Remember how I welcomed
the New Year?
Well, it started out right in alignment with the
pixie-dust. I got a call from a friend I’ve known since I first went over to
the UK to interview for the job that eventually took me there for three years.
During that time I got to know Ros pretty well. She’s
Italian, I’m Californian; we were both to some extent fish out of water. Also
both slightly mad, so we bonded pretty quickly. An admin in the sales/sales
support unit, still in her teens, she impressed me with her drive and absolute
focus on getting things done. Ros could freeze the blood of account directors
nearly thrice her age with one of her Looks, and then smooth everything out
with a laugh (which is infectious, I can tell you).
Shortly after my arrival, I set up a group to support
sales proposals across the region. Business proposals are huge, complex
documents comprising inputs from sometimes dozens of people. Just keeping track
of the latest version of these things is a nightmare, and then there’s the issue
of people not meeting their deadlines. Ros wanted to be a document controller,
and I absolutely knew she could be a star at it.
What surprised me was pushback I got from colleagues,
including the putative supervisor of admins. She assured me that the other
admins would not like Ros getting this opportunity, because she’d essentially
be moving ahead of her peers. (This is something Brits refer to as “having
ideas above one’s station.” I am not making that up, and it explains a lot.)
None of the other admins was interested in the job; they just thought that she
shouldn’t get it because…because.
Well, see above about being a Californian. I held my
ground against the admin queen, my own manager and the woman who was running
the technical support side of the group. I had to slap “junior” in front of the
title, but I got Ros.
And I was right, and Ros was right, and all was right
with the world. She tore the hell out of that job; her proposals went out on
schedule and looking fine, and bid managers and other contributors had nothing
but praise for her dedication. (This came from a bid manager in the Paris
office: “Ros does not count the hours.”)
I could give you dozens of examples of her generosity and creativity, but here are a couple of my cherished Ros memories: she taught
me one of my favorite sentences ever: “Ci
vediamo domani.” And there was one time—post-project, when she’d been
working all the hours God sends for many days, when she suddenly looked up from
her monitor and wailed, “[Bas Bleu]—I’ve been on this Nike site for an hour and it won’t let me buy this bag!”
I doubt it had actually been an hour, although it
probably seemed like that to someone bent on buying a bag (and Ros can shop for
Britain, take my word for it). And it wouldn’t have mattered to me if it had
been, because I reckoned my staff were professionals, they got their work done
to an extremely high standard, and (within the bounds of legality and
consideration for others) I didn’t care what they did to unwind. But Ros’s desk
was equidistant from mine and my manager’s, and he thought people should arrive
at the office by 0830, remain there until 1730 at a minimum, and engage in no
horseplay during the intervening hours. Working through the night did not excuse
you from that expectation. Not a bad guy, really, but definitely one or more
pokers pretty far up his butt.
Well, we got through that one—actually, I think Ros and I
made Graham uneasy just in a general way individually, and he didn’t much fancy the
idea of dealing with us as a pair—and I privately suggested that she not make a
public issue over any future online shopping disappointments. At least not
while he was within earshot.
But back to the call on New Year’s Day. Since I left the
UK in 2001, Ros has gone on to two different Fortune 500 companies, moving up
to bid manager and now capture manager, which carries a high level of strategic
business vision and what’s known as dotted-line team management. You have to be
able to get people to do stuff they might not be interested in, without wielding
direct authority. Ros is a natural at this sort of thing.
She was telling me about a couple of recent experiences,
and from 8000 miles away I could see the assurance and the complete passion she
brings to her work. She’s rightfully proud of her accomplishments, and it
lifted my spirits to hear the happiness in her voice.
It also reminded me of what you can do when you’re
focused, determined and willing to throw yourself completely into something.
Ros says I’m responsible for her current success. Well, yes—I
was her mentor back then. But while I’m happy to have had a part in it (I did
indeed dismiss those stuffy Brits with Victorian notions and pokers up their
butts as stuffy Brits with Victorian notions and pokers up their butts) by
giving her her start, after that I pretty much just got out of her way.
From the beginning, as she was cutting and pasting all
those hundreds of Q&A sections, she was reading, assimilating, asking questions,
piecing things together. She also went after every possible training she could
get. She never stops learning. She sets goals, achieves them, and then sets
some more and goes after them. That’s something I find both admirable and inspirational,
because it doesn’t come naturally to me.
Ros called because she’s decided she’s going to write her
memoirs. A few years ago I would probably have had some doubts about something
like that. But not after hearing her last Thursday. She knows the story she
wants to tell and she will not be daunted if she doesn’t pop out a first draft
by Groundhog Day. She just spent three years gutting a Victorian cottage in
Windsor and building it out exactly to her suit flawless Italian sensibilities.
She’ll get this right, too.
Here’s how I always picture Ros—we’d ditched the corporate crowd one afternoon at a sales conference on Cyprus and went off
to the birthplace of Aphrodite. This is a woman who will accomplish whatever
she sets out to do:
And I’m grateful that she reached out to me at the
beginning of the year, when I could really use some inspiration. Perhaps what
goes around does indeed come around.
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