A Day in the Life
of a Senior Consultant
Meet Alex Speechly
My name is Alex Speechly, I live a hundred clicks from Toronto, Canada in a fast-developing place in GTA with my wife & kid. With the entire Urban population rushing to the heart of the city at the break of dawn, a coffee and Bagel (or Timmie’s as we call it here) in hand, a smile on the face greeting your co-traveler, covered up with 3 layers or more (yup it’s that time of the year and you don’t want to freeze out there). I just went into my own imagination for a moment… “Where is your workplace located?”, “How long do you need to commute?”, “Are you working from home?” these are the most common questions I get. Well, thanks to our Leadership team, who have immense trust in us that we will fulfill our client tasks with aplomb and go the extra mile with our deliverables, I have the privilege of working remotely from my little “Home-Office.” Although I miss the buzz and frenzy of being in a cubicle with colleagues and fun-loving people, my home-office space allows me to gather my thoughts around some of the scenarios that arrive while I work.
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A day in my life? Well, let me take you through some of the moments I encounter on a day-to-day basis…
An average day in my job
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7 - 8 AM: Wakey, wakey… It’s been more than a decade since one of the most long-lasting fights in my life started, the one between my subconscious mind and alarm clock. The clock keeps shooting waves of sound travelling speedily towards my ears and my mind shoots signals to my body to counterattack… With eyes closed, my hand hits the snooze button several times before I finally accept my fate and put my feet on the ground, lifting my still sleepy body off the comfort of my bed around 7. I spend the next hour stretching, freshen-up, make my way out for a stroll round the neighborhood listening to my favorite EDM music. It’s a quarter to 08:00, time to freshen-up once again and grab a quick bite before I take the hot seat in front of my Office laptop.
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8 - 9 AM: I grab some coffee and head over to start my work. My typical workday starts with a client call, who are preparing for their planning cycle and working on the process we put together for their planners. Our team (AP) as well as a few members from the client-side work together sharing notes, discuss upcoming meetings, deliverables, how we are progressing against timelines and feedback on what’s going well and what’s not to come up with a strategy and work on the deliverables. We discuss on the day’s agenda, what are the tasks planned for each of us, have we met deadlines for previous tasks and what’s the way forward. We also plan for our meeting with the larger Planning users meeting which is coming up in the next hour.
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9 - 10:30 AM: I login the meeting and see a large contingent has joined, we exchange pleasantries while we wait for more users to join the session. It is an open forum wherein we address some of the questions on the process to be followed for the planning cycle within the tool and address some of the concerns that the users are facing. The discussions take various turns with a flood of suggestions from different departments suggesting improvements, a business head steps in to suggest the best way to collate ideas and prioritize based on what is necessary and what can wait for the near future.
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10:30 AM - 12:30 PM: I take a quick break (provided there are no scheduled meetings), quietly sneak into my baby’s room to check on how she’s doing, have a glass of juice and hop back onto our virtual office. This is where our actual work for the day starts where we brainstorm on points from our last meeting with the larger team and focus on the final list of deliverables form the vast list of suggestions we just received. Our discussion mostly revolves around our individual tasks and some involving collaborating on getting things done together. I may have to drop from the virtual office to attend other meetings/discussions, gather requirements/review completed tasks and take feedback.
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12:30 - 1 PM: Sometime into our virtual office, I take a break to have lunch, get some fresh air, play with my little one (she’s my stress buster), listen to some music.
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1 - 4 PM: I spend some time to gather my thoughts around the many discussions we just had, review my to-do list once again and dive into completing pending tasks. Finding solutions to a variety of problems is a thrill, but it also means I need to back this up with test cases to make sure I've covered all bases and get the right results. I further work on getting my tasks completed as much as possible and ensure I am ready for the status call in a few minutes.
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4 - 6 PM: We get together for our end of day status call to see how much we have accomplished and if we have any tasks which might spill over due to unforeseen circumstances, tool issues, insufficient inputs, pending feedback. Post our discussion I either continue in the virtual office or drop and finish up my pending tasks (which sometimes spills over to the next hour or two) before I call it a day. It’s time now for me to shed my professional avatar and get into my parenthood role, eager to pick my little one, play with her and give her my undivided attention after a long day. It’s also a time my wife gets a break, who I immensely appreciate for her generous support by sacrificing her personal & professional life to take care of our home and baby while I am dedicating my time to work.
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