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Ella,
I’m just putting together the slide deck for the final presentation to the trust tomorrow. Can you send over your project plan for the initial phase, including costs, as soon as possible so I can integrate it into our overall proposal?
Thanks
Lee
I close down the email and, with a sigh of pleasure, open up the project plan to give it a final once-over before sending it to Lee. It’s not surprising that project plans give me joy; I’d be a pretty rubbish project manager if I couldn’t take pleasure in a well-honed plan, and this one is a doozy. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been through it, both on my own and with other people in the company. As I study the Gantt chart, looking for any tiny holes I may have overlooked, I’m filled with confidence that this really is a work of art, as project plans go.
I’ve always liked order, and my sister Ava used to tease me relentlessly when I was doing exam revision at school, because I’d spend nearly as long putting together my colour-coded revision plans as I would doing the actual revision. Having assembled the plan, I’d print it off and stick it on my bedroom wall, meticulously ticking off the tasks as I completed them.
‘This is borderline OCD,’ she’d remarked when she first caught sight of my A-Level schedule, ‘but you’ve missed something.’
‘What?’
‘There’s nothing here about organising your knicker drawer. How will you cope if your knickers get out of sequence?’
‘Piss off,’ I’d replied as she’d sauntered out of my room, grinning.
Since joining Orchestra, the somewhat bizarrely named payroll and accounting software firm in Leeds where I’ve worked for the last five years, I’ve put together countless project plans, but this one matters more than any of them. We’re down to the final two in a bid for a contract with a cluster of NHS trusts across the north of England. Not only does this deal involve pretty much all of the components of our software suite, but it could also become a template for deals with other NHS trusts going forwards if the project is successful, so to describe it as ‘massive’ would be something of an understatement.
The other reason that this deal matters so much is that our opposition is a company that goes by the equally bizarre name of Harmony. Harmony was founded roughly ten years ago by a couple of disgruntled Orchestra consultants who left to set up on their own. It’s widely believed that they chose the name of their company as a deliberate snub to their ex-employers, but this all happened before I joined, so I don’t have any firm evidence. However, most of their products have similar names to ours. For example, our database component, which all the other applications sit on top of, is called ‘Maestro’, and theirs is called ‘Conductor’ – go figure. To begin with, they didn’t pose much of a threat, but Lee tells me that their offering is now on a par with, and in some ways better than, ours, so this deal really could go either way. Needless to say, this is as near to ‘personal’ as business gets. Everyone in the company is rooting for us to shut Harmony out and close this deal.
Having gone through the plan one last time, I convert it into a format that Lee can embed into his presentation and attach it to my reply.
Hi Lee,
Plan attached. Trust me, a lettuce leaf has more fat on it than this plan does. I’ve already included contingencies, so you can use the numbers in the attached spreadsheet as they are.
Good luck for tomorrow!
Ella
I attach the spreadsheet with the costs to back up the plan and press send. My part in the sales pitch is now done; it’s up to Lee, as the Customer Relationship Manager (basically an upmarket term for salesman), to bring everything together into a compelling argument to put to the trust tomorrow.
‘Have you seen Lee’s email asking for the project plan?’ my boss, Jonathan, asks, plonking his backside on the edge of my desk and manspreading. I don’t think he does it on purpose, but it’s definitely a subconscious power play because he never does it when he’s talking to people at the same level as, or above, him. Today, he obviously feels a special need to assert himself, because he’s spreading so wide that I’m having to tuck myself into the corner of my desk to prevent my arm from coming into contact with his thigh.
‘Yes. I’ve just sent it,’ I tell him.
‘Oh.’ He looks momentarily annoyed. ‘I thought you were going to walk me through it before you committed it.’
‘I did. That’s what we did this morning, remember?’
His face clears. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. Baby brain, I’m afraid. Even though Lucas is six months old now, we’re still not getting any sleep. So, are you excited? There’s a lot riding on this deal for you, isn’t there? I’ll be sad to lose you from my team, but I think you’ll really flourish as an account manager. I’ll put in a good word for you, of course, when the time comes. I’ll tell them what a model of efficiency you are, and how much you deserve the job.’
‘I’m not counting any chickens,’ I tell him firmly. ‘Let’s see whether we manage to close this deal before we start celebrating my possible promotion.’
He is right, though. Although I really am trying very hard not to think about it in case I jinx it, I really need this deal to go through too. Nothing has been promised, but there have been heavy hints that Orchestra will need a new account manager, among other positions, if we land this, and I’ve been left in no doubt that my name is in the frame. Having delivered his speech, Jonathan obviously feels that our little motivational chat is over and strides off back to his own desk. As he does so, I look up and meet my friend Ruth’s eye. She’s grinning broadly and surreptitiously forms a T with her hands. I grab my mug and we head for the kitchen.
‘I couldn’t see everything, but it looked like we were quite high on the manspread scale just then,’ she giggles as soon as we’re safely in the kitchen and out of earshot of the rest of the office.
‘Oh, yes,’ I reply. ‘I’m calling a solid nine as he pretty much had me pinned against the side of my desk.’
‘Surely that’s a ten?’
‘No. Wrong trousers for a ten. You only get a ten when he’s wearing the dark blue ones that emphasise the crotch bulge. Come on, Ruth, that’s elementary.’
