What do I want to be when I grow up?

When I retired from Accenture 18 months ago I was ready for a break. After over 30 years as a management consultant, I wanted to get a PhD in history, finish editing my book of journalism, and spend more time with my adult kids. It’s been great! The PhD dissertation is coming along well, my book was published last year, and I’ve had the joy of traveling one-on-one with my kids. I’ve also retrained my brain to stop thinking in 30 min to 2 hour bursts and recommitted to long deep reading, archival research, and thinking about a topic for months at a time before attempting to write something about it.

Despite my intent to step away from the business world, late last year I was seduced into doing some light PE advisory work that involved me making a few calls to long-standing clients and getting back up to speed on what’s been happening in the banking world since I left. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, and it reminded me why I had made it my career in the first place.

In a previous post I talked about the comparison between jazz and classical music as ways of working, and my desire to work on a symphony rather than just continue to improvise. https://tinyurl.com/346tjvwu

But my experience of being back in the business flow reminded me of the Duke Ellington quote that "there are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind". It turns out that, while I still have a symphony of a PhD dissertation to complete, I also need a bit of jazz back in my life.

So, I am delighted to be rejoining 埃森哲 as a part-time Senior Adviser focused on a small number of banking clients. I'm very well aware that I have the privilege of being able to take a break and explore what I want to be when I grow up. At least for the moment, it appears that a portfolio career that spans the mid-19th century in New York and the banking industry of the mid-21st century seems like the right combination.

I look forward to catching up many old friends in the banking world and hope we won't all be singing the blues as the hens of aggressive commercial real estate lending begin to come home to roost over the next 12 months!