It's time for me to get back into it.
A Few Favorite Stories That Tell Something About Me
International Site Redesign #2
This story will be short, but I think says a lot about me and the value of building long-term relationships.
The first round of site redesigns was going very well. It was now basically self-governing requiring only a little of my time to set initial expectations. But there was a darker cloud on the horizon.
The original plan had been to request another $10mm for the following year to redesign an additional 10 markets. But the economic forecasts was turning less favorable and our unit had been told to expect lower investments across the board. I was told we needed to reduce our request by about 1/3rd. I was asked to explore three options: (1) reduce the number of markets, (2) somehow reduce scope for each market, or (3) find some way to do the planned 10 markets at full scope but reduced costs.
I ran to my main technology partner to discuss. We agreed that we needed to have dedicated working session in Phoenix (AXP’s main technology center) with a handful of our most experienced architects and engineers. We got everyone to block 2.5 days.
We got together on the first morning, and two of the technology folks from Phoenix, who I had known and worked with for the past several years, said they had taken the liberty to come up with a possible path for option 3 – doing all 10 markets at full scope but reduced costs. Based on their observations of the last few markets redesign, they felt there were some options to have some work done concurrently rather than serially by market. They also pointed out that this could only work if “the business” (meaning me and my co-lead) continued to place very tight parameters around the project controls. Basically, they were saying there is no padding for contingency.
I was surprised at the boldness of their plan. We spent about two hours walking through the details of the timing and my co-lead and I agreed that it was doable. Our 2 ½ day working session finished up in about 3 hours and we all went out to lunch to celebrate.
We got our $6.6mm and the plan ended up working. It may not seem like I did a lot in that meeting to make this result possible, but that is missing the point. This proposal came about based on several years of building great working relationships with my technology partners and having built a strong reputation for meeting my obligations. Our ability to achieve option 3 was the result of several years of my hard work and building trust.