Alumni Profile: George Tillmann
Today: While officially retired as a Vice President of Booz Allen, George continues to consult with Chief Information Officers (CIOs) on a “less than”part-time basis. He is also the author of numerous articles on managing information technology, including “Looking for Privacy in all the Wrong Places” and “In Search of Overhead Heroes” which recently appeared in strategy+business, Booz Allen’s quarterly thought-leadership magazine. After working at Booz Allen for 22 years, originally as a management consultant but most recently as the firm’s CIO, George is enjoying the fruits of retirement and the joy of waking up each morning and not wondering what city he is in! Future challenges: Having spent many of his consulting years “marriage counseling” between CEOs and CIOs, George now enjoys the option of working selectively with CIOs. He is also considering turning “In Search of Overhead Heroes,” into a book. However, this stage of his life remains a work in progress. In planning it, he is reminded of a quote from Martin Buber: “Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware.”
George Tillmann
At Booz Allen & Before: George served as Booz Allen’s CIO from 2000 to 2005. He assumed the role of CIO just after the firm’s Y2K conversion was completed; new projects had been on hold for about 18 months, so there was enormous internal pent-up demand which had to be addressed. Booz Allen was also experiencing double-digit growth and George was in charge of modernizing the firm’s internal IT resources for the new millennium. During this period, his team supported offices in 70 countries on 6 continents. His work in revamping Booz Allen’s internal systems garnered a number of awards for the firm, including Computerworld’s “100 Best Places to Work” in 2003, 2004, 2005; the CIO 100 Award, 2003; and The Information Week 500 “Most Innovative Use of Technology Award,” 2003.
Prior to his tenure as Booz Allen’s CIO, George spent 17 years advising commercial clients around the world. Based in New York, he worked on assignments in a range of industry sectors, including retail, insurance, banking, and manufacturing. He enjoyed this broad mix of industries and the opportunities for cross pollination that it offered, whether introducing innovations from finance to manufacturing or bringing commercial concepts to government assignments for the IRS and other agencies. Before joining Booz Allen, George was regional manager for a small IT consulting company.
Do you feel that Booz Allen gave you a strong foundation for your current work? My post-Booz Allen career was really my position as the firm’s CIO. In some ways, I felt incredibly prepared for it after having seen the good, the bad, and the ugly at so many companies over the years.
I enjoyed working with the best. It was really great to be on assignments with very intelligent people who were driven to uncover the facts. Assignments can be very nerve-wracking. Coming into a company, you know nothing, but the client assumes you know everything. You’re parachuted in and on day one you can’t even find the restroom without help. By the time you leave three months later, you’ve learned an amazing amount. You probably know more about the company than any single individual in it.
The client is almost always right in thinking that there’s a problem and almost always wrong about what the problem really is. So every assignment is a bit of a Sherlock Holmes investigation. As a team, you hit the ground running. You’re from New York, there’s someone from San Francisco, from Singapore, and from London. You shake hands and get to work. Within a week, you know the real story. Then you gather the data to prove it. There’s a real high from working with smart and driven people. That is hard to find elsewhere. I think this is what keeps a lot of people at the firm.
What did you learn at Booz Allen – what skills and strengths did you acquire? For me, it was learning about the inner workings of companies, from clerks right up to the boardroom. I found it fascinating. Not many people have the chance to see a few dozen companies in this way. I gained a lot of knowledge in broad categories that I couldn’t get elsewhere. It instilled in me a strong desire to figure out what’s really going on inside organizations.
I also acquired a level of confidence and the skills of a team player. Booz Allen is great at turning people, who in the past operated on their own, into team players working together until three in the morning to get answers. I think the drive to solve a problem is key. One of the difficulties of being a manager at most companies is that you have to motivate a team to dig deep enough to really understand and solve a problem. At Booz Allen, the manager’s problem is pulling a team away from a problem! There’s a level of tenacity, a drive to dive in and cut through to the real issues.
Would you recommend working at Booz Allen? For people who are smart and want broad exposure, I think it’s a great place. It offers a great opportunity to experience, in a relatively short time, things that would take years and years to experience elsewhere. If you work for one company or even two or three in your career, you may see a few different corporate cultures. At Booz Allen you can experience that and more in your first year at the firm. There is no better opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t work in the corporate world. Being at Booz Allen, particularly early on in your career, is like doing post-graduate work. Anybody who really wants to have a major impact on a company can benefit from the Booz Allen experience.
Any favorite Booz Allen moment you’d like to share? Nothing I can tell you! I’m sworn to secrecy!
Any advice for people just starting their careers with the firm? There’s a tendency for people to want to specialize in one industry. I would advise people just joining the firm to take advantage of the broadness that Booz Allen provides. It’s an intellectual smorgasbord of unique and fascinating experiences. If you’re in the financial area, you can learn what manufacturing is doing and then bring some of those ideas back to finance. Focusing on only one area at Booz Allen is like visiting a Baskin Robbins every day for a month and only buying vanilla. You have a chance to try other flavors. That’s an opportunity you can’t get in a lot of other places; it would be a mistake to squander it.
Working with a lot of different people and in different countries is also very broadening. I worked for Booz Allen on five continents. There are two advantages to this – the first is the number of air miles you’ll gain! The second is the chance to see how businesses elsewhere in the world are run – their laws and cultures. I worked for Japanese, European, South American and Australian companies. These are experiences that you won’t get in many places.
I’ve always considered Booz Allen to be one of the biggest small companies I ever knew. In a positive way, it always felt considerably smaller than it was because of the independence it offered. There’s not a lot of hierarchy. If you’re going to succeed at Booz Allen, you have to walk the halls and meet other people, because you have to sell yourself. If people don’t know you, they’re not going to reach for you. You have to get out and bang on doors and let people know who you are, and say, “Think of me for your next assignment.” Since you’re essentially in business for yourself, you also have the opportunity to be very entrepreneurial.
profile posted February 19, 2007
