Aerosmith, Get a Grip, 1993

From: Garmt@Accenture
Sent: October, 2017 3:46 AM
To: EveryoneIknow@Accenture
Subject: I’m finally leaving Accenture

Hello,

Like so many others, it’s time for me to send you a note that I’m off to a different place. Like some leavers, I have no idea where I’ll go next. We simply don’t know what comes after death. Science has little data on this particular topic! Anyway, you have guessed by now that I meant it when I said I would work for this company for the rest of my life.

I came to learn. I viewed it a bit like a stint in the corporate army, where I would be properly trained for a few years, pass or fail the exam of becoming MD and thus find out what I was really worth.

It didn’t turn out that way. Instead of a corporate army I found a home, the first job after ten years with three previous employers, where I could just be myself. You can’t imagine the feeling of freedom I found. And yes, I got to learn everything I wanted. I even once got to screw up an important project without getting fired (sorry KPN). The exam I had expected came in a different form. Instead of playing the promotion roulette, Accenture gave me total freedom and the whole company to throw at the disease that ate me alive. I think that challenge, of what to do with that freedom and the whole company, was an exam. I think I passed.

You know you all have the same challenge, right? Your degree of freedom may be different, but that’s a mere detail.

Time to get sappy. Colleagues are not like family. I can quit being your co-worker but I can’t quite quit from my siblings or parents. Yet, at times we spend more time with our project team than with our spouse (said Nick Cave to bandmate Warren Ellis, `I’ve had more meals with you than my wife´). I was closer to some of you than someone who just shares my last name. We shared passion, commitment, extra hours and much more. Sometimes we shared love, for Accenture’s IT Operating Model (ITOM), I think, or for business development or for something really important like ITOM, or for each other. If I imagine my family, there are quite a few (ex-)colleagues amongst the Van Soest, Da Costa, Van Den Bosch and Werksma’s. Colleagues can be like family.

At the end of your life, all you have left is what you have given. When the end comes for you, you’ll have given me a lot. Thank you.

All the best, maybe see you at one last Friday Afternoon Drink, right after my funeral this Friday 27 / 10.

Garmt van Soest

Senior Manager
Accenture Strategy
“Kicking ALS in the balls”

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead