When I joined, CAF was developing and implementing a new Treasury system. The Development team were doing extensive bespoke enhancements to a package that had been bought at the behest of Sylvia, the IT Director, a Board member. The package did not fit user requirements particularly well and perhaps more importantly did not include interfaces to the principal UK payments systems CHAPS and BACS. So we had to build them. By the time I joined, the project was already running well behind schedule and the users were very unhappy with the functionality they were being offered: substantial parts of the functionality they needed had been de-scoped from the project on the promise of a second phase to follow, but there were as yet no plans for that phase, the timescale was unrealistic and it was unclear how it would be resourced.
I felt uncomfortable at CAF from the word go. The senior management went on about how "unusual" their culture was, and in particular how "open" it was. Open it was not. I quickly found out that saying what I really thought was not welcome. My regular meeting with Sylvia was not so much a meeting of minds as an opportunity for me to say "yes, I agree" at regular intervals while she gave me chapter and verse on how the system should be designed and how the project should be managed. And the HR Director took exception to something I said in an email, which she regarded as too blunt: from that moment on she disliked me.
But more worryingly, given my experience at Midland with unclear reporting lines, was the fact that both my team leaders, and even some of the development staff, had frequent formal and informal meetings with Sylvia at which she would tell them what they should be doing, regardless of whatever instructions I had given them. This situation created enormous confusion, and just as at Midland I had been blamed for the ensuing distress, so too at CAF. Only a couple of weeks after I joined I was hauled into a meeting with Sylvia at which she told me that I was upsetting my staff and must back off. This would come back to haunt me.
What was a feature at CAF, though, was backbiting and gossip, which I found thoroughly unpleasant. And worse, some people were the targets of what amounted to smear campaigns. The Head of Internal Audit, with whom I developed a good relationship, was the target of such a campaign. She told me that she was concerned that her view of the role of Internal Audit was at variance with that of some members of the Board. In particular she did not think that Internal Audit staff should be treated as free resources for user testing of the new Treasury System, as it compromised their independence as auditors. She said that she would make this clear to the IT Director and stand her ground regarding user testing. Soon after she told me this, the IT Director's secretary started criticising her behind her back - for petty things, even including the way she dressed. I was concerned about this, because I thought it was unprofessional, but I didn't realise what was really going on. Not long afterwards, the Head of Internal Audit abruptly left, apparently because of "inadequate performance". It was the harbinger of what was to come.
The Treasury department were not happy. There had been continual delays to the system, it wasn't going to do what they wanted and tight IT resourcing meant that Phase II was probably going to be delayed. The IT Director had promised them that Phase II would be completed within 6 months of Phase I. Unfortunately she had also committed the IT department to a lot of other developments. I knew we could not achieve them all, and said so repeatedly. I would have redirected staff from other developments to Phase II to enable us to deliver it on time, but there were hard deadlines on other projects too which made this impossible. I could not bring in additional staff to do the work because of budget constraints and CAF's general policy of paying less than the market rate for IT staff "because it was a charity", and I could not pay staff overtime because of Board rules limiting overtime payments to very exceptional circumstances. Overtime rules were relaxed at my request for the Phase I final user testing and implementation, when both IT and user staff (mainly Internal Audit) were working silly hours. But no-one wanted to relax overtime or recruitment rules for Phase II. It was an impossible situation. But that wasn't what Sylvia was telling the users.
Phase I of the new Treasury system was implemented in August 1999. Although the implementation went smoothly, the aftermath was a disaster. The system simply did not do what the users wanted: the lack of functionality due to de-scoping caused them serious problems and they refused point blank to stop using their existing system until they got what they wanted, which meant that IT staff had to be diverted from Phase II development to support a parallel run. This sounds like cutting off their noses to spite their faces, since they needed Phase II to be delivered, but from their point of view the IT department's resourcing difficulties were not their problem: they had a business to run. Unknown to me, the fallout from this went up to Board level.
A couple of weeks after the implementation, on my way into the office, I spoke briefly with a senior Treasury staff member. She had a new hairstyle, and I made a comment about it. Normally this would have been greeted with a bit of a laugh, but not this time. I got a terse slapdown. It was evident something was very wrong: she was angry and stressed, and did not wish to speak to me. I wondered what I had done to offend her. It never dawned on me that I was being personally blamed for the system's shortcomings. But I was.
Later that day one of my team members took a phone call. He looked over to me and said, "Sylvia's waiting for you in her office". I had anticipated this call, as Sylvia had just returned from holiday and I expected she would want an update (yes, the IT Director was on holiday during the implementation of a major new system needed for FSA compliance!). So I went up to the office expecting a discussion about the Phase I parallel run, the planning of Phase II and the other projects, and what we were going to do about resourcing.
It's funny how little details stand out. As I went into the room I remember seeing three coffee cups on the table by the door....I knew then. A normal meeting with Sylvia would not have three people present. I looked over and saw her sitting with the HR Director.
I knew what was coming, but the shock was still terrible. It wasn't "dismissal", as such, as I had been on a 6-month trial period. But it made no difference. As she said "We are not confirming you in post", my head started to spin, and there was a roaring in my ears. I barely heard what she said after that. The only things I remember clearly are that she blamed me for the fact that Phase II had not been planned, and said the staff were all complaining about me.
They would not allow me even to go back to the department and clear my desk. They expressed some concern about whether I was fit to drive, but I just wanted to get away as fast as I could. Sylvia's secretary retrieved my handbag and briefcase from the department, and said any personal items from my desk would be delivered to my home. Then I was escorted off the premises.
Heaven knows what my driving was like on the way home. I was blinded by tears and kept going over and over the meeting in my head, trying to remember exactly what had been said....but I kept coming back to the same thing. The staff hated me. The wound had opened up again, deeper and more painful than ever.
I could not make myself look for another job after that. It hurt too much. So I withdrew into my tiny house with my children, and for best part of a year I became an ordinary mum. Except that I wasn't. I found it hard to cope even with being an ordinary mum. I was insomniac (I still am), brittle and anxious. What I had been told at my dismissal nagged at me all the time: I felt worthless and hopeless. I found practical things to do, which distracted me: but the dull ache of loneliness, and the sharp pain of knowing that everyone hated me, underlay everything. As I write this, I can feel that pain again, and I know that fourteen years later, I am still not really healed. Maybe I never will be.
I was already doing some professional singing and a small amount of private teaching at my singing teacher's suggestion. A chance encounter with a friend who I knew worked for Kent Music School as a singing teacher offered me the possibility of a way out. Maybe, just maybe, I would not have to force myself to find another banking project management job and risk being hurt again.....
But the CAF story is not quite ended.
Nearly a year after I left CAF, I went to a performance of "A Winter's Tale" by the Detling Players, in which a friend of mine was performing. At the end of the performance, I hung around to meet my friend. As I waited, I saw two people I knew......two members of my former staff at CAF.
I had to speak to them, though I was terrified - I didn't know what they would say. I wasn't sure if they would even speak to me: if they really hated me as I had been told, they might turn away when they saw me. But the pain was eating me up. I had to try to find out whether what I had been told was true.
I went up to them and nervously said "Hello". To my astonishment they were delighted to see me. We talked for a while about the play. But eventually I brought the subject round to CAF. I told them about the circumstances of my departure. I said that I had been told the reason was that the staff were all complaining about me, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I needed to know if it was true.
Mick looked pityingly at me. "It's not true", he said. "We had no problems with you."
"But the HR Director said it too! She confirmed what Sylvia said!" I cried.
"Two very poisonous ladies", he said.
It seemed that I had been sacrificed to preserve Sylvia's position.....for a while. The users were demanding retribution for what they saw as the monumental failure of the IT department to deliver what they wanted. They wanted blood. Really they wanted Sylvia's blood, but she pacified them by sacking me. It didn't last, though. Six months later Phase II failed, as I knew it would, and Sylvia was forced to resign.
Mick's remarks helped to lifted me out of my depression. The wound started to heal. I started to believe that maybe I was not the ogre that I had been painted.
I applied for a job as a singing teacher at Kent Music School and was accepted, starting in September 2000. Childcare arrangements were complicated: by this time Dominic was at primary school and Nadia at pre-school, but some of the Kent Music School work was in the after-school period and did not finish until an hour after my childminder's finish time. My husband, by then working in London, was not going to get home in time to pick them up. So I organised a variety of friends to collect my children from school and look after them until I got home. My amazingly resilient children tolerated an incredible amount of disruption and inconsistency for the next two years. It took a major international disaster to open my eyes to the risks I was taking with such tenuous arrangements for their care - especially after I went back into banking.
For I did, of course. In September 2000, just as I was starting part-time work at Kent Music School, Nat West rang up.
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