Written by Una Tobin, Senior Consultant
7:30: Alarm goes off. After hitting snooze several times, I go through my well-tuned hurry-hurry-hurry routine to get out of the door. This ritual is repeated every Wednesday, when I go into the office. I usually work from home and spend an extra hour in bed, because the early bird gets the worm, but who wants a worm?
8:30: I grab a coffee and some breakfast before I reach the office. My commute takes about 40 minutes, but I try to time it so that I don’t get on the Central line (aka the seventh circle of hell) until 9:00. By this time the finance bros are safely at their desks, and I can travel without being fumigated by Dior Sauvage.
9:15: I get stuck into the day’s work. Charlie and I are working with a bank who are upgrading a piece of their marketing technology. As part of a squad, we’re designing new customer journeys that leverage the new capabilities/features in this technology provides. We’ve done some in-person workshops with the client to walk through how they can take a customer-needs first approach to designing interactions. These outputs are being transformed into briefs with supporting copy, ready for the technical specialists to put live. This process has proven to be quite a shift for them, as historically they’ve been focused on traditional product focused batch and blast campaigns. While there has been some change resistance, generally there is appetite to change and mature not only the technology but also internal ways of working and the customer experience this creates.
12:00: Lunchtime!! We do a group order at Farmer J’s and I offer to collect it. We have a culture of proper lunch breaks, away from desks, which is a refreshing change from my last job. I natter with my colleagues about how their projects are going and my upcoming volunteering day to help run mock interviews at a school back home that sits in a disadvantaged catchment area.
13:00: Back at my desk with the noise-cancelling headphones on to keep this morning’s momentum up.
15:00: I have my monthly 1:1 session with my manager. We take a walk to get some fresh air and grab a chai. We discuss: my general wellbeing, the go-to-market proposition I’m holding the pen on and my miniMBA progress. This is a 12-week online course developed by Mark Ritson which covers the basics of business such as leadership, financials and innovation. Optima have funded the course as I studied Physics at university and found I had some knowledge gaps when I transitioned to consulting. The course is an engaging way to upskill, because if my (lack of) Duolingo progress is anything to go by, unstructured learning isn’t my greatest strength. Murray and I chat about the insights I’ll share back to the team at a future lunch and learn.
16:00: We have a project team meeting with the client to discuss progress against the deliverables (on track yay!) and the SOW for next year. Despite a few technical challenges, the team is upbeat and eager to scale the activity we’re doing into other areas such as business banking. As most of my projects involve teams working across the country (literally from Cornwall to Glasgow) we agree a date for a few weeks’ time, to meet in person and discuss the proposal in-depth. We re-group internally afterwards to assign tasks such as estimating project financials, drafting the next contract and producing the pitch deck.
17:15: The team are reviewing the Hussle gym website, browsing the selection of gyms we can visit for free as one of our work perks. We debate if the weather is good enough for a trip to Brockwell Lido- some of us have tougher constitutions than others.
17:30: The team pop to the local bar for a quick drink and some truffle fries. Luke opts for an alcohol-free beer as he’s prepping for his next IronMan. We discuss the prep (evidently Luke wants the worm) and his upcoming sabbatical. I took one this year and travelled to South America, so we compare itineraries.
19:00: Tube home! Thankfully I did some meal prepping this week, so I enjoy some Chilli, finish my book and kill a spider the size of a 5p coin for my flatmate before heading to bed.
