At 28, freshly promoted and sitting at the VIP — Very Important Place — desk in our open-space office, I found myself staring at the only typewriter in the room. I was deeply disappointed. One of my teammates had just made a mistake — not a little oopsie, a full-blown biggie.
Mr. Müd, the owner of the company, had hired me — together with his French partners — to become the Marketing Manager of their joint venture, Pierre Fabre-Sifar Cosmetics. But then, surprise, surprise, everything changed. The big bosses decided the partnership would turn into a distributorship instead. And Mr. Müd just casually dropped a bomb:
“Now you will get the sales team as well.”
What did I say? Oh, only this: “I applied for the Marketing position! I have never led a sales team! I don’t think I can do that!”
But Mr. Müd — a heavily scientific pharmacist, Harvard Business School graduate, proud owner of a Harvard mug that I secretly adored — looked at me, his patience thinning like cheap shampoo, and said, “Girl, you are getting the lead of the entire business you applied for. I am deciding in your name. You will and can do this, and I will be at your side.”
And bam, just like that, I became the Head of Pierre Fabre-Sifar Cosmetics’ distributor business, tasked with relaunching their main brand in the country after a few… let’s call them adventures.
Back to the suspicious typewriter: as I started typing, every keystroke pounded out my frustration like a drum solo from a very angry rock band. The room was silent — but trust me, my mind was anything but. I was supposed to prepare a memo, but really, I was venting all my rage into that poor machine. The typewriter buttons were probably the only ones feeling the full force of my silent scream.
Luckily, I had taken a typewriting course at the age of twelve because I was determined to become a writer one day. The only problem? My brain was thinking way faster than my fingers could keep up — ideas just kept flying in before I could even catch them!
“Daddy,” I had told my father years ago, “you have to send me to that typewriting course! How else am I supposed to win the Nobel Prize?”
Which is why today I hammer away on all those Lenovos, Macs, HPs — you name it. Oops, there goes another one!
Anyway, there I was, 28 years old, hammering my feelings into a typewriter that was not yet considered an antique — PCs were still rare, lucrative creatures in offices. I was typing furiously, muttering nonsense under my breath, but the typewriter understood. I could swear it was grumbling back at me in sympathy.
The tik tik tik of the typewriter filled the room, punctuated by occasional berrp and zip sounds — the soundtrack to my inner rant.
Meanwhile, across the room, three senior staff members (combined age approximately the lifetime of Noah) were deeply engaged in a Very Important Discussion: “Who Has the Prettiest Wife?”
I kid you not.
There was the lawyer, old enough to have witnessed the invention of coffee itself, his wrinkled face lit up by twinkling eyes. Then Monsieur Consoli, the Italian export genius. And Mr. Wise, who had once been the GM but was gently nudged into retirement when the company decided to focus on one single product line at their new biotech plant.
Since then, Mr. Wise roamed the halls with his mysterious black book — talking to all the young talents (whether they wanted him to or not), offering his pearls of wisdom while their coffee slowly turned to sludge. I think sometimes I was the only one actually curious about what he had to say.
There they sat, these three ancient mariners of the business world, still comparing photos of their wives, while my typewriter clattered faster and louder. Tik tik tik. Berrp. Zip.
And then — whoosh — Mr. Wise materialized at my side, black book in hand.
It was as if he had grown taller, his black book transforming into the Sword of Damocles dangling above my head.
“Girl,” he said, in a voice that suddenly sounded older than time itself, “you have to see everything. But only your eyes and brain should do that. You can’t catch and shouldn’t see everything, even if you literally do — or else you can’t manage a team.”
And just like that — poof — he vanished, the black book fading into the ether, the shadow lifting from above my head.
The room felt lighter, and I just sat there, blinking, trying to figure out what had just happened. Slowly, I started to think: Was this really such a critical issue that I needed to intervene? Or was it just a side drama I could ignore?
And over the years, I came to realize: Mr. Wise had secretly shared the essence of the Eisenhower Matrix with me — without charts, without buzzwords, without any of the corporate jargon. Just pure wisdom: see everything, and focus on what truly matters.
I was not supposed to manage every little thing. I was supposed to manage what mattered, and delegate the rest.
The path to effective leadership is not paved with busywork but with wise choices — Labyrinth of Management will support you in how to make them.
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