First, some brief history for those of you who are not up to speed with the chaos in the Wood household...
We completed our relocation to Allentown on Labor Day weekend last year. On November 25, the company was informed that the corporate headquarters was moving to Dallas. This came as a hugh surprise to everyone, myself included. The company, Heidelberg Cement - based in Heidelberg, Germany, had been in the process of acquiring another company, Hanson Building Products, for quite some time. Hanson has operations all over the world, just as Heidelberg does, but they had key locations in the UK, Australia and Dallas, TX here in the US.
A massive undertaking was underway as of late September by the board of directors and a dedicated team of individuals to determine how best to integrate the Hanson organization into the existing Heidelberg organization. That is when the madness began. As a part of this "re-organization", the company decided that now was as good a time as any to begin streamlining and consolidating resources and locations - after all, we now had nearly 10,000 people in the US alone spread across nearly 1000 locations. I don't even know what the global stats are at present. What this essentially meant was if one was to be a part of the future organization, that would require being in Dallas, Texas. Many people did not get that option as the vast majority got what is referred to as "retention and severance packages". The company identifies key personnel that have experience, knowledge and value to the company that is not easily replacable by going to the open market. For those skills that are general in nature, they took the approach of hiring new in Dallas, and giving the existing folks a retention bonus to stay for X-period of time.
Thankfully for me, I was approached early on and told that I was included in the short list of individuals that were identified as relocation candidates by the IMO (Integration Managment Office - a fancy term that basically means "people in high places that make big decisions that affect people"). This list was around 20 people for corporate IT, and I was lucky to have my name on that list.
I don't think I could begin to document the true extent of the uncertainty and insanity that prevailed over the next few months. My situation was unique in that the team in which I manage did not exist in the Hanson I.T. organization and there was no plan to include it going forward in the new organization. Here is the chronology of positions and possibilities that were presented over the last 4 months:
- First, they had identified me to be a Field Services Manager, which is essentially managing a team of geographically dispersed people that are responsible for maintaining I.T. systems and hardware at remote sites like plants, terminals and sales offices. This was the same environment from which I came in 1999 to 2003 as a Sr. Technical Analyst before taking a Technology Lead role in 2004.
- Then it was identified that they needed to integrate the two company's Service Desk Organizations and they wanted me to be the Project Manager. This was to be a 1 to 2 year project with no clear picture of what existed at the end of that period. It was made very clear that there would most certainly be something, but it was not clear what that would be until further out. I did not like this arrangement for obvious reasons - the lack of permanence.
- Then there was a shakeup, the Director of the Service Desk Organization for Hanson was dismissed, thus leaving a vacancy at a high level. There were discussions as to how that should be filled and that it could be the existing North American SDO manager, myself or someone external. This opened up a lot of possibilities for me at this point because I could shoot for the Director position or the North American SDO manager if he were to be promoted into the Director. That latter seemed like a better move for me and the company as the leap to Director for me was too much and too soon.
- The North American SDO Manager got named to Director and then his former position was eliminated as non-essential in the new organization design. So, I took up the position of "Project Manager for the SDO Integration" and waited to see what developed as something permanent going forward.
- In February, I was offered a position in Corporate Purchasing as a Purchasing Manager specifically for I.T. related contracts and commodities. This was completely outside I.T., but it gave me something new and interesting to do and was permanent position going forward. It seemed like this was the best thing - at least at that time. I had some discussions with the Purchasing Director and was awaiting a formal offer letter which if I signed, established my role and title and basically started the ball rolling for the relocation process.
- Before I received the offer letter for the Purchasing Manager position, I got a call from my former manager, who going forward has a global responsibitility for specific components of our global infrastructure in I.T.. He asked me if I would be interested in something back in I.T. in the infrastructure team, based in Dallas for North America. I was excited to hear more and he stated it would be under a different Director than he and he wanted to meet with me. Apparently, in the process of identifying candidates to fill positions in this other part of the organization, my name had come up and whomever was sitting at that table had agreed that I would be a good fit. Later that same day, I received the offer letter for the Corporate Purchasing position.
- The Global Director for Application Hosting, a man from the UK, came over to chat with me about this opportunity. We had a good meeting and a comfort level was reached on both sides. In the end, he could not offer me a position and made no verbal indications that there would be an offer because I had an offer already in hand for the Purchasing Manager position. The company does not get into the practice of competing for resources. I first had to decide whether or not I wanted the Purchasing Manager position and if I did not, an offer MAY be given for this other position. It was quite political and stressful, but in the end, I declined the offer for the Purchasing Manager and accepted the position for the I.T. position.
So, my new position is titled, "Intel Global Solutions Manager" and essentially it is managing a team of 10 people, situated at various locations throughout the world. Our responsibilty is to architect systems and operating environments that will host the running of our company's critical business applications. It is a huge challenge and opportunity. My job started yesterday, and I didn't sit much all day. What time I was sitting, I was on the phone.
Oh, and by the way, we went house hunting last week and I'll write about that some time this week.
