Deauville

Deauville was fabulous. It was probably the poshest Christmas company party I have ever attended. Our present was a Hermes tie. Okay, it was an extremely ugly one, but still, I still have it and even wear it once in a while.

Proudfoot did not do very well in those days but they had lots of cash from which they bought IMR. In fact, it was management at Proudfoot which was rather weak; after that company meeting Proudfoot was mainly managed by IMR directors.

What I found very interesting, IMR was a young company with only a few older people working there. Proudfoot on the other was the exact opposite. Proudfoot was a truly international company though. They had strongholds in the US, Australia, and South Africa.

Oh yes, and as one can see from the picture above, we did have lots to drink that evening...

The Merger

One morning after we arrived at the job, the project manager (from that Telekom project) and I downloaded our e-mails. And there it was, the CEO of Proudfoot Consulting sent all of IMR a message that our company was taken over by them. We were now working for Proudfoot, the epitomisation of evil in the consulting industry. Well, at least with IMPAC we were brainwashed that way.

It was December 2000 and there was the company Christmas meeting in Deauville (Normandy, northern France, extremely posh seaside spa) coming up at which we would celebrate "our marriage".

One thing I have not told yet on here. Before I started with IMR I worked for Proudfoot for 2 weeks, did not like it, and left the company again since I got the offer from Paris which I much preferred.

IMR

IMR, the company I worked for, was a pretty small niche consultancy based in France with a few main markets for which they had regional offices and consultants. There was obviously the Parisian Headquarters, but there were also offices in Manchester, Frankfurt and Madrid.

The company belonged to 2 owners in the US, but the US part of the business was very small and neglectable. There were 4 German project managers working for them, lots of French ones (as this was the core market), and a handful of Brits, plus some Spaniards.

It was then that I decided to step up as project manager and ask the European Head of Operations what his thoughts on my ideas were. I did not have to sell myself a lot, he only replied "Yes, of course. The next available project will be yours..."

I did not have to wait for a long time.

Encore!

I started with IMR in 1999 and got a trainee week in Düsseldorf on a project where the client produced soup. It was a production process project. It looked very straight forward. Interesting was, IMR had a different methodology than my old company. The result was the same, savings, but the way towards those savings was much smoother. There was no consultant with a whip and a trainer to soothe the pain, but the consultant did all by himself. The only problem was, formal training was really missing as the coaching skills of consultants who were evaluated against hard cash savings and not people's behaviour change were rather thin.

Well, I knew why they wanted me. That was clear.

Straight after that week there was a company meeting in Paris. All was very posh, something I was not used to from my American company. The French certainly knew how to live.

A few weeks later I was assigned to a couple of business reviews till I finally ended up on a project in Germany.

Berlin

After that disaster in the US I was a bit fed up with consulting and tried to orientate myself. I moved to Berlin for a few months. I had first thoughts of working as freelancer. And the field I was most comfortable with was management training and coaching.

After I assessed my skills-set I realised that I lacked essential operational experience. I felt I focused too much on training; training had become my comfort zone. I knew I had to tackle the other side, too, the more technical and operational one.

It was in those days that I got a phone call from a headhunter who found my CV somewhere on the internet. My biggest asset, so he said, was my extensive training knowledge which would have been most beneficial for this consultancy he is looking to hire consultants for.

This company was based in Paris but I could live wherever I wanted. To cut the story short, I started with that company, moved back to London, and worked as consultant with training experience. The company does not exist anymore. Its name was IMR.