Last week I had a meeting with a service provider. They had been meeting with a senior management staff until the previous week, before she was bundled out.

 

Their expressions on the faces of the gentlemen in the meeting had sought an explanation. I muttered a non-committal “she’s no longer with the organisation”. Inside, I was reminding myself of the saying that the only constant in life is change.

 

The immediate aftermath of any change is often chaotic, or maybe a sense of void. I remember the day Anwar Ibrahim was sacked in September 1998. Not long after that he was imprisoned. There was a sense of insecurity, of uncertainty.

 

It has also often been said that for every change there is an opportunity. I suppose that is the type of saying a life coach or one of those morale boosting seminars – perhaps a line someone like George Clooney would use in a recent movie (“Up in the air”, I think).

 

All consistent with my current sentiments I guess. It feels like now is the time for change. Especially with the way I spend my time daily – spending hours to protect a corporation from itself, endlessly generating documents to comply with often obscure policies with lengthy and often changing edicts from another corner of the world. Confirming old advices and researching endlessly.

 

For fear of allegations of negligence, one isn’t allowed to leverage lengthy legal experience and every position advised needs to be freshly advice, even on the clearest of issues.  I often feel like there is a very rude word to describe what I do and it rhymes with bank or banker.

 

The recent de-layering process has again re-directed a gust of wind out of my sails. It feels like no matter how hard one works, one is faced with the twin terror of never ending mountains of work and job insecurity. Who is say we wouldn’t receive an edict from regional office one day to de-layer further? It could be finance today and legal tomorrow, the sword of Damocles will hang indefinitely. If this is a feature of an organisation which professes (along with almost every other company) that people is its best assets, God help employees of companies where people aren’t.

 

While change is a given and we should adapt, change to suit narrow interests at the expense of benefit to the wider employee group should b resisted.

 

I walked into my office building on Thursday morning and caught a colleague out of the corner of my eye. He was in the café getting his coffee. I sometimes have a quick chat with this colleague when I was also having a coffee myself. He was a regular guy. Outside work he was ok to deal with. At work, he was driven, talked a lot and often stuck to a task doggedly and picked out issues everyone thought had been settled. He had, to an extent, good attention for details. He was a leader too – had to be, as he was senior management in charged of operations. I’m sure his ancestry had nothing to do with it (he’s Dutch) but he also drove vendors hard for pricing. He worked hard, and he drove his team hard.

Later that morning I saw him again, this time he was coming out of the CEO’s meeting room. It looked like a normal BAU meeting.

On late Wednesday afternoon, I had a meeting on some procurement matters. It was with another member of the senior management team. We talked shop together with a few other colleagues for about an hour, I came back to my desk, sent her an email and it looked like a normal BAU end to the day.

Earlier on Wednesday I spoke to a project manager from the IT team. He wanted a service agreement reviewed and we discussed, again talking shop. He then sent me an email – a normal BAU email.

On Wednesday night I sent a sales guy an email. I copied that email to a back office manager – sort of keeping her in the loop on the matter. She is a bubbly livewire – a nasal loud presence who would have been mistaken for that nanny on television but for her size. Her presence is often well felt, sort of a normal BAU presence.

Yesterday, for reasons best known (the real reason that is) to the decision makers, all four of the above colleagues were given the boot. De-layering, it was called. Not cost cutting, not retrenchment, but de-layering with a resultant redundancy. No one saw any of those sackings coming. Not least the victims.

The irony is we have been repeatedly told the company is doing really well – going gang busters. Record profits in recent years which have continuously trended up. GOE has been trending down. Market share has been growing and we’re inching up to be the number one player in the industry.

So it is especially difficult to understand why we have gone on a sacking spree. It almost look like a selective de-layering with the possibilities for a common denominator whittled down to just two prime suspects –they have crossed sword with either the regional office or the CEO (when the CEO was a divisional General Manager). So it is either regional office getting rid of people who don’t just shut up and do as they are told, or the CEO assembling his own team with no hint of past clashes. Either way it leaves a sour taste. Working relationships, morale and individual livelihoods are sacrificed for the sake of narrow interests.

HR is presently trying to leverage the World Cup in South Africa to build some team camaraderie. Different floors have been designated different pools for decoration with team colours. My area has Greece and Argentina. It feels however that the common theme running through the decorations isn’t the World Cup but the red cards that have been dished out. The inexplicable red cards which are increasingly a BAU feature in this place.

It is now the third week of winter. It feels colder this year. That is not what I had expected. Summer felt really long and hot, and last year’s winter was riddled with the effects of the swine flu bug which ravaged our family. So I thought it really couldn’t be worse this year, I was in fact looking forward to this. This winter however I have felt more vulnerable.

This past weekend for example, I have had my tummy tugging and pulling all weekend. Already a coldish weekend that constantly nagging sensation compounded matters and for most of Saturday and Sunday, I was just out of it.

Tress birthday on Saturday night was typically low-key. We went out to a fusion, friendly restaurant down at the O-zone at the Knox. It was a very good meal for all 3 of us and we then headed back home and worked at cozy-ing up to settle down for the night. Unusually, I had been tiring easily most of the day and the next day was also going to be a longish day. After church there was a barbie and a sports afternoon with Cornerstone and then there was a full moon dinner for a couple’s first born. It turned out to be a fantastic meal (at Gold Leaf on Burwood Highway) but my feeling unwell meant I kept away from the grog.

Thankfully it was a long weekend (Queen’s birthday) so we had Monday off as well. By then the bug (or whatever it was) had cleared up mostly so I could venture outside to tidy up the house. In fact between Tress and I we got the house cleaned up ok.

Actually I was just looking for something to distract my thoughts from the disappointment of seeing the Socceroos thrashed by a very slick German team. Mesut Ozil looks like a Bryan Robson in his prime, plus silky smooth skills to boot. His constant running and finding space was tearing the Aussies in the last third and his formidable skills in beating players or finding the right pass just shredded the already dreadful defence headed by the vacuous Lucas Neil.

So Tress and I spent the better part of Monday cleaning and tidying and had Scruffi with us most of the time. It was really good. We then went out for a little while to buy some groceries. It is indeed a blessing that the shopping centre is just a couple of minutes away – we can pick up something we need so easily.

We had bah kut teh for dinner and Tress cooked a couple of other dishes for freezing. I also managed to bring Scruffi for a longish walk – which tired him out so that all he did for the rest of the evening was stretch out in front of the heater and slept! We needed the heater less than him after the hot BKT but that didn’t last long. The temperature dipped a couple of degrees as we sat watching tele, no doubt heading fast towards the 2degree overnight forecast. We felt it. I felt it – the cold as well as (possibly) my age.

The boys at legal have teed up for a “steak out” tonight. We’re rolling out to the Squire’s Loft at South Yarra for some decent red meat. I’m wavering a bit actually – the thought of all that red meat, even if it is to be just a 200g, is a bit challenging. I am just not presently up to such lofty aspirations.

Maybe a really good red will help. A few nights ago Tress, Kiddo and I went to the ThaiGarden on High Street in Glen Waverley. It’s an okay place – kiddo loves the green curry there. We’ve been there a number of times before, especially in summer when a nice chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc is often a fantastic company for Thai food. I was home just in time to nick into the house, leave my gym gear in the laundry and grabbed a bottle of red. Since I didn’t have time to choose, I just grabbed whatever comes out when I reached my hand towards the dark corner of the bottom shelf in the pantry. It turned out to be a 2002 Cabernet Shiraz by Jamieson’s Run. It wasn’t a Grange but neither was it a nasty teeth staining plonk either. I would not have taken it to a neighbourhood Thai joint like the ThaiGarden, no disrespect to the nice restaurant which we quite like.

At the restaurant, I should have perked up when the waitress had a “trainee” badge on her, but I didn’t see it – Tress did. She tool the 2002 JR and from the moment she handled it I was a bit apprehensive. When she returned my worst fears were realised as she gave me the bottle with the corkscrew standing up through the opening with the cork no where to be seen (it had gone through down the neck about a couple of inches). “Bottle too old” was the reason she proffered for not pouring any wine into my glass. I looked at the cork half resigned. It had been bored through with nothing left for any meaningful rescue attempt.

A more experienced lady came around, offered half an apology and took the bottle away. I said maybe a decanter can help, but wasn’t sure if either of them knew what I was saying. When she came back the main part of the cork has now been removed. The problem was she left hundreds of those little bastards swimming around and when I poured a little bit into my glass, they all seemed to be happily floating around doing backstrokes in a pool of what I was expecting would be very nice Cabernet Shiraz. My heart sank and the meal lost its appeal.

Half way through the meal I decided not to let that spoil the evening. Kiddo obviously enjoyed the food. On the way back we sort of chatted and tried to soften the experience. At home that night I tried to pour the stuff through some paper towel. It took the bits of cork out but I don’t know if this has affected the wine in any other way. I still have about half a bottle of it at home, and will no doubt sharpen my skills at pouring wine through paper towel.

The tiring flip flops on the identity of my employer’s parent continue to unfold. Work done in preparation of the IPO up to maybe February this year, would probably have to be taken out to have dust blown off and worked on again. Prudential’s major shareholders have demanded a renegotiation following recent global financial market dips and AIG has said no to reopening negotiations. Prudential Board is considering its next move and unless it can convince it shareholders within the next 5 days, the deal will be binned and we will likely be looking at the IPO again.

This all just confirms my sentiments about working as an in-house lawyer for a corporation such as AIA. We are mainly creating reams of paper in reaction to events which happen thousands of miles away and will have so little effect on the lives of people around us. It just makes us feel nice and warm inside but what impact does it have on others? My work isnt the type which makes a difference to others, except maybe it affords little extras to my family. If I can live with that rationale alone I suppose I will toil on. If on the other hand our lives would not be affected in any way, I have to act on my growing conviction.