Canadians and Europeans are Good People

I currently work for CGI and could not happier.   We are a very large systems integrator (consulting, systems integration, outsourcing, business proces outsourcing) with over 70k employees.  I ran their oil & gas business sector.  

I was working for Logica, where I was CEO of Logica North America, prior to being acquired by CGI in August 2012.  I have to give credit to both the old executive at Logica and the new team at CGI for treating me so well and doing so much for me during my journey.  I have been so blessed to work directly for great people and surrounded by unbelievabe co-workers who have also been there for me.   I am not sure all companies would react the way CGI has acted for me, but that is a great prayer to pass along.  

Lesson #4:  Don't Believe Everything the Media Reports

The reason I mention CGI now is that most people had not heard of CGI until all of the news came out about how messed up healthcare.gov is.   Yes, that is the CGI I work for .   The one that was constantly being thrown under the bus by the media for healthcare.gov failures.  I can't, even if I wanted to, use the blog to get into any details about that other than to say it was another part of the business that I was not involved with and don't believe everything the media says (true with Enron as well).  

Lesson #5:  Focus on Helping Others Succeed and Your Success Will Follow

This is probably the most important lesson from my career.  The more you can put the needs of your co-workers, workers clients, and even the execs you work for ahead of your personal needs - the greater success you personally will have.  

A tangible example is when I was in sales and quit worrying about how big the size of commission check would be and started focusing on how many people could I put to work and what type of succes could I generate for my client. 

I had two big operating mantra's at work.  

#1 - Never Let A Colleague Fail 

#2 - Never Let A Client Fail

In fact, I tried hard to recognize and reward people who demonstrated these at work.  For whatever reason, I elected to say "never let them fail" instead of "always make sure they are successful".  First time that I have ever taken a glass half empty approach - ha.  

In Closing

That's enough for a blog, but let's just say that my career has not been boring.   I have the opportunity to travel to great places to work from exotic locations, hang out with truly fantastic people, and accomplish some pretty interesting projects for a lot of great clients.  Most importantly I have always enjoyed what I do, proud of who I did it for and accomplished.