Larry wasn't going to drop the South Africa thing, "why did you choose South Africa instead of maybe India, China or even Eastern Europe? They have good software developers there who are probably cheaper." Brian laughed, "You are probably right, but I've known these guys for quite sometime. They were based in London before, but moved to South Africa to set up a software shop. Plus they really understand how business is run down here." "Okay that makes sense," said Larry. "When are you going to be back?" "Well I'm there for just 5 days so I will be back on Sunday. How about we meet on Monday after work? Since you are starting on that day you will be able to tell me about your first day at your new job." Brian responded. "Okay let's do it," Brian said. They both said goodbye to each other and hung up. Larry was smiling to himself when he put his phone down, remembering how he'd met Larry at his previous job. When he joined UCompli, a company which provided online financial compliance services to financial services companies, Brian was the Project and Development Manager for the company's commercial training team, responsible for providing both elearning and face-to-face compliance training to retail and investment banks and insurance companies. Larry worked as part of the L&D team that sat under HR. Later the L&D team was moved to sit side-by-side with the commercial training team. Naturally Brian became his manager. Initially he was really upset because he saw Brian as an overly commercial and driven manager who was much too focused on achieving results.
He would later learn that was so far from the truth. Though Brian is extremely driven and highly result focused, he is a consummate people developer. You can't be lazy and work for Brian, you will either resign or he might just fire you. That's something Larry had to learn when he started working for Brian, but it all turned out well for him. Under Brian, Larry learnt about project management, instructional design, learning and development strategy and a host of other things he didn't have the opportunity to learn when his team sat under the HR Director. When Brian left to start his own business Larry was upset, but suprisingly Brian had kept in touch and even become his mentor. It was also Brian who had finally helped him to move from the private to third sector. Looking back he now realises how fortunate he has been to have had a manager like Brian. And now that he was starting a new job where he would be working as the sole learning and development person for 200 staff he would need all the support he can get from Brian.
