"We dont work this way, Son!!!"

Consultants or consulting companies are knowledge based. The measure of a good consultant is by the knowledge he has in his field of expertise. If an end user firm is planning to hire a consulting company to do its job it has to make sure that management from its side is experienced, tough, intimidating and is able to handle the people of the consulting company, who in turn are bound to think that, knowledge-wise, they are a cut above their client. In short, client project manager should have good management skills so that he can derive desired results from a bunch of bloat heads. 

Early in my consulting company career life  (Its not that I'm an old man now.....but right now much more work experienced than I was then)  I worked with such a project manager. He was working on extention duty in the client's company. Being highly experienced he was assigned as the project manager of that particular project. I remember him bustling around the office corridors with the energy of a horse. Slim, fit looking and a sort of radiance on his face is how I would describe him (I have observed that, any man who gets to yell at 10 different people a day has a 'radiant face'!!!)  He used to be on his toes and used to keep people on theirs too. He was given a tight schedule of around 1 year to complete the project, and such was his 'power' that he managed to get it done in a span of 8 months!!! He was an expert at commercial negotiations with vendors, he used to participate in them, himself and take command from the commercial group people......Every time a vendor tried to quote a very high price......he would somehow convince them to quote lower and bring their pricing down. A vendor once quoted a delivery schedule of 24 weeks, to which Mr. N (I'll call him that) replied "20 weeks and thats final, I am 68 years old now, I am getting older, I arent sure if I can make it till 24 weeks!!!" The vendor was down to 22 weeks in the next 15 minutes of discussion.  

He was a good observer too. When I first sat for a commercial discussion meeting, I was quite nervous.....there were a lot of bigwigs from the client's side, vendor's side and I was sitting in the meeting in the capacity of an engineer who had technically evaluated and accepted the vendor's offer. He noticed this and voiced his opinion in front of everyone......"Dont be nervous young man, I ain't gonna eat you." 

He had once told a vendor, "Mr. R, you look quite good with that scar on your neck, so please quote a good price!!!" (There was actually no relation between the good looks and the good price, but then Mr. N was an eccentric old man....he must have been under the impression that he was cracking a good joke!!!)

'Young man' and 'Son' were his favourite words. He used to throw them around with the air of a ship's captain addressing a newly inducted midshipman on a frigate.

"Son, why are you taking so much time for this evaluatation?" he asked. "Sir, I need a written confirmation from the vendor. He's not replying to my email since the past 2 days" I said. 

"Son, I have worked in this bloody business for 30 years......we ask for confirmations across the table, in my company, why do you want it thru email? Call him today, record the minutes of that meeting, ask him to sign it. If he doesnt come, reject his offer, we have many more vendors willing to take the offers, is that clear?" he said. "Crystal." I replied. 

 I once made a very bad technical error. The gravity of the error was such that he called me personally to his cabin (he was given a temporary cabin in our company, so that he could personally interact with our people, on a day to day basis) ....."How long have you been working in this company, young man?" he yelled the minute I entered. "Since the past 8 months, sir" I replied (I was a trainee then). He stopped for a moment and told me "That figures why you made a mistake. Sorry, I yelled that way. Its ok, we'll rectify the error somehow, I probably didnt know where my office's washroom was when I was at your level of experience." 

The project was completed in a span of 8 months (engineering phase) as I mentioned earlier and the plant was commissioned after the next 3 months. Wont ever forget Mr. N's very powerful personality, though. He is something I would like to be when I am older......maybe not that eccentric or blunt, but yes, something of that sort.