11 February 2016, 11 am
Our appointments panel of four sits round a table with the recruitment consultant, to do the “long-listing” for the next IPReg Chair. It is a small table in a very cosy room, because the recruitment consultant’s company is refurbishing its offices and this is all they have spare. They have laid on biscuits to compensate, but the sad fact is that with a plate of biscuits on the table, there is no longer room for pen and paper. The long list may actually have to be quite a short one. We go through the CVs of all the hugely successful Strategic Leaders. Ironically, we are less interested in executive roles (which involve getting on and making stuff work) than we are in non-executive roles (which involve telling other people to get on and make stuff work). We are particularly interested in people with “portfolio” careers, which means they have collected lots of different part-time non-executive roles each of which involves them turning up to meetings four times a year to tell other people to get on and make stuff work. If you have managed to gather together several such roles, all paid, and you have got away with it for more than a couple of years, then you are worthy of the title Strategic Leader and you are ready to go on our long list. Although, if you could not be bothered to proof-read your application, or to structure your covering letter around our list of essential criteria, or worse, if you thought you’d done both but had succeeded in neither, then we will be giving you short shrift however big your portfolio of strategically non-executive roles. Someone who cannot write accurately is in no position to tell patent attorneys how to behave.
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11 February 2016, 4.30 am
The alarm goes off. It is icy and dark. I have a cold and my limbs ache. I have not slept well. My body and my brain are about to have another argument. But this time my brain is one step ahead. No way, it says, can you do this appointments panel meeting by phone. People might need to shout and pull faces at each other. You cannot do that properly by phone. Later, the car also tries to get out of putting in any effort. My brain is having none of that, either. I’ll do the de-icer, it says; you do the glow plugs. Once we reach the bottom of the drive, that is. Together we will make it to the 6.30 train. And we do. 10 February 2016, 3 pm
And that’s the last of the CVs. I am mightily glad. It has been demoralising to realise there are people in the world who can achieve such greatness before they retire – turning organisations around, spearheading transformational change and other ground-breaking tautologies – and that I am already too old to be one of them. There are candidates on this list who could apply to run an entire country, never mind the board of a niche regulator. 10 February 2016, 11 am
Mr Davies and I have our meeting. One of the President’s jobs is to line-manage the Chief Eggsek, so every now and then I have to ask Mr Davies whether he is doing his job properly and he has to tell me that everything at CIPA is hunky-dory and then I have to agree to leave him alone to get on with it. I get the impression Mr Davies is also relieved we are not meeting in person, because he can carry on with all sorts of other stuff whilst he is on the phone to me pretending to be line-managed. Anyway, apparently everything at CIPA is hunky-dory, which is good news, and Mr Davies is happy for me to leave him to get on with it, so that’s another big tick on today’s to-do list. Phew! 10 February 2016, 5 am
The alarm goes off. It is icy and dark. I have a cold and my limbs ache. I have not slept well. My packed suitcase sits at the bottom of the stairs. Beside it are my boots, which I have to put on at the door because otherwise the sound of the zips wakes my husband (poor man). For the same reason, the hair dryer is in the kitchen, not the bedroom. My clothes are laid out systematically so that I can put them on in the dark (noiselessly); my breakfast is pre-prepared and cling-filmed (I am not allowed anything crunchy); the car key is in my right coat pocket ready for off. (I am only supposed to start the engine at the bottom of the drive. You have to be considerate about these things.) My body and my brain have an argument about whether to ignore the alarm. It does not last long, this argument, because my brain is not in operational mode. At the heart of the argument is the heretical idea that we could do today’s meeting with Mr Davies by phone instead. My brain is a bit cross it didn’t think of this before. The brain says: but then we will have to set off even earlier tomorrow morning to get to the other meeting which can’t be done by phone because it might require us to shout at the rest of the appointments panel. And the body says: yeah, yeah, tomorrow schmomorrow, and at least we won’t have to drag the suitcase along with us. The brain says: you know, you have a point. So I go back to bed. I will do the meeting by phone, and I will read the remaining CVs in the comfort of my own duvet. And I will try not to think about having to get up even earlier tomorrow morning, because that’s tomorrow’s problem. At least my clothes and boots are all set out ready. Maybe the breakfast will last another 24 hours too. 9 February 2016, 1 pm
I have spent the morning reading CVs and accompanying statements from people who want to be the next IPReg Chair. Between them, they have been doing an awful lot of Strategic Leadership and Change Management in Challenging Environments. I had no idea there were so many challenging environments in the UK today, but I guess with so many people wandering about doing Strategic Leadership there are likely to be a few challenges to deal with. And how else does a person build up a CV? After four hours, and still only a third of the way through the task, my desk has become quite a challenging environment in itself. I decide it is time to down tools and instead give some strategic thought to Things You Can Put in a Pancake. The ability to create the perfect Shrove Tuesday main course may not count as a transferable professional skill, but it is nevertheless a source of personal satisfaction and there are not many of those left. 9 February 2016, 3.30 pm I am a thoroughly modern business woman. I am reading the CVs of strategic leaders whilst waiting for a mammogram. Of course, a mammogram can only happen if they can find anything worth X-raying, and if when they find it, it has not migrated so far south as to need referring to a podiatrist. In my case, it is touch and go on both counts, although my waistline is doing its best to hinder the downward migration of upper body parts by creating an ever-expanding barrier to their progress. Whilst I wait, and read, and muse to myself about whether “transformational change management” is a euphemism for firing everyone you don’t like, I am also thinking of how I will roast the red peppers till their skins blacken and crumble the goat’s cheese and tear up the Parma ham, not to mention what I will do with the butterscotch sauce. This is called multi-tasking. It will doubtless get me into trouble at the appointments panel meeting on Thursday, because I will refer to the candidates’ strategic crumbliness and their challenging apple butterscotch management, or worse still, their skins blackening, and no amount of crusading about diversity and name-blind CVs is going to get me out of that one. 8 February 2016, 6 pm
Mr Davies texts me with a progress update. He and Team CIPA have now learnt how to break the new database. Also they have learnt how to use the new database to break other systems with which it communicates. I do not ask whether they have learnt to mend the new database. I am not that tactless. 8 February 2016, 4 pm
The afternoon tea is as posh as the database training is ineffective. It is the type which arrives on a three-tiered plate, from which you have to eat the bottom deck (the sandwiches) first before you are allowed to move on to the middle deck (the scones) before you are finally allowed to eat the pink macaroons and mini chocolate caramel tarts that you had your eye on from the start. By the time you reach the high altitude stuff you are of course far too full for the mini chocolate caramel tarts, but this is a first world problem and you tackle it with typical first world fortitude; it is a matter of pride. Besides, having been forced to select from forty different types of tea, you kind of feel you’ve earned the top deck luxuries. I think it is very kind of the VeePee to treat me like this. I am thinking there must surely be a catch, but if there is he is not prepared to let it spoil a good macaroon. He asks what have been the highlights of my Presidential term. I’m guessing he needs something to look forward to. I say, Mr Davies has already asked me that – about the highlights, I mean – and I couldn’t think of any. But this is not strictly true, because one of the best things about being President has been the chance to work with the VeePee and the EyePeePee and the EyeEyePeePee Train Man, and the Onssek and his commas, and of course Mad Mr Davies, and I would not have missed that for the world because they are super-bright people of integrity and courage and I would trust them with my life not to mention my afternoon tea. I cannot easily put this into words with a mouth full of macaroon, though. 8 February 2016, 3 pm
And finally today, the VeePee is taking me out for afternoon tea. Perhaps he is being nice to me to prevent me questioning his international liaison plans in too much detail. Or perhaps he wants to make sure I don’t just disappear off into the sunset the minute I step down from the presidency (too bad: I will be on the first plane out, and will be sure to email him the photos). As we leave, the CIPA team are beginning a training session on the new database. In one sorry room, Mr Davies, Mr Lampert, Unlucky Gary and New Isabelle (Mr Lampert’s new communications officer) sit hunched over their individual workstations, phones to their ears, pulling despairing faces and sighing. Unlucky Gary has his eyes closed, as though trying to block out the trauma. Mr Lampert appears to have invented a whole load of new shorthand symbols. There is steam coming out of Mr Davies’s ears, even without a kettle anywhere nearby. They are supposed to be learning how to use the database to do whizzy new things and how to get it to communicate with the whizzy new website. They would also like to get it to deliver up the data it purportedly houses, in a form that people can use to, for example, write to their members, or process subscription payments. These last are not in themselves whizzy new things, they are just ordinary old things that databases are supposed to do, and our database’s failure to play ball is what is causing the sighing and the steaming today. The VeePee and I beat a hasty retreat. This may sound callous but in the circumstances, it is probably in CIPA’s best interests. And we would not want to arrive at the posh afternoon tea place picking bits of database out of our hair. 8 February 2016, mid-day
Now the VeePee and I are sharing lunch with the key people from the EyeEllSee, which if you were paying attention before you will remember is the International Liaison Committee, charged with telling the rest of the world about the brilliance of chartered patent attorneys. Together, we make a list of all the international liaisons we are going to engage in over the next twelve months, so that the VeePee can shape his holiday plans accordingly. I am not sure why the VeePee feels we should be internationally liaising in Barbados during his Presidential term, or indeed if there is such a thing as a Global Patent Harmonisation Safari. But he promises to email me some photos to prove that he really is doing these things and not just skiving off again. |
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