CEO's Diary

 March 17 – There are days when I think I am fortunate.

We had a senior management team meeting this morning – this being the new structure of which just East, AM and I are members. That said, my PA sits in to make minutes (and may contribute) and today East was on holiday and Office joined instead as we had issues of concern relating to her areas of work.

 March 15 – Many hours of work have gone in over the weekend, in between mildly unfocussed trips to look at possible new houses. Neither is designed to create a low stress environment.

The cause of the work was company number 2. I’ve clearly unleashed enthusiasm there. That’s great. The trouble is those there have little idea how to take this forward. This has become horribly apparent.

 March 9 – Three lots of good news.

Almost as her swan song as a divisional manager, and as her opening gift to the newly promoted manager of our new department, she and he together closed negotiation for the biggest deal this department has ever done. If no other department in this company grows in the coming year this one can now hardly avoid doing so. From being a new venture this ‘sideline’ hunch of mine has now turned into what might be a major profit centre.

 March 8 – And I thought I’d got everything under control with two companies by the end of last week. Then my wife announced she wants to apply for a new job which will require us to move, but which would be good for schools for the children and will only mean I have to commute roughly the same distance but from the almost opposite direction and my life was thrown into utter turmoil at the weekend.

 March 2 – Bunked off to company number two for most of the day to facilitate a working party of most of the senior manages to talk about new names. For many of them this was their first serious engagement with me, and vice versa. I greatly appreciated that – there’s nothing better as a way to judge people than to see how they work when slightly out of their own comfort zones, and this lot were.

 1 March – Another year over, a new one just begun, as I think John Lennon once sang. For reasons best known to others our year end is 28 February (and Tescos apart I can’t think of anyone else who shares the date).

 February 25 – Time to reach out to my other responsibilities – as Chair of company number 2.

You may recall I’d been working with the MD to tackle his procrastination. To do this I was using a technique called solution focussed therapy. This does not mean hours are spent analysing the problem. Instead it seeks to determine what the situation would be if the problem was solved and what characteristics would identify the change.

 February 24 – I warned that having two jobs might reduce my time for writing. I was right.

Last week’s reshuffle (or was it coup?) needed some inevitable follow on work. AM needed briefing on what I expected of her, but candidly our minds were pretty much as one anyway. And she has wasted no time getting to grips with things, including her staff, now reinstated having withdrawn their notice to quit.

 February 18 – Hard to keep up with this week.

#1 has gone. Her two deputies are staying – they have both withdrawn their notice. Their new employer to be is going to be annoyed!

 February 16 - #1 came to see me before the meeting planned for this morning.

Her request of me was simple: she asked how much I was willing to pay for her to go. She said she was quite sure that was the objective of the review. We could go about it the long way or cut a deal now. How much to make her redundant was the question she asked.