New Twist and a midnight mistake

In a twist of weirdness that only my lunatic corporate life could throw up, everything seems as though it’s about to change (well, not everything, but you’ll see what I mean).

As I revealed in my last post, I have decided to leave and had blown the whistle on Dumb Boss’s bullying and madness and was set to head off into the sunset with a stack of cash and a plan to do nothing for a whole year.  I think I also told you our company was bought out, which I was thrilled beyond belief about – a fantastic smokescreen for my departure that could form the basis of an explanation for decades to come!

The two events however seem to be incompatible.  The head of HR called me and said our deal’s off.  No signed deed was in place because I didn’t trust Dumb Boss and wanted to stitch them up so he’d never as much as raise an eyebrow about me to anyone else.  So, now the new owners will “repoint” the support roles like mine (meaning freedom from Dumb Boss perhaps???) and seem to have called a freeze to any big staff changes.  DAMMMMMMMNNNNNNN!

So many factors now in this equation, where do I start?  I was OK about it at first (hell, at least I’d keep getting paid) and maybe I could wrangle a deal anyway if they took responsibility from me and made me report to someone less senior in the organisation.  But…HANG ON…I might now look like a lunatic in front of the CEO and head of HR and can’t ride into the sunset after spilling my guts on Dumb Boss…and what if I am stuck reporting to him after all, making no change and continued imprisonment in my dark musty hole?

OK, I decided the plan was to carry on as usual.  Pretend nothing was wrong.  Stay calm.  Until I went to a meeting of Dumb Boss’s direct reports, and he hands out the revised department budgets for 2010 and HE HAS CUT MINE BY 10%!  I have probably not told you yet about how DumBo [NEW NICKNAME -CHECK IT OUT] sets budgets.  Oh, please let me.  When I first arrived in my job (and remember my mandate was to bring change to a desperately under-performing and low morale team), I found out in my first week that he had cut my budget the week before I got there.  Yep, you read that right.  The week before I got there.  A pattern seemed to be forming – he had also cut part of my role out without telling me the week after I signed my contract, but that’s another story.

Then, a few weeks later, I was asked to cut it by another 5%.  Except no-one gave me my budget so I spent nights in my sad new office in pathetic tears not being able to work out how much money I had.  How was I to turn around this team, many of whom were dramatically underpaid, without money to do it??  Then, in the budgeting process, he cut my budget again by ANOTHER 5%.  When I rang him / emailed him asking to discuss the budget with him and tried to explain to him that we needed MORE money, not less, I got the Dumb Boss Brick Wall.  “The budget is the budget” was the reply.  “You are a senior person; you should be able to work out how to make the department work with the budget you have.”  And that was it. 

No meeting.  No engagement.  No discussion.  And this process has repeated itself again and again for the last 3 years.  My team is barely coping with our workload – my PA is non-existent as she’s on maternity leave and I wasn’t allowed to replace her.  I have people stretched to breaking point.  But, because we were all asked to save money, we went without.  Doing the right thing.  And now, because we have “coped” with the lower resourcing, DumBo has decided we can afford to lose more money.  “There’s no longer a GFC” he proclaims, “so we don’t need all these lawyers”.  He seems not to have noticed that we have had more lawyers than this for years, with diminishing numbers, the massive wave upon wave of post-GFC regulatory reform coming through, and the humungous legal workload that integrating the two companies will involve.  Or how tired my team and I are.

Plus, it seems we were the only team in his area being asked to work to a lower budget in 2010 than we had in 2009.  All his Flying Monkeys got MORE dough.  They of course claimed they didn’t through the use of dodgy accounting techniques like using provisions to pay for their areas.  But, on paper, it didn’t seem fair and my management team were furious as well.

OK, now it’s time for me to confess something bad: I have a midnight email compulsion.  As I felt the wave of stress return to my mind and body because I was trapped, I reverted to my wicked ways (it’s been well over a year since my last fierce email to DumBo I promise).  So I drafted him an email telling him how unfair this was, and could we discuss it, and practically accusing him of stacking the finance budgets and taking money from legal before we were cut loose and he could no longer dip into our cost centre to fund the Flying Monkeys who suck up to him.  I suggested that he remove MY role to save his money.  Naturally, although I drafted it just to make me feel better, I went just that leeeeeetle bit far.  And sent it.  To him and the head of HR. 

Yes: oh dear. 

Not quite sure of what I was thinking.  In my defence, it WAS 2.07am.  The guilt kicked in pretty quickly.  Part of me wanted them to turn around and give me the flick.  Part of me wanted the HR chick to see how desperately stressed I became again under his evil empire.  Then the part of me that wished it was still in my drafts folder started wondering if I should do something to avert disaster.  Apologise??  Heck no!  He’d sent me WAY worse emails than that.  Plus, I had to make the point…

One of the Flying Monkeys from Accounts fronts up 2 days later and declares that my budget was targeted because I had asked for 4 new resources…so they cut them out.  WHAT?  “in what universe do you think I would imagine I would have 4 new roles approved?” I shrieked.  He confessed he found it illogical.  And then when I worked through my budget with him, he realised he had it wrong.  I felt a little better and a little worse at the same time.  “I need to go back and see DumBo” he promises, “We’ll have to revise your budget target”. 

Not sure how this one will turn out.  However, the good news is that something nice happened as well.

One of my team connected with her counterpart at our new owners in their legal team.  Despite my whipping myself for months and my massive loss of confidence due to DumBo, the reaction of the legal team of our new owners (a monster-sized company) was somehwat unexpected.  Dumb Boss had told me I might have some reporting line into the General Counsel for our country…someone I had met, and who was WAY too junior to be my boss.  “It’s like you reporting to one of us!” declared my management team.

However, one of my old team works at our new owner in the legal team, and it seems she had been providing wonderful reports about me.  Their general reaction was  ”Fantastic!  We hear such great things about [me].  She’s a really rigorous lawyer and charismatic leader.  It will be great to have her in our team.  Of course, she’s really senior so she’ll have to report straight to the Group General Counsel.” 

Pathetic old me cried - I really understood then the depth of what Dumb Boss had done.  I remembered again what it was to be respected and highly regarded.  One of my managers was with me – her reassurance was that our team gave me that praise, that they knew how good I was, and what I could do; that it was only Dumb Boss who had no idea.

The next day, I managed to speak with the leader of our integration stream, a very senior employee of our new owners, and a former lawyer herself.  She confirmed I would report to the Group GC, that he was a wonderful man.  I hinted that I would love the change to happen sooner rather than later.  “Message received” she purred.  “Dumb Boss has asked to be consulted about the new reporting lines for the legal, risk and secretariat areas but he’ll be pissed off.  We don’t do that around here.  We just make the decisions and get on with it.”

Is this a new future?  And have I screwed myself over with that damn email?  Has the CEO seen it and written me off? 

Is Dumb Boss finally losing power?

Decision Time

Oh, hasn’t it been a while? So sorry. Much has gone on.  Let me try to update you.

I’ve made an important decision.  I’m leaving at the end of the year.  No, Dumb Boss isn’t finally getting rid of me.  I’m not being fired because we lost that case.  Nothing like that.  I’m just done, that’s all.

If you don’t know, I joined the Company in 2007 to turn around the dysfunctional Legal team.  Thankfully, everyone acknowledges that I’ve achieved that.  So, what was next?  It’s fair to say that Dumb Boss isn’t helping to facilitate My Next Big Step.  Plus, the international opportunities that I joined the Company to access have shrivelled up since the GFC knee-capped the joint.   At the Company at least , I’ve meandered into my personal dead end.

For what seemed like a long time, I kept updating this blog with Dumb Boss’s considerable sins.  I tapered off as I slowly came to take his lunacy for granted in some kind of corporate Stockholm syndrome.  And to realise that he has them fooled.  Not all of them, of course.  Most of his peers know he’ll end up with his face on a wanted poster and think he’s evil.  But those above him buy his act, and I just came to realise that his staggering ability to manipulate the truth meant my concerns about him would never gain traction – he was too good at covering his tracks. 

I knew things had gone too far when one of my direct reports shut my office door, and sickly explained how Dumb Boss arranged for him to be approached to review some legal advice that I had given.  All because Dumb Boss didn’t like the answer.  Even though I told Dumb Boss that outside counsel agreed with the view I had expressed.  My direct report refused.  When others hear this story, they are horrified.  When it happened, although it registered as wrong in my head, I barely flinched.  I had finally come to accept his bad behaviour as normal: it was time to go.

But not before I took my issues to the head of  HR, unfolding 2 years of stories about the control freak.  They tried to have my reporting line changed.  Although the CEO was happy to do it, our Group requirements for GC reporting wouldn’t permit it.  Then, the choice: stay or go?  Exhausted from all of it (and possibly not in the best frame of mind to make the call) I decided to go.  I laid out the ground rules: I would stay until the end of the year, have them pay me a shitload of money for breaching my employment contract, and they couldn’t say crap about me. 

It’s been over 9 years that I’ve been a General Counsel and, as much as I’ve loved it, I’m done.   The advent of Corporate Risk Management roles means that the GC role has slowly receded in importance in many organisations – I am continually amazed at how many things legal is kept out of in place of the Chief Risk Officer.   I have no interest in becoming a CRO, so it feels like sunset time for this part of my career.

So, you’re wondering: what am I going to do?  Truth is: I don’t really know.  Not yet.  I need to breathe in deeply, over and over again, shut my eyes and actually listen to the world around me.  Then I’ll go see if there’s something left of the life I forgot about living while I was clambering up the corporate ladder.    

I am trying to develop my poverty plan: what if I never work again?  Can I afford just to sell up, move to another country, grow my own food and never let corporate life darken my doorstep again?  Of course, I’ve spent plenty of time changing my own mind on this.  Every time I think about it, I find a breath catches in my throat.  The reaction of others has reinforced the two-edged vibe of this decision.  Some have been caught, wide-eyed and fearful for me.  Those few in my team who I have told are upset but they’ll go on without me.  Most of my friends, though, have practically cheered. 

When I broke the plan to my brother, he said “Fantastic.  We have been so worried about you.  I know that, if you don’t leave that place, you’ll be dead before you’re 50″. 

So, I’ll take 9-10 months or so off (before I start begging others for work!).  Travel for half of it.  Perhaps I’ll come across me again somewhere on the Mediterranean.   I’ll walk the Camino de Frances across Spain, wile away weeks in the Greek and Croatian Islands.  Finally visit the Cinque Terre and Lake Como in Italy…straddle Europe and Asia in Istanbul.  Find me again.  Write a book. Work out a future.

The final showdown?

Sorry I’ve been so quiet.  Encountered a technical problem on my blog, for one thing.  But really the issue is that I think I’m heading into the final showdown with Dumb Boss.

He has reverted to bullying me, and using any negative thing someone says as fodder for my under-performance.  He has even committed this to writing – in emails, which he is particularly patronising and belittling in.

The core of the issue is that, after the transfers of funds, I was asked my view by the internal auditors.  So I told them I thought there were risks with the transactions.  He went ballistic, became threatening and now I’m not allowed to raise a risk issue unless he agrees with me.  This includes to the auditors.  He reckons that I’ve been running my own agenda, but all I’ve done is express concerns about a transaction that (a) the regulator is sniffing around, and (b) I warned them not to do in the first place.  Being the General Counsel, THAT’S MY JOB!

Yet again, he’s also let another Senior Exec complain about some advice we gave – and even though I tried to brief him on the issue more than once (he declined) he is not interested in hearing my side of the story and is slamming me in my performance review.  I have said I want an independent person to review what was done, as I stand by our conduct and the advice given.  He says he doesn’t want to “re-litigate” it – “there’s no point”.

He also has given me no credit for working around the clock for 3 months to sort out all sorts of disasters that were going on.  Instead, I got criticised for making decisions instead of letting the business do so – problem was, there was no-one from the business around and, when they were around, they were unprepared to make the decisions…leaving a massive and dangerous gap given the complexity and speed with which things were moving. 

He also failed to actually meet the promises that he made to me in our half yearly discussion – that he would meet with me every 2 weeks, and we’d discuss issues and he would raise any negative feedback in a timely manner so that we could discuss it.  He has done that twice.  No more.  And now he’s raising issues without notice or interest in my version of events in my performance review.  I feel like I’m suffocating.  I can’t move.  There’s no room – it’s his way or the highway, and I have no way of knowing his way until well after the event.  Naturally, since I can’t get in to meet with him, I can’t work out what he’s thinking…he now tells me he has no time to meet with me.

So, I am now pondering how to deal with him.  Do I:

(a) resign – in an environment of GFC crap where I may not get a job

(b) formally respond and go all “legal” on him

(c) roll over – but compromise what I regard as the core part of my role, for which I will be criticised if I don’t do it!  (he is asking me to stop being concerned about whether the Boards are meeting their legal obligations, and focus on assisting management.  My working assumption is meant to be that management knows what it’s doing and will never cause the boards to be in breach of the law…except I know different.  Few people in this business seem to know or understand their legal obligations, and there have been numerous things done that compromise the Boards…how can I ignore this when it’s my job to help people navigate through it?

(d) ask him to change my position description to remove the things that he doesn’t want me to do - things that are crucial for a General Counsel, like ensuring compliance? 

(e) something else – report him to the regulator?  Sue him? 

So, we have another meeting tomorrow.

Buffett is right

So, you know how the old Legend of Omaha has said “It’s when the tide goes out that you find out who’s been swimming naked”?  Well, guess what…it’s Dumb Boss that might just have been caught without his duds on.

The last few weeks have been mad at work.  I returned and managed to wander about in a daze for a couple of weeks, but then got sucked into the Credit Crisis vortex, perhaps never to be seen again.  As you know, Dumb Boss is the CFO, and it seems that he hasn’t really been paying enough attention to our regulatory capital.  Whoops, it’s been invested in funds that are exposed to other institutional investors, as well as money the Company manages for others…

While the tide was up, the regulatory capital was in the black.  However, the past 3 weeks has been spent madly trying to unravell a bunch of cross-investments where we’ve mixed our own money with that which we manage for others.  Makes for an interesting legal conundrum when you have to battle with conflict of interest laws and act in the best interests of others.

So, we were busy working through the labyrinthian sets of investments, trying to make sure we protected everyone involved.  In one trust, we had the Company’s own dough, plus plenty of investor money.  Gee, what to do?  I said I could theoretically get it all out, but felt better about pulling only some out now and getting the rest later – to not do so would open us up to massive reputational risk, especially since there was a good chance we’d soon have to freeze the trust we were exiting to protect investors!

So, the CEO and head of the Business Unit agreed but I did ask the innocent question: is any of the remaining money regulatory capital?

Apparently, behind the scenes, all hell broke loose.  The CEO grabbed Dumb Boss, who hadn’t realised he had $135m in the trust, and the next thing you knew he was calling urgent meetings and sending unfortunate emails to the world, panicking about getting the Company’s assets out of the trust.

So, we had to remove it but I left it to DB and his cronies to justify it.  I gave massive warnings about the reputational risk, and sat back.  On Thursday, I updated the Board on this and their HEADS EXPLODED.  It was great.  I just told them I’d outlined the risks but the CEO and CFO made the call, so go talk to them.  The Board was reconvened the next day, after DB frantically began reinventing history by claiming not to have been warned about the risks, and quoting all sorts of so-called “pre-existing reasons” to pull the money out.  On Friday, there was another Board meeting and, as he spoke of all the reasons to get the money out, he was warned by one of the Directors that he was the CFO not only for the Company, but also this subsidiary.  This, bizarrely, was big news to Dumb Boss, who looked quizzically at me as I nodded to confirm the Director was right.

Meanwhile, 2 of DB’s peers were in the meeting and all 3 of us were exchanging looks of disbelief at DB’s massive and unrelenting stupidity.  It was great.  A true highlight.

Fingers crossed that he’ll unravel like a cheap pair of tights.

Old friends in Athens

It’s 19 degrees and raining here in Athens (hey! when I looked last week it was balmy and sunny – what happened?).  I seem to have had no jetlag, which seems impossible given how long it took to get here and how many time zones I am away from home.  I attribute it to being upgraded to First Class (blisssss) and taking plenty of herbal sleep stuff like melatonin.

Since this is my third visit to Athens, I have made friends here so I am in the process of catching up with them.  It has proved a little more eventful than even I imagined!  First is Anastasia.  Anastasia is about my mum’s age – 70? – and her hobby is languages and travelling the globe.  She is a serious go-getter, and I first met her on the plane on the way to Athens on my first trip.  I looked up from my “flight thoughts” to discover her staring and smiling at me.  We struck up a conversation, and it turns out she was returning home from a South American adventure.  We met a few times for dinner, and she joined my friend and I on the gorgeous island of Hydra, where Anastasia dragged us out of the standard tourist trap half way around the island to have the BEST meal I had in my entire Greek sojourn.   It was one of those classic tales: local taverna, with the fisherman reclining on a seat.  A trip into the kitchen revealed fresh red mullet (the “King of Fish” according to the Greeks).  We had it flash fried with the most amazing taramosalata (caviar dip), fries and salad.  Just magnificent.

Anastasia seems to be slowing down a little, at least in body.  Her spirit is lively, though, and we will have dinner tonight.

Another friend is Laura, who I met in a jewelry store in Athens.  I bought so much stuff there that we became friends, and we have had a meal or 2 each time I have visited.  After arriving yesterday evening, I hot footed it straight to the jewelry store and – lo and behold! – no Laura.  The owner, Costas, who I know from previous visits, just blinked at me when I asked where she was.  “She has left”.

So, I grabbed her number and will get all the goss tomorrow night.

My third friend is a little different.  George.  Giorgos in Greek.  On my first visit we had something of a fling.  On my second, we didn’t see each other (he protests that he rang and came to find me but no luck).  So, we have reconnected on this trip.  We have just met for coffee.  He is as hot and heavy as ever.  Oh dear.  Now I have to work out if, in the cold hard light of the Acropolis, whether I feel the same way.  It’s all good and well to fantasise about him from a distance, but when he’s right there in flesh and blood, one has to make choices…

The last thing I want is to make the wrong choice here and then realise that my life is completely in the toilet.  Dumb Boss, shit time at work PLUS completely wrong choices in men.  Bloody hell, it’s bad enough that world financial markets are going mental…leaving me contemplating the harsh reality that walking out of my job (even with a tidy pay out) may not be an option…

Now, how did having an affair with a Greek dude get back to Dumb Boss?

Anyhow, I’ll try and update you as I go, but I didn’t bring my laptop (travelling light, don’t you know – not enough warm clothes, as it turns out…).  This seems like it will be one interesting trip.

Rainy Saturdays

I used to love a rainy Saturday, but now they just seem to make me feel depressed.

Two weeks ago, one of my management team told me that the team wanted to nominate me for a senior leadership award, but they were worried that I wouldn’t want it in the current political climate.  The team is going well.  There are still a couple of drama queens, but things have improved out of sight.  I am really chuffed that they want to nominate me: Lord knows, though, I won’t win if the Exec Directors that are aligned with DB have anything to do with it.

But how do I deal with this overwhelming feeling that I have no ability to do my job as General Counsel properly?  The feedback from DB has been whirling through my head for 3 weeks now, and I still can’t make head nor tail of most of it.  Much of it contradicts itself.  How do you address issues when you don’t even understand them?

There are two issues here:  one is my ego.  How can I be subservient to Dumb Boss when he is so patently such a fool?  This folly is a well known fact; but my hopes that the new CEO would pick it up quickly have been dashed.  I was approached by the Regional CEO, who is the CEO’s boss, and a supporter of mine.  He told me I would need to fit the regime because, while he could say words of support, the CEO would take time to work Dumb Boss out.  How long will this be?  And would I be one of the sacrifices that would eventually expose him?

Can I live with checking everything with him?  He now wants to see the questions in our customer survey, and the list of people being surveyed.  He always reviews my papers for the Board, often adding himself in as a contact person.  He doesn’t let his direct reports nominate their own staff for leadership opportunities, or even consult with them; instead, he takes these decisions on his own.

So, even if I can live with it: swallow my pride and shut up at the right times, is that what a General Counsel should do?  Will I speak up at the right time, or will he just break my spirit?

My managers are worried that I will leave.  For, if I do, they will follow.  So much is at stake.  But the Company seems so full of backstabbing and blame – do I really want to be here?

I have a holiday to Greece ahead…I will be in Athens in 2 short weeks.  Although I fear a crisis while I am away, I need this break to consider my future.

Performance Review: Part 2

You can only imagine how much I was looking forward to this.  I walk in and prepare for another schellacking.  Instead, DB is calm.  He begins: “Well, last time I did a lot of talking.  Why don’t you take it away this time.”

I considered his beady little Dumb Boss eyes.  “How honest can I be?”  He choked for a second, then composed himself.  I continued: “The biggest issue is whether our relationship will ever work.”  There.  I said it.

A fairly civil conversation ensued, at which we agreed I would visit the other Executive DIrectors and get direct feedback, and that he and I would (for the first time ever) actually meet on a regular basis.  That he would give me feedback on issues as they happened.  I foreshadowed that I would respond formally to the issues listed in his extensive email.  All in all, it went OK.

Over the next 2 weeks, I finalised my response: when I delivered it to him, though, he seized up…he felt it was like a declaration of war, whereas I felt I needed to respond to the issues that he had raised.  It was a fair and balanced document: where there were things to learn, I acknowledged it.

But I also noted that he needed to remember that my team was a work in progress: that just over a year ago, I had arrived to turn the team around.  Judging me and the team’s performance was premature and particularly unfair given how overworked we had all been for the entire year. 

We will have to see how it goes.  To be honest, I can’t see how it will work.  I know for a fact that he’s dribbled a biased viewpoint into the CEO, and that with all the problems in the business, my troubles with DB are not a priority.  Especially when all his other direct reports toe the line and hush up at the first sign of trouble.

Another chat with HR

During chat number 1, my HR rep suggests and she and I should get together with the Acting ED of HR to talk about the Dumb Boss situation.  So, we catch up for an hour the day before Performance Review Part 2.

They are their usual cagey selves, but announce that no-one wants me to leave.  Not even Dumb Boss, and he has confirmed this personally (that asshole; I had already started making plans to spend my massive pay-out on a 12 month break, some of which would be spent studying Italian in Florence, probably at a school going by the name of a famous Renaissance artist).  They give me some meaningless advice, and then give me a couple of pretty nifty pieces of information:

1. The CEO has no plans to break up Legal.  While he might change his mind, and Dumb Boss might force the issue anyhow, all the new CEO wants is for service areas to have more accountability to the business.  This is completely cool with me; in fact, that was the next phase of our plan.

2. The CEO asked that they tell me he really values me.  I cried at that bit.  Only a little bit, though.  It certainly made me feel better.

The other thing that made me feel better that week was my lawyer, who reckons DB could seriously screw himself over if he makes the wrong move.   Only 1 day to go until Performance Review Part 2…

Performance Review Part 1

Don’t panic, I thought.  DON’T PAAAAANIIIIICCCC!  CEO is smarter than to be taken in.

I called our ex-HR dude in Europe: What should I do next?

His words were calming: don’t put it past the new CEO to know exactly what DB is like.  He is a smart guy, and has already commented that DB “Has his phaser turned to kill instead of stun.”  Hmmm.  OK.  I’ll trust that and prepare for my performance review with DB.

So, I wander into DB’s cage at the appointed time, and take my seat across the desk from him.  He then pulls out a file with my name on it and yanks out a pile of paper.  He vaguely refers to a couple of positive things I have done this year…and then promptly announces that, for all of his team who are “service providers to the business” he has sought anonymous feedback from 15 people on our performance.  15 people???  He has asked Exec Directors (ie his peers), but there aren’t 15 of them…it appears that he has also been busy asking MY PEERS for feedback.  All without my knowledge.

He then reads out a list of supposed sins, from “The Legal team only provide basic service”  (uh, yeah, because we have been swamped and because DB randomly cut our budget last year), to “they sometimes get advice wrong (um…every lawyer does), to “they outsource too much”  (again, that’s what happens when you’re under-resourced). 

Naturally, all feedback is anonymous, rendering me unable to know what to properly respond to.

As you can imagine, it hit me like a tidal wave and I didn’t know what to respond to first.  I did, however, remain calm and cool about the whole sorry tale.  I responded to what I could and then suggested that he needed to work on his own communication style.  That I felt it was both unfair and inappropriate that he had bombarded me with this without warning, and that I would respond formally in due course.  Needless to say, it was an hour and 20 minutes before we parted…and he announced that there was to be a follow-up session in which he would cover the “positive” feedback.   It was scheduled for 8 days later…leaving me to sweat and continue to hatch my response plan.

I knew I couldn’t panic.  I had to remain level-headed and take each day as it came.  The worst thing I could do is to over-react and ruin any chance of credibility he had.  I needed to be cold and calculating.  It was the only way to respond.  It seemed to me like it was time to plant some helpful information with our HR area…

Chilling at the spa

OK.  Continuing my Battle with Dumb Boss. 

I went to a spa for the weekend and spent $3,000 on clean food, sensual massages and thinking about DB and what appeared to be his evil plan to oust me.  First of all, I decided, I needed to NOT CARE what he did with my team (yes, even with all I’ve put into rebuilding the team).  Why?  Because if I took it personally he would attack me for not supporting a fact of corporate life, and I would end up being too emotional to make the cold, calculating decisions that were necessary to take it to him.

So, with that decision made, I also emailed our regional general counsel (my functional boss) about what had been going on.  He was very concerned to hear that there were considerations about legal’s reporting lines being changed, and my governance role being threatened.  He is a wise old bird, and I figured that he could help me build a strategy to defeat DB’s evil plan.  A very cool dude indeed.

I also downed lots of lentils, bought much Babor facial products (very nice German stuff – hello again, Deutschland) and did tai chi each morning.  This is apart from finding out that I am a somewhat talented salsa dancer, and blew the other less rythmic chicks out of their socks.  But that is beside the point. 

I arrived back at work on the Wednesday and had cooled to the idea of seeing the CEO first – I needed to duke it out with DB before unveiling all his evil ways to the CEO.  However, when I rang to cancel the appointment, his PA told me that the CEO had asked her to postpone it until after my appointment with the CFO.  Not surprisingly, it appears that DB had been doing his own lobbying.