Sheridan Poorly and The Battle of the Blonds
So there we are: we’ve been in business for nearly nine years, and it feels, for the second time, as if we’re starting from scratch again. Even with our reduced head-count, the forward billings look decidedly shaky. Unless we win some substantial new business, and soon, we are at real risk of going under, and don’t think for a moment that Stid doesn’t know that: he’s cut and run at the only time in nine years when his departure genuinely threatens our future, which is why he will forever remain in my top three bastards of all time, and why I will never speak to him again. Actually I wouldn’t piss in his ear if his brain were on fire. There, another something off my chest.
While the horrors of the split have been going on, though, there has also been another major development, with short- and long-term implications for the business, and which now requires a major decision to be made: a decision which has to weigh up the potential of a long-term opportunity against the short-term financial risk. And given our current precarious situation, it’s a decision which could sink us, before the (possible/probable) pay-back has us swimming back to financial security.
Concurrently with Stid and the Cat’s deteriorating relationship, the Cat has introduced us to Stuart and Liza, who are senior account handlers with a big London direct marketing agency and with whom we share a client – Rothmans. We create the sales promotions – they develop direct marketing campaigns on the back of them, using the client’s growing database of smokers. Given the way that legislation is going in cigarette advertising and marketing, a combination of below-the-line disciplines (promotions, direct marketing, sponsorship) represent a real opportunity for big-budget activity, now they can’t spend it on media advertising. Over a few beers (and fags), it has become apparent that the two of them are disillusioned with their current agency employers and harbour ambitions to run their own show.
We have been discussing adding direct marketing to our ‘offering’, but to be credible, you have to have skill-sets and proven experience in the business. It is particularly ironic that this should come up now, because one of the fundamental reasons for the breakdown (on paper at least) between Stid and the Cat and me had been his insistence on taking us down a direct marketing route, and our resistance to it. Just as he splits to form what will become a direct marketing agency, rather than a promotions agency, here we are discussing the establishment of a direct marketing arm in our own operation.
During all the acrimony of the last few weeks, the Cat has continued talks with them about setting up Marketing Principles Direct – a semi-autonomous arm of the agency, with its own discrete client list, which would allow us to cross-sell the new discipline to our (somewhat emaciated) existing client list. Stuart is a skinny guy with a pleasant enough disposition, who seems credible – you’d be a bit disappointed if he weren’t. He’s the one who’s apparently running the show, so it is with him that the initial meetings take place. He’s keen to do the deed and set up what he no doubt thinks of as his own show, albeit under our auspices. It is all predicated on his claim that he can bring with him the Financial Times account, which is worth at least a quarter of a million a year in billings. There are other potential gains, too, not least with the Rothmans account, where their work on the Raffles brand could and should put us in a good position to develop the business into a full-service through-the-line agency, based on comprehensive below-the-line expertise. And there’s a development client in organic baby food, called Baby Organix, which he says will also come with them.
The risk, then, comes down to this: with the Splitter’s departure, our core business is, to put it mildly, depleted. If they come, these guys are due to arrive on January 1st and will want necessarily large salaries – north of £80K between the two of them is on the table for discussion. We don’t have enough fat in the business to sustain this kind of expenditure for more than a couple of months, before, quite simply, we run out of cash and disappear down a large financial black hole. So it all boils down to how quickly they can bring the business over and start billing (while remembering that billing alone is all very well, but the money itself doesn’t arrive for another 60 days – assuming our sturdy but fragrant debt collector can work her traditional magic.) Yet we can’t make too much of this: it looks like a seriously good opportunity, and we don’t want to frighten them off with talk of high risk or early closure, if quick results aren’t achieved. And of course there is every chance that Stid’s departure, in itself, will put the wind up them. Are they pinning their hopes on a business which looks like it’s imploding?
In the meantime, Stuart wants us to meet Liza, the Account Manager whom he proposes to bring with him, to help him manage the business – or to put it more succinctly, to do the business. He may be the brains behind it, but it soon emerges that she’s the one who makes it all happen. Liza turns out to be a strikingly good-looking blonde, with an assertive but noticeably flirtatious personality, whom the Cat and I take to immediately, no doubt for all the wrong reasons. Notwithstanding the obvious sexual attraction, however, it is immediately apparent that the two of them make a very viable and complementary team, and assuming the anticipated business does come in, we see no problems in working with them and expect no problems in them running the business, once acquired. So the success of the venture hinges on the speed of acquisition of new business. Actually, the success of our whole business: if we go with this, we’re effectively betting the house on it.
I think we both know though, that however agonising the decision, given our current predicament, there is only one choice. Stay as we are, and we risk death by a thousand cuts, or worse – one big chop. Go with it, and make it work, and we can replace the business the Splitter’s taken – almost at a stroke – and give ourselves a real chance to stabilise everything and get things growing again. The carrot of the opportunity is so much bigger than the stick of the threat. With some trepidation then – that stick still hovers in the background and could get bigger and beatier at any moment – we decide to definitely go ahead. They too have elected to continue with the move, despite our split and the fact that we’re now half the size we were when discussions started. Who knows what informs their decision: possibly the fact that, while they could go back to base and start again with a new agency, one, they have to find another partner they can get on with, two, this opportunity is so far advanced that psychologically it’s a done deal and three, they’ve probably already made hints and overtures to their key clients with intimations, if not outright facts, about their plans.
From our point of view, one original problem, the accommodation issue – where do we put them in the office? – has gone away. Post split, the top floor is eerily vacant, apart from our Finance Director, Pierre’s lockable corner office, so it is entirely logical to install them on their own floor and create a whole new identity. It really is out with the old and in with the new.
The main question remaining is how we structure it in financial and equity terms. There is no question that we are going to have full control over the new entity – otherwise there’s the potential for having a fifth column in the business at some future date – but it is equally important from my perspective, and from theirs, that there is real motivation to build, and keep building, the business in the medium to long term. We start with the notion of a wholly owned subsidiary in which we own 51% and they own 49% between them, in a proportion to be negotiated by Stuart – likely to be 30/19 or 35/14, if I have read the runes correctly. We all begin working together on this premise on January 2nd: there is a piece of paper which outlines the basic terms and structure somewhere, which no doubt would form the basis of a contract if tested legally, but it certainly hasn’t been drawn up by Biddle & Co, who would undoubtedly pull it to pieces in court if requested. Because everything happens so quickly, the agreement is always (in our minds at least) subject to ratification on the basis of detailed advice from our lawyers and accountants (Grant Thornton, about whom, more later).
This becomes significant several months later. You may surmise from this that the new venture works out, both financially and in terms of business structure and credibility, which I will explore in more depth in a minute. But it eventually emerges that for reasons of both tax structure and business flexibility, we will not be best served having what is essentially a separate legal entity in our midst. By which time, a couple of other considerations have also come into play, which mean that the Cat and I need to re-think our overall longer term structure, if we are to build a business with real value – i.e. one a potential purchaser might pay serious money for at some future, and at this moment very unspecified, date.
The first is that we have two teams in the promotions division headed up by people whom we recognise we need to keep onside. We do not want to lose vital members of our senior team to the siren calls of some flash (that’s a relative term in sales promotion, to be fair) London agency, waving a fat cheque book. And the only way to head off the constant threat of higher pay demands is to build in some long-term motivation, to keep the team together through thick and thin. We’ve had plenty of thin to chew on over the relatively short space of our existence, and it would be nice to experience a bit of thick sometime soon, but the only way to achieve this with any real effectiveness is through equity in the business. If we share some of the equity, they have a real stake in the value of the business – not just the actual value if we were to sell it, but also any dividends we may declare, in the event (oh happy day) of a profitable year and some spare cash to distribute.
The Cat and I, with first Gaylord’s and now Stid’s departure, control 100% of the business between us (equally), so it’s a good job that we at least get along and don’t squabble constantly. We are obviously concerned not to lose control of the decision-making to anyone, however vital to the business. It would be a less than delicious irony, were we to become victims of a palace coup by the very people whom we are trying to incentivise to stick with us. The experience we’ve had with the Splitter is a real warning of what can happen when personality defects, such as delusions of grandeur and over-weaning ambition, overturn what you think are solid business relationships.
The second consideration is that, once the new operation fully settles in and we have a chance to view the dynamics of it all, it soon becomes apparent that Liza is far more important to the success of the venture than had been represented by Stuart at the outset. She may have the title of Account Manager, but she clearly has the clients eating out of her hand – women as well as men – and is the one who actually delivers the campaigns devised by Stuart, who is the direct marketing technician. So fair enough, he may be the brains behind the business and the senior person in age and experience, but she brings equal benefits to the equation, in our opinion, in terms of campaign delivery and client retention. It doesn’t take long for us to realise that, for the long-term health of our enterprise, there is a nettle here that has to be grasped. We have a vision of what our business will look like ‘when it’s finished’ (read The E-Myth for a full understanding) and it dawns on us that we have to get that essential structure in place sooner rather than later. Or in other words now.
What it means in practice is creating a proper senior management team for the whole business, effectively putting in place a succession management, in the event that the Cat and I are ever made an offer we can’t refuse. This is going to present one big difficulty, because it’s going to drive a coach and horses through the understanding, if not contractually written agreement, we have with Stuart. The trouble is, unless we do renegue on that, we will have an unbalanced team, with Stuart the most senior person overall, after us, and to be honest, neither of us thinks he deserves that ranking. Instead, we want to put in place a team of equals, beneath the pair of us, the majority shareholders.
Between them, the lawyers and accountants come up with a concept that we’ve never heard of, called shadow or phantom shares, whereby the holders of them enjoy all the financial benefits of them (dividends, sale of company) but none of the executive decision-making – and only as long as they remain in the business. They do not have title to the shares, and while they will sit on the Board and contribute to team discussions and decision making, when push comes to shove in the event of any contentious issues or major disagreements, the Cat and I retain complete executive control of the business. It’s a principle that would help a lot of small businesses keep key people onside, though I do find that most small business owner/managers are far too selfish to share the spoils of their success with the very people who have significantly helped them to achieve it. In practice, they probably do not reach their full potential, simply because they do not involve their senior people sufficiently in the running, management and long-term vision of their business.
All we have to do now is decide how much we are prepared to give away. There are five people to take into consideration: Stuart and Liza; the Weather Girl and Nick, on the promotions side; and our extremely efficient and trustworthy Finance Director, Pierre. After much number crunching and agonising, we come up with a figure of 6% shareholding of the entire business for everyone except Nick, who gets 2% (we’re not that convinced about Nick’s long-term future, but we know that if he isn’t part of it, he’ll walk now, and right now we need a bit of stability). That’s 26% of the business we’re giving away, leaving us with 37% each. As always in these matters, the end result is a compromise between greed, self-interest and effectiveness. No point in giving up chunks of the business if it isn’t going to have the desired effect.
Marketing Principles Direct will trade as a separate entity – or operating division – and its results may be extrapolated and compared with the other teams in the promotions division, but all the finances will be consolidated into one financial statement. If we had gone ahead with the two separate businesses, we are told, it would make the payment of corporation tax less flexible and probably more expensive, because the allowance would be halved between the two companies, and if one is profitable and one is not, we could not use the losses of one to offset the profits of the other. I think that’s it. Taxation isn’t my long suit, and important though it is to our pockets, my eyes still start to glaze over when we are getting lengthy explanations of the pros and cons of this or that. Yawn. So one business it is. And the very fact that I am explaining all this pre-supposes that the new division is a success and that, somehow, we work our way out of the hole that we (and Stid) have got ourselves into.
Where does all the new business come from? Looking at the billings for the first year, post split, there are three or four dominant contributors. The first is The Financial Times, which the new team do bring on board, as promised, and in very short order – we’re billing by month two – sending letters to prospective readers, offering free and reduced price copies over several weeks, to get them into the habit of buying the paper, and which nets us over £420K of income in the first 12 months of trading. Perhaps just as significantly, their work with Rothmans, initially with the Raffles brand which had led to our initial introduction, brings in even more: with a major promotion also breaking on the King Size brand, they end up spending over a million pounds with us in a single year.
Because all of this takes place over a protracted twelve-month period, it isn’t immediately apparent that we are going to survive. At the start of January, we are still looking down the barrel, and it is amazing how galvanised the Cat becomes when his livelihood’s at risk. Given our (especially his) expertise in the drinks market, he sets out to win drinks business to replace Smirnoff and Baileys. This is no easy task: there are only a handful of major corporations controlling most of the spirits brands in this country (even fewer now, after more mergers and acquisitions), and we’ve just had the doors of the largest one slammed in our faces. Nevertheless, he goes at it with vigour, and before too long we find ourselves on the pitch list for a major Martini promotion.
I’ve already documented this in chapter four, but briefly the circumstances are these: for decades, it seems, Martini has used the advertising slogan, “Any time, Any Place, Anywhere.” Now the ad agency has persuaded them that it’s time for a change. The new campaign is due to be ready any time now, but to no one’s surprise except possibly the client, the agency is pleading it needs more time to get it right. Approaching Easter, when drinks sales are higher than at any time except Christmas, and the client needs some stop-gap marketing to fill the void filled by the unfinished ad campaign. Step into the breach an on-bottle sales promotion designed to act as a bridge-head between the old and the new campaign (entitled “Beautiful People”) and shift stock. Oh, and also get consumers to trade up to litre bottles. All for a budget of £300K.
Our solution: “Time For Martini” – a Swatch-style watch, with three different strap designs using graphics that reflect the new campaign, but with a proposition that harks back to the old one, free with two proofs of purchase. And here’s the creative bit: the cardboard cube bottle collars which we design to communicate the offer have two variants – a standard one for the standard size bottles, and for the litre bottles, a slightly larger one which will have an actual strap incorporated into it (though not the watch itself: you have to send for that, but the one-litre bottle qualifies for one on its own). It’s hardly award winning, but it is a neat solution to the brief, and in a six-way pitch (six – honestly, clients) it wins the business. Much celebration, naturally. It seems like it’s saved us from ruin. We have a major new drinks brand – and a high-profile one – on the client list. All we have to do is deliver it, on a million bottles. A free watch promotion? Piece of piss. Nothing difficult about that. Well you’ve already heard what can go wrong earlier, so if you’re desperate for a re-run, turn back to page 87, but the main thing is that it gets us through the first half of the year with a decent profit (you can make a healthy margin on watches, believe me), and probably more importantly, it gives us a psychological lift, after all the traumas of the split: we’re back on track, with a new and fully functioning direct marketing department (fully profitable too, almost from day one), and a sales promotion business that is recovering its equilibrium.
Stuart soon gets burdened with the nickname Sheridan Poorly, after some Viz cartoon character, as a result of him always having a sniffle, a bad back or some other non-life-threatening ailment, so will be referred to as Sheridan hereafter.
In addition to Martini, Rothmans and the FT, we also run a major promotion for Holsten (you can see why we describe ourselves as specialists in the vice accounts – pity pole dancing isn’t branded: today we’d be doing work for Stringfellows, I swear), and there’s another £300K comes in from computer manufacturer AST, which we’ve somehow acquired, and now we’re their main agency, doing everything from brochures to leveraging their sponsorship of Aston Villa (ASTon – yes, I know it’s tenuous, but we didn’t propose or organise it: we’re just using it to promote the brand to the trade). Never heard of AST? Hardly surprising. The business is full of complete wankers and within a couple of years it’s gone down the swannee. Or been acquired by some Far East corporation and integrated into its own operation. Or whatever. But again, it helps to keep us afloat. Better than afloat, because when I look at the figures for the year, sales promotion turns over £1.75 million and the new DM division well over £1.1million. Together, the turnover is only just shy of last year’s £2.89million, which included the Splitter’s £1M of client business. At the start of January, we were looking at forward billings of about £750K at their most optimistic (so you can see how the ‘looking down the barrel’ phrase may have seemed appropriate). By the year-end, we’re planning our futures with confidence and looking up at a clear blue horizon with expectation, devoid of all nervousness.
As the direct marketing business grows rapidly, we have to recruit again, and the whole business takes on a new dynamic. Recruitment and redundancy are recurring themes in any service business, which suffers pronounced peaks and troughs in its financial performance. If we had hung on, and kept all our people when the Splitter left, couldn’t we have redeployed them all onto the new business, as and when it comes in? No. Well, partly perhaps, on the promotions side, but direct marketing requires entirely different skill-sets, and therefore we find ourselves recruiting from another side of the market sector. The top floor is soon home to a bevy of fit women, and this time the Cat and I have nothing to do with the process, though we naturally approve of the end-result. There is definitely a trend towards women as marketing service account handlers – maybe it’s because they’re better at multi-tasking and have better people skills when it comes to massaging clients’ egos (while selling our ideas to them). There’s Sophie and Lucy and Rebecca and then another Sophie – nicknamed Lady Di as early as her first interview, because she’s a striking blonde with hair cut into the famous bob, but whom the Cat subsequently renames ‘Smugglers’ after she’s been with us about a fortnight, when he discovers she’s been smuggling into the building, under our very noses, the most magnificent pair of tits, camouflaged by a careful sense of dress. In fact, apart from Rebecca, who’s a particularly striking brunette, (I don’t shag the staff, but if I did, she’d be number one), we have somehow acquired a stable of blonds who can all turn heads to various degrees, and who are jointly and severally intent on giving the promotions division, with our own blond Weather Girl to the fore, a run for their money.
All of a sudden, there is competition between departments over who’s making the most money, and who’s doing the most business. Before too long there are minor squabbles over whether this or that bit of business should belong to one department or another. Where projects cross over, agreements have to be made about the split in income. Mostly this is healthy competition, but there are plenty of examples elsewhere of businesses where the competition becomes so intense that it becomes poisonous and ultimately destructive. Keeping that balance and sense of proportion is part of what informs our decision to divide the equity the way we do. If the real financial benefits accrue, no matter who is putting the billings on their figures, then the competition is only ever that of personal self-justification, which is itself a strong enough motivator and needs careful control.
As the de facto heads of department, the Weather Girl and Liza soon start to develop a bit of rivalry which, one senses, is never going to develop into a pally girls-night-out sort of relationship. There are never any rows, shouting matches or tantrums, but there are a few snide comments and catty remarks about the other’s looks, performance and working methods. The Weather Girl, as already documented, is known to be close to the Cat, and while they may not still be having it off (the Cat will no doubt put me right when he proof-reads this), there is without doubt the bond of the sometime sexual partner between them. The Weather Girl and I have a perfectly affable and good professional relationship, based more on enjoying each other’s company than sexual attraction, which is the safest sort to have at work. In fact, years later, she’s the only one I’m still occasionally seeing and having lunch with.
Liza has this disarming habit of putting her arm through yours when you’re walking together, and leaning in to you, as if you’re already a couple. I’m sure she does this with the Cat too, so I don’t kid myself that I’m being singled out for the treatment, but it’s clear she’s not afraid to use her physical attractions to play both ends against the centre, if necessary, to advance her career. Neither the Cat nor I give two hoots about the rights and wrongs of work-place relationships (destructive as they can be, if they get in the way of good team building), and both of us are more than happy to take advantage of the situation, if and when the occasion arises. In my case, it goes no further than a snog outside the pub at one of the regular pub crawls, but I know for a fact that my wife thinks she’s the potential source of a marriage break-up, and possibly ours. (It doesn’t happen, miraculously, given all my bad behaviour, most of which she only suspects – I think). Just for a nano-second, there is real temptation, but then I find she’s relayed details of it all to the Cat (he and I have developed the close kind of relationship where we do literally tell each other everything, and trust each other implicitly, which is why the business really starts to prosper: there are no competing egos to get in the way of decision making), and I realise the cynical and manipulative way of her. And because we tell each other everything – well, most things – if anyone is playing both ends against the centre in what becomes known as the battle of the blonds, it’s him. Fair play.
The key difference between the two departments is indeed sexual. On the top floor, direct marketing is all women. On the middle (sales promotion) floor, there is a better balance, with enough blokes who enjoy all the usual blokeish talk – sex, sport, drinking, more sex – so there is a good deal more banter all round. In these days of political correctness, the received wisdom is that sexual innuendo in the office (of the oo-er, missus variety) is distasteful to women, who feel offended and disadvantaged by it. My experience of it is that they not only join in with gusto, but are frequently better at it than their male colleagues.
We have Jonners – a big lump of a guy with a passing resemblance to Robbie Coltrane and a nice line in chat – and Spence, a young Brummie with plenty of personality, sparking off one another, and it’s not long before the female cabale on the upper floor are dubbed the Stepford Wives. Around this time, I have a PA from Auckland called Megan (she pronounces it Meegan), who’s with us for 18 months or so before she goes back to New Zealand, and Spence takes it on himself to teach her to speak proper, like. His core achievement, by the time of her eventual departure is that she can say in an ultra-thick Brummie accent, “Oi’d loik a curray, ploise.” No, it isn’t much, but bringing culture to the masses is never going to happen overnight.
Are there any real stresses and strains though? There are definitely no fundamental fault lines, of the type which developed into the Splitter’s departure, but what is happening is that the relationship between Sheridan and Liza is ‘developing’, shall we say. Liza was brought in very much as Sheridan’s Account Manager – his junior, reporting to him – but it doesn’t take very long for her to start punching above her weight. When we start taking on staff in the department, she is the one who organises and manages them and to whom they effectively report. Within the first twelve months she has become the de facto head of operations, with Sheridan playing the role of elder statesman, strategist, and source of knowledge. She senses an opportunity to advance her career and doesn’t waste the chance to stick the knife in, if she thinks it gives her a bit more leverage. A ruthless, smiling assassin? A bit over the top perhaps, but there is that definite quality in her.
It emerges – and this is after the decision to divide the shares equally between them – that Sheridan has a porn habit, and Liza most definitely does not approve. She comes to the Cat – it’s always the Cat that the staff go to, never me, with their troubles, hopes and fears – and makes a complaint about the images which are occasionally on his computer screen and which she finds offensive. It’s strange how women seem to split down the middle on this subject: half of them have a totally laissez-faire attitude to it, even getting turned on by it themselves; the other half find it shocking and disgusting. Obviously Liza’s in the latter camp. Well, it’s a formal complaint, so we have to take it seriously. The Cat and I, as you will readily guess from what has gone before, are not averse to a bit of high-quality, hard-core porn, but this is putting a considerable strain on a relationship which we need to be as strong as mine and the Cat’s. What do we do about it? First up, we need to establish the facts of the matter. Is this a bit of harmless dabbling or is there a bit of an issue here? So we go take a look at his computer one evening, when everyone’s left. Oh dear. Serial pornmeister. All sorts of grotesque images downloaded. Close-ups of female genitalia a speciality. Hundreds and hundreds. Frankly, a bit of an embarrassment, getting caught with all that material in your possession. He’s obviously not getting enough at home. So we are going to have to have a word.
Sheridan knows the Cat and I are not averse to naked women, on screen or in the flesh, but he has to admit that causing offence to his entirely female staff (naturally they all know precisely what he’s up to) undermines his authority, diminishes him as a person, and therefore lessens his effectiveness in the work place. It also fully justifies our original decision to divide the equity the way we do. But what pisses me off more than all of that is the sheer amount of our time he’s been wasting on online porn, instead of building the business. Never mind the tits, make us some cash.
There is another issue that emerges too, regarding Sheridan, as a result, rather ludicrously, of a week’s work placement by my teenage son, Luke. The school gets them to do work experience in their GCSE year, presumably to start the familiarisation process of what it’s like out there in the big bad world of work. I have mixed feelings about how useful it really is: by definition, they get a sample of one, so they might get lucky and have a really positive time, or they might end up in the direst place on earth. Rather than doing a bit of work to try to find somewhere else, Luke takes the line of least resistance and asks if he can come and work in our office: the school is happy, because they think they have another option for placing their recalcitrant youth in future years. (I soon disabuse them of that. If you’re going to do it, you have to find something constructive for them to do, that’s useful both to them and you; this is not only difficult, but takes time and effort which you can really ill afford). It is invidious for him to work in my group, so I get Sheridan and Liza to accommodate him, and they set him up with some relatively simple administrative tasks that need doing but which no one has the desire or time to do. It is a perfectly sensible system, but you do feel like you’re creating a 5-day lesson plan which gives the teachers a(nother) break.
So there he is on the top floor, beavering away at whatever they’ve given him to do and keeping his head down, but absorbing everything that’s going on around him (which, I grant you, is possibly the main point of the exercise, educationally speaking). You would think, wouldn’t you, with the boss’s son in attendance, that you might temper any behaviour that might be perceived as less than professional? After two or three days, however, Luke tells me he’s surprised how rude Sheridan is to his staff, frequently shouting, hectoring and generally berating them. His management style, from the description I’m given, borders on bullying in the work place. This is news to me and the Cat, since we’ve never had any inkling or reportage of such from Liza or Pierre, our finance director, whose office is off their work space and would surely see signs. There again, we never saw or heard any of what was going on in the studio a few years back, so we feel we need at least to ask some questions around the house.
It turns out that his management style is exactly as Luke has reported, which is no surprise to me – he isn’t given to over-exaggeration or flights of fancy – but does pose a problem. What to do about it? Apparently the girls just accept that that’s the way he is, and he might behave like a right tosser, but what do you expect: he’s a man. Everyone’s just put up with his little peccadilloes, and because she’s already made one formal complaint about the porn, Liza probably thinks that if she steps up to the plate on this issue as well, then their future business relationship really is on the rocks. And she’d be quite right, I’d say. The Cat and I aren’t going to put up with it though: we have a very definite management style – we’re all going to work as hard as we have to, to achieve our objectives, but we’re going to have as much fun in the process as is possible in the circumstances. Work hard, play hard. Firm but fair. We have no time for unnecessary shouting – at people, in particular. Anyone who has worked with me will have a wry smile (or worse) at this point, since I have a reputation for shouting when things go wrong, but mainly at things – like the bloody computer freezing again, just as you’ve finished a lengthy document, but before you’ve saved the contents. I have come close to throwing the damn thing through the window and down into the courtyard below, more than once. But I do try very hard not to shout at people. It achieves little except alienation. As a business we have never subscribed to the pirates’ motivational mantra: “The floggings will continue until morale improves.”
So the Cat, as self-selected human resources expert, takes Sheridan to one side and (instead of leaving him there, as I might have done) introduces him to the uncomfortable facts. His behaviour is inappropriate, ineffective and is doing him no favours – not least with the two of us: the equity decision is still further reinforced. I’m not sure it is positioned as a verbal warning, but I am sure that that is the way it comes across. It will certainly go on his personnel record for future reference, just in case we have to revisit the problem. We’re certainly not envisaging having to fire him, but if things were to deteriorate and push comes to shove, we’ve been to one industrial tribunal, and we know that the more written evidence you have the better, to back up any decision you make.
I think Sheridan is genuinely surprised by the allegations. We have to tell him they come from several sources, so there is no chance of any recriminations, and Luke’s name is never mentioned. I suspect he has turned into this ogre without him even realising it, because if it were deliberate and conscious, he would surely have mitigated it in Luke’s presence. As so often, people who find themselves in charge of a few employees equate management with giving orders. He’s obviously never played a team sport seriously, so doesn’t properly understand the team ethic. We should probably send him on a leadership course, but actually let’s just see if the bollocking improves matters. It seems to, though without Luke’s presence we don’t have any objective witness who doesn’t have an axe to grind.
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