In all the excitement of professional advancement, one must never forget to express gratitude
To my colleagues
Let me begin by thanking you.
Your assistance in my last Bids and Tenders Manager’s the little shit performance improvement journey was invaluable. The regular and specific feedback you so generously provided — or, more precisely, the feedback I attributed to you — proved instrumental in bringing that journey to its entirely predictable conclusion.
Those of you who have been paying attention since Winning Way #1 — Weaponising the PIJ will already understand that the journey itself is merely the vehicle. The destination, as always, is predetermined.
Your names appeared helpfully throughout the documentation: observations about attitude, competence, professionalism — all the small but damning details that organisations so admire when they appear neatly recorded on paper. You even provided your observations directly to the little shit him, and on occasion, found the need to intervene with remedial coaching.
Whether you ever actually said or did these things was, in the end, largely irrelevant.
As discussed in Winning Way #2 — Managing the Narrative, once a narrative has been confidently documented it quickly acquires the comforting appearance of truth.
Naturally, a narrative is always stronger when it appears to be shared.
This is where Winning Way #3 — Securing Stakeholder Alignment proved so effective. By the time the documentation was reviewed, it appeared that a number of colleagues had independently reached remarkably similar conclusions regarding the little shit’s employee’s shortcomings.
Consensus, after all, carries a certain authority.
You will also recall Winning Way #4 — Deploying the Cat’s Paw, in which one allows others to provide the necessary implementations while remaining comfortably above the mechanics of the process. Your unwitting contributions were therefore both efficient and entirely consistent with best practice.
I am pleased to report that no one — not the People and Culture Partner, not my manager, the Managing Partner of Audit, not anyone with the authority to do so — thought to verify a single word of it.
Which I find rather extraordinary when one considers the image our firm works so hard to project: a stalwart, upstanding pillar of the community, entrusted to audit governments, corporations, and charitable institutions where the appearance of integrity and honesty is paramount.
Apparently, the appearance alone suffices.
So thank you. Your contributions ensured the process unfolded exactly as it should. The documentation “existed”, the boxes were ticked, and the system — that magnificent machine of procedural righteousness — dutifully delivered the outcome I had already decided upon.
In fairness to you, of course, you were merely doing your jobs.
I was simply the only one doing mine properly.
And to the slain you little shit
I should also extend my thanks to the employee himself.
After all, his brief tenure provided the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of Charlotte Kok’s Winning Ways (I ought to trademark that) in combination. Without his presence — and eventual absence — this particular lesson in narrative construction, plausible deniability, and organisational theatre would have lacked a suitable subject.
So congratulations.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to make such a meaningful contribution.
Your departure has proven most instructive, if not for you, then certainly for me.
You have played your role admirably: the necessary casualty in a process designed to reward confidence, documentation, and a firm grasp of how organisational systems are rigged truly function.
In a sense, you have contributed more to my professional advancement in five weeks than many colleagues manage in three years.
For that, you have my sincere appreciation.
Should our paths ever cross again, I trust you will take comfort in knowing that your professional misfortune proved extremely valuable to someone.
Me.
A final reflection
Our firm prides itself on integrity and honesty. These words appear prominently in marketing materials, annual reports, and client presentations.
They are admirable ideals.
But once one peels away the layers of reputation and ceremony, one discovers something rather instructive about how the organisation truly operates.
Integrity and honesty, it turns out, are optional.
