After my time in limbo following the Midland GALM disaster, eventually my line manager found me a job.....working directly for him as his assistant. This sounds like a good thing: as he put it, it was a more "protected" position, and it gave me the opportunity to learn far more about what was really going on. But it was not really appropriate: personal assistant to a top manager is a good job for a graduate trainee, but he was not a top manager and I was more senior than a graduate trainee. It was widely regarded as a considerable demotion. I had no choice but to accept the job, but I became a laughing stock. But not to Andersens. They started to take me seriously. "Personal assistant" to them meant "useful".
One of the things that I had to do, as his assistant, was try to introduce good project management practice into SMI, a department that he had taken over. The trouble was that SMI hated him, and did everything in their power to undermine him. They also hated me, as his representative. This was not obvious, and it was not universal. The head of that department had a small circle of close associates. And those associates did everything in their power to discredit me. The methods they used ranged from outright obstruction to lies and deception. Obstruction I could handle: it made my job difficult, but not impossible. But lies and deception were a different matter.
Just as with GALM 1 I had no idea what was really going on, so in this case too I was completely blind. I don't "read" people very easily and I find it difficult to judge when someone is lying. And because I am straightforward to the point of bluntness myself - which is partly the cause of my interpersonal difficulties - I assume everyone else is playing with a straight bat too. That's why it is laughable when people accuse me of being "manipulative" or "twisting things". If they only knew.....I'm more devious than I used to be, but even now it doesn't come naturally and I can easily be wrongfooted by a more gifted player. Colin Duthie, one of my managers at OSS, commented once that I "don't play the game". He was only partly right. I didn't play the game, not because I chose not to but because I didn't even realise there was a game. These days I understand the game, though even now I don't always see it when I am part of it. Just as in a poker game, if you can't see the sucker, it's you, so in office politics: if you don't see the game, you are the one who is going to be stabbed in the back. And stabbed in the back is exactly what it feels like when you realise that someone is systematically spreading lies about you in order to discredit you - someone that you thought was friendly......
The first I knew of this was when my manager called me in and said that he had been told I had made some remarks that were extremely critical of a particular individual in SMI. I had indeed made some incautious remarks over drinks with a few members of SMI : not all of them were hostile, and at that time I didn't realise how much bad feeling there was anyway, so going for drinks with them didn't seem unreasonable. But what was being said was a huge distortion of my remarks. I defended myself, of course: I admitted to the remarks but said that they were quoted out of context and distorted. He warned me to be careful what I said in future. There we left it....
But then there was a disaster. A few days later, I was accused of leaking details of a senior recruitment, including grade and salary. Apparently it was all round the office. He said it could only have come from me.
I was appalled. Given my disgraceful exit from the GALM project not long before, I could not afford another disaster. And even though it was seen as a demotion, the role of PA requires absolute discretion. If I couldn't be trusted, then I was dishonourably out of a job.....again. I had to defend myself.
I knew I had not leaked that information. I had told a couple of people from SMI that someone they knew from Andersen Consulting was joining Midland, but certainly hadn't given details of grade and salary. But my manager believed it came from me. I had to establish who else might have known about it. It transpired that my manager had disclosed the same information to everyone who reported directly to him - me, and two department heads. One was the head of the finance team with whom I had previously worked: the other was the head of the department that my line manager had taken over. Either might have had reason to try to discredit me. But the leak was in the department that had been taken over. I pointed out that it was possible that the head of the department had leaked it himself. My manager agreed that was possible, but then questioned why he would do that. I did not have an answer.....
But he turned out to be the source, although indirectly. By this time I had realised that the information leaks attributed to me were malicious. And although I had not given details of grade or salary, I had told a couple of people about the recruitment. One of them I was pretty sure would not have said anything. But the other.....I was not so sure. So I decided to test her.
The following day, I engaged her in conversation, and in the course of the conversation dropped a piece of confidential information. I had thought carefully about what I was going to drop - it had to be something that didn't really matter if it got out, but significant enough to make her want to leak it if she was the source of the leaks, as I suspected.
Sure enough, by the end of the day it was all round the office. And the following day it reached my manager. I explained to him what I had done, and why. I think that was the first time that he had realised just how much some people in SMI hated him.
It was still a bit of a mystery as to why this particular individual was so intent on destroying me. It was my boss she hated, not me. But there was a good reason. She was having an affair with the head of SMI: the information on the senior recruitment had come from him as "pillow talk". She assumed that the relationship between my boss and me was the same as hers with her boss, and therefore she could hurt him both professionally and personally by forcing him to dismiss me. It was thoroughly nasty.
And it brought home to me just how vulnerable I was to devious and manipulative people. I was far more guarded after that, being careful what I said and to whom I said it. It was a painful learning experience. But it was not enough. Far worse was to come.
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