Little Differences

"Bruce got rid of all the data analysts seven months ago," Russ continued. "His vision was for a team of true business analysts who didn't simply report on data but dug down into it, with a detailed knowledge of our operations and our customers to find potential problems and help the respective managers develop solutions. We are no longer assigned to specific customers or teams, but rather work collaboratively to analyze and support the business as a whole."

Kevin picked back up, "Our biggest challenge has been getting the managers to understand our new role. They are used to a certain way of managing their teams, which in many cases involved a ton of reports on things like staff utilization and customer satisfaction. With just the two, and now three of us responsible for the entire operation here, we don't have the luxury or the time to create reports for any manager just on a whim..."

"Did you work with Gene Hahn during your internships at corporate?" Russ asked. They had already established that Peggy's only practical experience with databases had been working as an intern in the finance department at Armore's headquarters in Atlanta.

"Yes, he was my site supervisor for all three internships," Peggy admitted. "Do you know Gene?"

"We've never physically met him," Russ said, "but we've interacted with him on several projects. We don't get tasked here with many financial reports, but data contained within the reports that Gene and his team have created is sometimes necessary for our analysis. Maybe you will be able to help us write our own queries when we need the data so that we won't have to bother Gene or his team."

Before she could respond, Peggy heard simultaneous 'dings' from Russ and Kevin's laptops. They both glanced at their screens and then up at her.

Russ spoke for the pair, "Bruce is asking us to let you know that he wants to see you in his office. He tried messaging you directly but you're still offline."

Peggy glanced at her laptop and saw that it remained on the login screen. She had been so focused on the question-and-answer session with her two coworkers that she hadn't even tried the credentials that IT had provided her. "Oh well, it could wait now," she thought.

"Can you direct me to where Bruce's office is?" she asked, looking around at all the doors that lined the periphery of the open workspace.

"It would be better if I showed you," Russ offered. "He's still down on the first floor until the new furniture arrives and we all get repositioned. Then he plans to work up here with the rest of the managers." He turned to Kevin and asked, "Are you going to hang here?"

Kevin nodded and turned his attention to his laptop before responding, "Yeah, I have the conference call with warranty administration in a few minutes, so I'll just take it here."

Standing, Russ said, "That's right. I'll just drop Peggy off with Bruce and then come back and join the call with you. Come on, Peggy, follow me."

Peggy picked up her backpack, rose, and followed Russ toward the stairs. Finally catching up to walk beside him, she asked, "Won't I need someone to escort me back from Bruce's office?"

Russ glanced at the temporary badge clipped to Peggy's belt and said, "Technically, you should be escorted, but there are no card reader restricted doors between Bruce's office and here, so you'll be able to get back by yourself. You're dropping breadcrumbs or something so that you'll be able to find your way, right?"

Laughing, Peggy said, "Mental breadcrumbs, for sure."

~~~

"Crap!" Peggy thought the instant that Russ pointed her towards Bruce Goddard's office and then turned on his heels to head back upstairs. Though still ten yards or more from the open door to the office, Peggy could clearly see the face of her direct manager, and it was not a welcomed sight.

Ten years had added more than fifty pounds to his midsection, but his ruddy face was the same as the last time that Peggy had seen it. She admonished herself for not recognizing the name, "Bruce Goddard" sooner. If she had, she would have sought a position with some other group out here in California. Her plans weren't ruined yet, but she would have to be cautious around Bruce. She approached his open door, and while his eyes seemed to smile warmly when he saw her, his rigid posture and chewing on his lower lip as he stood behind his desk sent a conflicting message. She couldn't decipher what it was, so her apprehension over this initial meeting increased.

"Please close the door," Bruce instructed as soon as Peggy had crossed the threshold. She did as requested and stood silently awaiting further direction. Bruce took his seat behind his desk and motioned with his arm for Peggy to sit in one of the visitor chairs across from him.

The pair sat silently studying each other for several seconds. Peggy was beginning to feel like she was sitting across a boxing ring from her opponent, both waiting for the bell to ring signaling the start of their impending battle. Glancing over Bruce's shoulder to the framed pictures on the credenza behind him, her eyes fell on one in particular, and she immediately recognized the captured scene. She quickly averted her eyes back to Bruce's.

Bruce finally sighed, leaned back in his chair, and said, "I'm not going to hold the circumstances surrounding your hiring against you, but I'm also not going to cut you any slack..."

"I don't understand," Peggy said in genuine confusion. "What circumstances are you referring to?"

"I had the requisitions for your team in the approval process for more than six months," Bruce began. "The requisitions for two of the business data analyst positions got approved within about ninety days, but the third one, the one for your position had been held up in finance claiming that my personnel budget had been exceeded, which wasn't anywhere near reality. Suddenly, without any prodding from me, the final requisition gets approved, but along with that approval came you. I was told that if I wanted the third business data analyst that I had to accept you into that role."

"I think I can explain," Peggy offered with an apologetic grin.

"Please do," Bruce said. "I have my suspicions, but I would love to hear your thoughts."

Peggy nodded and said, "I interned in the finance department under an agreement between the Terry School of Business at the University of Georgia and Corbin Baker, vice president, and Chief Technology Officer at Armore. The agreement stipulates that Armore would provide preference in hiring to qualified graduates who had successfully completed the internship program. Armore had not complied with the terms of the agreement in prior years and was at risk of being dropped from the program. Mr. Baker thought that the partnership with the MBA program at the University of Georgia was too important to lose, so he encouraged me to apply for any position that interested me and which I was qualified for."

Bruce grunted and said, "Close to what I suspected, but that doesn't explain how you ended up here. Why leave your home and a choice position at Armore's corporate headquarters to come here?"

Peggy mentally recalled all the details in her employment records as she sat taller in her chair and explained, "Headquarters houses cost-center operations almost exclusively. There's administration, finance, personnel, IT, and a few other groups, but they do nothing to contribute to the success of the company beyond trying to keep costs minimized. My Masters is in Business Analytics, so I want to contribute to those operations of the company that makes a difference; those that have a direct impact on our customers and the services that we deliver globally. That left me with a choice of working in New Jersey or working here. If the weather in both locations wasn't enough of a determining factor, I suspected that the recent decision to expand operations here to provide twenty-four-seven support sounded the death knell for the operations in New Jersey. I may be wrong about the future of operations there, but there's still the nicer weather here."

Bruce's eyes grew wide in surprise but he soon recovered. He grinned and said, "Okay, well it looks like we're stuck with you. Before I explain my expectations for your role, I want to give you the same admonishment that every member of my inner circle gets. My instincts tell me that it's not necessary with you, but I'll give it to you just the same."

"Inner circle?" Peggy asked. "What's that?"

"It's what I call my direct reports. That includes all the senior managers for each department and the now three business data analysts. As part of my inner circle, you all occasionally become privy to confidential business information. I cannot function as the Director of this division without all of you being informed of things that we cannot yet make company-wide knowledge, and I need to trust each of you to maintain the confidentiality of anything that I share with you unless I approve otherwise. I call that rule my 'prime directive'."

"You mean things like my suspicions about operations in New Jersey being eliminated?" Peggy asked, seeking validation of her analysis.

Chuckling, Bruce said, "Exactly things like that. No one here besides me, and now you, know anything is even being discussed, but that will change later this afternoon at my staff meeting. I have been tasked with determining how many of the personnel in New Jersey we might be able to absorb here, so I will be delegating specific assignments to each of the senior managers at the meeting. They will likely be looking to the data analytics team for information to assist them."

"It won't matter much," Peggy said.

"What do you mean?"

"The culture in New Jersey, in most of the northeast, in fact, is different than many other areas of the country. Families there often go back generations and genealogical roots run much deeper. My analysis indicates that fewer than twelve percent of the existing New Jersey personnel would consider relocating if the operations there were eliminated, and ninety percent of those would try to find positions in Atlanta before ever considering California. You'll be lucky to see only a handful of manager-level or higher employees interested in relocating here, and those positions would most likely be redundant to ones already in place."

"Would you be prepared to share your analysis at the staff meeting?" Bruce asked.

Peggy considered the request and said, "You have to remember, this analysis was a personal project that I did to help me decide where I would want to seek a position. It isn't a comprehensive analysis by any stretch of the imagination. I will be glad to e-mail it to you when I get back to my computer so that you can review it before your meeting, but I don't think it is presentation-ready as it is. I wouldn't object to you sharing any part of it that you feel is relevant, but I think that you are in a better position than me to make that determination."

Her explanation wasn't entirely true. The analysis had been completed for reasons other than her possible relocation and contained information that she could not share with anyone, but she would be able to extract portions of the report adequate to satisfy Bruce's current needs.

Bruce studied the young lady before him. She seemed capable and confident in their one-on-one interaction, but he didn't want to assume that she would be the same when placed before a dozen people that she was yet to meet. Her personal appearance was not that of someone trying to impress others, and he could assume that her personality was just as reserved. In fairness to her, he wouldn't put her on the spot so soon. "That's fair. Send me what you have and keep your messaging application open on your laptop in case I want to ask you any questions prior to the meeting."

Peggy was feeling more at ease, so she simply nodded and smiled. Bruce checked the time and said, "I don't have enough time right now to explain the rest of my expectations to you, but I'll find some time on my calendar tomorrow and send you an invite. Stick with Russ and Kevin for the rest of the week and make certain that they get you access to all of the databases that they have access to. If they help you get the access requests submitted, those will route through me for first approval and I'll explain that IT should clone your access rights to be the same as your two coworkers before I forward them. That's the easiest way to ensure that all of you can do the same job."

Peggy picked up her backpack and spoke as she began to stand, believing herself to be dismissed. She said, "I'll send you an e-mail as soon as I log onto my laptop."

Opening the top center drawer on the desk, Bruce said, "Hang on." Removing an item from the drawer, he placed it on the top of his desk and slid it across to Peggy. "Let's trade. Give me your temporary badge and you can have your new employee badge."

Peggy silently unclipped the temporary badge from her belt and placed it onto the desk. She placed the new employee badge onto her belt and said, "Thank you. I feel somehow more official now."

"Good," Bruce said. "I want everyone to feel that they belong. I look forward to reviewing your analysis."

Nodding, Peggy turned and walked quickly towards the door. Before opening it, she turned and asked, "Would you like me to close the door when I leave?"

"No, you can leave it open," Bruce told her, so that is what she did.

Retracing her earlier route to return upstairs, Peggy contemplated her first meeting with her direct manager, a man who she had met briefly ten years ago, and someone who stood a better than average chance of not only recognizing her, but knowing exactly who she was. Reflecting on the way that her father always introduced her to people, Peggy found some comfort in him having always used her proper name. Plus, the picture on Bruce's credenza illustrated just how much in the background Peggy had always attempted to be at events similar to the one where she and Bruce had been briefly introduced.

The picture had been taken by Peggy's father at the request of Bruce's wife. She had wanted a picture of them together as they rode on the ski boat while it raced across Lake Lanier, towing two teenage girls on water skis behind it. Peggy had seen her father holding the camera, and assuming he was trying to take a picture of her and Janelle as they waterskied. She could be seen over Bruce's right shoulder in the background of the picture, waving.

Arriving at her workstation, Peggy saw that Russ and Kevin were both wearing wireless headsets, so she assumed that they were on a conference call. She simply waved at both of them and sat down to log onto her new laptop. Her temporary credentials worked to get her to the spot where she had to enter a new password. Her user name was the same as when she had been an intern, so she saw no problem with using the same password from that time. The system accepted her assumption without question.

Reaching into a pocket on her backpack, Peggy withdrew a USB clip drive and inserted it into the laptop. She then opened the e-mail application, which reminded her to also open the messaging application. She saw a message from Bruce, but it was the one from earlier so she ignored it and focused on sending him an e-mail instead. Editing out confidential portions of the analysis, she saved the new version as a different file. She quickly drafted a short e-mail, attached the new file containing her redacted analysis on the operations in New Jersey, and then hit the 'send' icon.

Chapter Two

Peggy knew that her first week of employment would be boring, but she had underestimated just how mind-numbingly boring it would truly be to spend hours with mandatory online tutorials on everything from company policies to setting up direct deposit of her pay.

There were moments of interest, such as Bruce's staff meeting, where she was introduced to the rest of his 'inner circle' and watched each of the senior managers as they tried to form an impression of her from her frumpy appearance coupled with Bruce's appreciation for the analysis that she had shared with him. He gave her full credit for providing the information that would make the pending transition of the New Jersey operations to California so much easier for all of them.

When Bruce and Peggy met the following day to discuss his expectations for her as a business data analyst, he brought up her report on the New Jersey analysis, "Who else did you share this with?"

Peggy considered the motivation for the question before answering, "I only showed it to my best friend, Janelle Sanders. She's an executive recruiter in our HR department in Atlanta. I wanted to get her feedback on my personnel assessments. Why?"

"Because your analysis and report could serve as a blueprint for the plan being implemented in New Jersey by corporate. Your analysis of the favorable job market in that area being a factor in people not wanting to relocate tipped the scales in the minds of corporate to offer severance packages with outplacement assistance to employees instead of offering relocation. Then, there was your part about the cultural differences between the New Jersey operations and ours out here and how that would impact the morale and performance of employees from both locations."

"Well, you have to admit that the open, collaborative approach that you have introduced here is night and day different from the work environment in New Jersey," Peggy said with a grin. "Employees need to buy into taking greater responsibility for their performance and productivity when they aren't being measured by the traditional metrics. You seem to have made great progress in getting that buy-in."

Bruce's eyes grew wide again as he asked, "And how would you know that? You've been here less than two days."

"Janelle wanted to help me make the right choice on location. She shared personnel statistics that show how much employee retention has increased dramatically through your 'New World of Work' initiatives. I know that some in corporate are questioning the lack of traditional performance metrics, but the overall results seen by them so far have quelled most of the criticism of your ideas."

Bruce didn't acknowledge the praise, but said, "Either your friend passed your analysis and report along to someone in upper management, or the time you spent as an intern has you channeling their same thoughts and opinions. That can be good and bad going forward. I need you and the rest of the business data analyst team to provide me with the same type of insight that you demonstrated with New Jersey. Russ and Kevin are excellent at gathering data, as you also appear to be, but I sense that you are far ahead of them with your ability to analyze that data to identify where opportunities for operational, system, or personnel improvements exist. Hopefully, they will be able to learn from your examples over time. I don't want anything to be off the table for consideration."

"We'll each have our strengths and weaknesses," Peggy offered. "I understand that you don't want any of us to focus on specific departments or operations, but won't there be advantages to just such a focus at times?"

"Let me give you some background on your coworkers that might help you understand my concerns relative to focus," Bruce said. "Russ had an extensive background working in the telecommunications industry before joining Armore. He is very knowledgeable about telephony systems and has already provided me with some recommendations on changes to our system that we may want to consider. What he hasn't provided to me, and what he seems to be struggling with, is what his proposed changes would mean to our disaster recovery strategy, which will be even more important than ever if the redundant operation that we have currently with the New Jersey location gets closed down. He isn't thinking broad enough about all of our operations yet. The same holds true with Kevin, only his background in outsourced computer help desk operations is limiting his vision. He has been viewing everything from a perspective that doesn't apply to most of our other operations. Both of them need to spend more time with other departments to gain the insights that will open their eyes and their minds. You will need to do the same, but I believe that you are already self-aware of that. Am I right?"