....come on down!
You may recall me telling how thrilled I was to be nominated for ‘Boss of the Year’ – an award run by Pharma Times and SOPHIE (Secretaries of Pharmaceutical Industry Executives). Well, I am it!
Here is the wonderful Louise – my assistant for eight years now(not the 6-7 as I had recalled the other day), who nominated me for this award and myself, sitting on the steps of Oakley Court Hotel in Windsor shortly after the ‘ceremony’ and presentation of the award.
It is, of course, my secret from a few days ago – I knew last week but was sworn to secrecy until today. I have had such difficulty keeping it from Louise in the meantime – my tactic has been to keep well out of her way as much as possible over the last few days.
Today was very strange – I have been sat next to her, carrying my secret and shaking, sweating and generally wriggling around all morning and she knew NOTHING! When it was announced, she gave me a clip round the ear for not letting on but I was just so relieved to have made it till today without letting the cat out of the bag. It’s the first time I have ever been on the receiving end of physical abuse for doing something good!!!
They went through the process, which was a hugely complex set of acted scenarios, where there was a ‘crunch’ then the scene was stopped and the five finalists each had to write down what their boss would do in that situation. Each of the five scenarios were ones that I see ‘every day’ in as much as they are all common occurrences in business life. The first was about piling work on someone as they are about to go off on an important personal occasion, the second was about booking business class air tickets when the company policy is economy class only, the third was about inappropriately letting stuff leak to the press, the fourth was about catching the sales director ‘with his pants down’ with a junior member of staff and the final one was catching someone accessing confidential information inappropriately. I must say, the whole process was really well thought through and the scenarios were spot on.
While the delegates were discussing the scenarios, Louise and I were comparing notes about what she’d said I would do and what I actually would do – on all occasions she got me exactly right – she knows me so well that she’d instinctively gone with my approach. I was somewhat humbled to think that she knows so much about me and my thought processes.
What makes this even nicer is that the people I beat to the award are wonderful people themselves, all much more experienced and deserving than me – there were two Sales and Marketing Directors (BI and Lilly), a Production Director (Lilly) and a CEO (Norgine). Blimey – I really don’t deserve this….
Later, when the award was given, we stood arm-in-arm throughout the procedure while she was in a state of flux between wanting to throttle me for keeping the secret and delight at winning.
She won a short break in an hotel along with a bouquet of flowers and I got the lovely glass memento pictured here. Later, just as we were leaving, I went to pick it up from the side in the Ladies Loo where it had been placed while I visited the Ladies and its box was open. It fell on the very unforgiving ceramic floor of the toilets and the corner got broken. I know I said yesterday I don’t mind my stuff getting ‘love marks’ but I really was gutted to have damaged such a fabulous memento of my achievement. I feel bereft!
I was so flattered to have been nominated in the first instance and since then I still feel that Louise’s eloquence was what made me the winner but boy am I thrilled! I am so delighted – it’s really the pinnacle of my career – I can think of nothing nicer than this. Louise is a joy to work with – it’s really easy to be her boss. I am a very lucky lady indeed!
Oh and yep - I took it - it's on a chair on a self-timer!
Last year I was mimicing DM and two years ago we were starting the first campaign of a new wave of promotions for our business - it was so successful we are now shooting wave 3!
