This won't be a regular communiqué from the skies between
Australia and New Zealand, but after almost a month of travelling I
thought I had enough to muse on.
What Time Is It?
I'm spending so many hours flying to and fro that I no longer
know what time zone I'm in. I do know I'm resisting New Zealand
summer time, though - this year the three hour gap caused by the
different onset of summer time between Australia and New Zealand
persists for four weeks instead of three and each week I fly into
the teeth of it. I have my computer set to Australian time - to
minimise mistakes when I schedule meetings in Outlook - and my
watch sits on New Zealand winter time. It does mean a few debates
when I'm home over when we eat, but so far I'm surviving!
Travel Tips
Let me pass on three tips from my recent travels.
Tip 1 - if you haven't yet, try Emirates. It won't earn you
flyer points on Star Alliance (Air NZ) or on Oneworld (Qantas) but
in business it will get you:
- A f ree cab ride to the airport and again at the other end to
your destination. For trips over 50km, you pay a trifling extra
sum. For me, this saves the client about $400 each round trip.
- Fabulous choice of entertainment at your seat. Hundreds of
albums, featured singers, etc. Over a hundred movies, twenty or
more TV shows. Fifty-odd games. And you can choose when to start
them all, when to pause…
- Plug-in facilities for your laptop.
- Massage function in the seat. (A little too frisky for
me).
- Internet and phone calls while in the air (for a fee).
- Complimentary toothpaste sets in the loos. The Colgate tubes
inside are about 25mls. Perfect for dealing with that new rule
about gels and liquids in your hand baggage needing to be in
containers of less than 100 ml each. This is the only source of
small toothpastes that I know!
All this, and the ticket is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper
than the competition. My consulting colleagues tell me that
Emirates can't be operating on a sustainable, economically rational
model. As a consumer I say: long live irrationality!
Tip 2 - Don't wear high-heeled shoes with an ankle
strap secured with a little metal buckle or you'll have to take
them off to put them through the security machine. I watched a
woman ahead of me in the security check queue swaying precariously
in the three goes it took her to get the buckle unclasped. She was
laden with hand luggage which didn't help.
Tip 3 - When you're stopped by yet another airport security team
and asked if you'll consent to a search of your bags and a pat-down
search of your person for explosives, there is only one correct
answer. You do have a choice, of course. The choice is to
travel as you'd planned, or not at all! As a naturally Grumpy Old
Woman I find it hard to bite back cynical, scathing and sarcastic
comments on such occasions…
Novel Experiences
Once I finally make it over to Australia, I reflect each week on
a couple of unusual angles of the project I'm on.
This is the first time I can ever remember working a project
where on the consulting side we not only have an even gender mix,
we also have an even mix through the ranks. Female partner, female
manager, female specialist (me) and so on. The achievement is to
score a female partner; across the local office system there are
only two, and one is a specialist outside the area I'm working
in.
Does it make a real difference to have senior women? I'll let
you know when we hit our first dose of high stress. So far it has
simply been pleasant to work alongside people who have had similar
life experiences and known the same sort of compromises.
Part Time Perils
Another first on the project is that among the client and
consulting team members we have an unprecedented number of
part-timers. These are all women, who work 3 or 4 days. Add to that
a scattering of international and interstate travellers who like to
be home on a Friday and you can see meeting schedules become a
patchwork quilt. To date, we are trying conference calls to get
everyone into important sessions but you know how that can be.
Dial-in difficulties, poor sound, and the person calling in finds
it hard to chip into the conversation.
The key to making the patchwork quilt function seems to be two
fold:
- overlay efforts by those actually in the meetings; for example,
afterwards they brief those who had to call in with a one-on-one
summary of the discussion
- co-operation by those on the periphery. In practice, this means
being willing to call in on their days off, as well as to check
emails regularly on those days.
So far it's working because everyone is very motivated and the
project timeframe is short.
It's confirming my thinking, however, that the part time model
is challenging to make work with full-on projects. It interests me
that the senior consulting women work 4 or 4.5 days. Three just
isn't enough. It's much easier to ring-fence one day a week to be
at home and unavailable by phone than two. The extra day also keeps
them that much more plugged in to what is going on.
The current part time model of - usually - 3 full days work in a
week poses a number of difficulties. So do the alternatives: If we
could think of part time being 100% on for a period, and then a
100% break off for a while, that would fit the work cadence much
better. However, it wouldn't fit with childcare norms so well.
Another model would be to come in for part of the day every day in
order to maintain contact, get to meetings and so on. This in turn
becomes difficult if you don't live close to work.
I'll keep watching how the case goes and I'll report back any
interesting developments and insights.
Tough Job
Lastly, I did have one great day recently. We were doing indepth
consumer interviews in cafes alongside a beach in south Sydney. The
sky was blue, the breeze was refreshing and the beach was full of
school kids and people having fun. And our last interview was up
close and personal with a 21 year old man who was a surfer, keen
gym goer and a builder's apprentice. 5'11", had a Spanish ancestor
or two, wore a skimpy singlet and board shorts. Getting the picture
here, ladies?!
And I had to sit next to this piece of well-muscled eye candy
and concentrate for ninety minutes straight.
It was a tough, tough job, but let me tell you, I am the woman
to do it.
© Professionelle Limited 2007