American Dreaming - 1990's / Part V

Once I had actual computer gear to work with, my days became very busy indeed. Since there were no other staff on board at that point that were technically savvy (although at that point in my career, it could be argued that I was not technically savvy). I was given a pile of computers, a pile of software, a collection of cabling and told to install 125 computer workstations in the next couple of weeks. Since there was no network in place, all of this had to be done sequentially.

After a few aborted starts, I arrived at a process where I would work in batches of five computers. I placed them onto their eventual desktop locations, hooked up the cables for the peripherals and then disposed of the cardboard packing materials. I would then take my pile of standard software install disks and begin a round robin of inserting disks, hitting enter, and moving on to the next computer. It was extremely rote in nature but I actually began to enjoy the task. After pretty much being engaged in things that wouldn’t necessarily be relevant in my longer-term role, this was kind of fun in comparison.

The other major task that I was assigned in this period was the creation of what were called “manuals”. These were three ring binders that would contain listings of thousands of medical providers broken by specialty arrayed alphabetically and then by zip code (2 different listings). These listings had to be done in paper format because there was no network in place and there were also no connections to the corporate computer systems in place for this particular book of business. I would learn later that this was because we made promises that our corporate IT function couldn’t deliver on. As my career progressed through three other organizations in this same industry, I found that this was not an uncommon practice in the managed care business.

The first problem I encountered in producing these paper listings was that the information came from corporate in a file format produced by a software package that I was not familiar with. I had to quickly learn the format, export the information, and then read it back into a software program I was familiar in to format the information and produce the listings. Because of the sheer size of this file, this was a very long process using the equipment that was “state of the art” at that point in time. The export/import process alone was taking around 4-5 hours to complete.

I continued with the process of working with that data while I was also overseeing and doing the workstation installs for the unit all of this needing to be complete within a two week time span. One of the really nice things that I enjoyed during this period was the fact that the business had not found a manager or supervisor for me. The hierarchy of the operating unit was still forming in those early days which meant that for the most part, I developed a really good working relationship with the COO of the operating unit (my interviewer and eventual mentor), Jack Riser.

Jack was an incredible leader. I learned much from watching him during this startup (and two others I would be lucky enough to be involved in while I was with this company). He had an uncanny ability to make all of the folks that he interacted with feel as if they always had his undivided attention whenever they interacted with him. He presented a front that was cool and confident regardless of what particular crisis you were about to lay on his doorstep. He developed a management team that was the best experience I had in my professional life. Throughout most of the five years I would eventually spend with this organization, I always felt like I was involved in something that was grand and promising. This was a complete shift from my experience within Civil Service where the only thing I ever felt like was a cog in a machine that was too big to ever truthfully care about working efficiently or providing a work environment where staff had any autonomy to speak of with regards to decisions or actions.

The first staff that joined that operating unit in those early weeks banded together and created a close relationship that was completely foreign to me in my adult working experience. We worked very hard and long hours but it was also a lot of fun and very rewarding to my spirit, especially given that these also were the final days in my first marriage. Despite the negative aspects of the dissolution of my domestic life, my professional life served to be a welcome new focus in my life.

---Jim