‘So I asked my friend what I should do, and she said, perhaps completely giving up is your best strategy.’
I harrumphed. Mostly at the idea that Sally Gulliver has other friends, and partly at the very idea of surrendering.
Things had certainly been tough for Sally recently. She was trying to improve the dreadful leadership at Global Blancmange, but the leadership was so dreadful that it didn’t want to improve.
And it had told her so in no uncertain terms.
‘How do you improve an organisation when its CEO doesn’t want you to?’
‘Perhaps he does not understand the urgency, or the importance, of the issue.’
Sally Gulliver flung her hands up to the ceiling. Fortunately they came back down again. ‘I’ve told him that 84% of the organisation reckon we’re about as good at leadership as one of our own blancmange. Sorry for the confusion I have unwittingly caused by being uncharacteristically clear.’
‘It appears leadership is not important to every leader.’
‘It appears leadership is not important to every leader’
‘Am I in the wrong organisation, Bingleby?’
‘Do you merely wish to preach to the converted, Sally Gulliver?’
‘At least the converted understand what I’m banging on about.’
‘But you would not be making a difference. The converted, notoriously, do not provide a challenge.’ I paused. ‘And though you may not feel like it now, I know you thrive on a challenge. Just look at how you never gave up when the wrapper on that family size Dairy Milk refused to open last Thursday.’
‘But I’m at a decision point, Bingleby, am I not?’
I nodded my leaves in assent. ‘Either you’re here to improve the organisation, or you’re not.’
Sally Gulliver sighed the sigh of HR people everywhere when wrestling with the professionally reluctant. ‘Time for a showdown with the CEO.’
A vision of Sally Gulliver dressed as a gunslinger, spurs jingling, stomped into my imagination.
Considering we are entirely different species, it was strangely appealing.
Next Friday: Why Are You Here?
@BinglebyinHR
Bingleby was confiding in Richard Goff
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