Business Traveller

A few years ago, I was on assignment in Dusseldorf. It’s a difficult thing because the krauts aren’t exactly famed for their hospitality or their partying spirit.

Fortunately I met an Austrian in the German office who was a kindred spirit. We got along like a house on fire, and stayed friends long after he left the company. He even taught me to ski (well sort of. What I learned was to go down a melting glacier on my back, screaming like a girl – it’s another story I should write one day).

A little while ago, my Austrian friend was diagnosed with MS, and told that he’d never be able to hold down a job again. He lives with his wife in Vienna, and I’ve been meaning to visit for a while now.

This last weekend, he was in London, and I had the chance to catch up with him and his wife again. He’s aged so much that it scared me a little. We had some time alone where we spoke about the good old days, and he told me a little about what it’s like for him to live with MS. It would frighten the crap out of me, I know that. Apparently last year, he wok up one morning, and the entire right hand side of his body had just stopped working. His wife later told me how it frightened her to see him get up out of bed, and fall flat on his face because he didn’t realise that this had happened yet.

The thing that really amazed me most, though, is that he isn’t bitter at all. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. In fact, the only thing that he seems to be afraid of is how much hsi condition frightens and upsets his wife and the people who love him. He’s actually grateful that he doesn’t have some of the symptoms that MS can cause. For example he was telling me h0w grateful he is that he doesn’t get the painful seizures, and that he is able to use the more mild (amino-acid based) of the possible continuous treatments.

He still has his sense of humour, and it humbles me to be around him – especially if I look at how trivial the things that I complain about are.

As regular as clockwork, our company is having it’s seasonal re-org – and the rumour is that this one is a biggy. 30% cuts across the board. Much bigger than the winter 10% cut, or the Autumn 20% cut.

 Anyway, our new CTO stood in front of us all, and explained to us that the reason why we aren’t innovative like google is that we are all too old and too male. If he had an organisation of 23 year-old women, well, then he’d have the most innovative team in the world. No mention of the fact that the processes he’s put in place completely squash any hope of innovation (something that we used to be quite good at).

The he told us about the great successes that we’ve had. How we’ve saved €450 million in a key area, and how we’ve managed to deliver great successes (inspite of the fact that 2/3 of the organisation tasked with delivering were laid off half-way through the project, and the rest were moved between projects and even continents at least twice).

Afterwards was Q&A, where he completely missed the fact that people who asked about the importance of their function in the new organisation were actually asking about how safe their jobs are. It eventually took an HR person to stand up and say that there would in-fact be cuts in all those areas, and that the importance described by the CTO didn’t preclude these cuts…

That’s why I’m taking my team to the golf course this afternoon. We’re going to walk around, and hit a little white ball just as hard as we can.  Hopefully when the details of the new organisation come through for the 1 April re-org (I checked – apparently it isn’t a joke) one of 2 things will happen.

1. I get an interesting new job with an innovation requirement, and enough freedom from the bullshit processes to actually do some innovation.
2. I get a nice little exit package.

Worst case scenario is that I get stuck in another crappy role in a temporary organisation that gets blocked from doing anything worthwhile – while the cockney tries to figure out how he wants to make the next round of cuts, and how to explain the lack of moralle and innovation in his little gulag…