Sympathy for the Devil

Abstract

Sometime before writing this book I was the Acting Chief Executive Officer of a medium-sized organization. I had been in the organization for a short while and happily accepted the role. It was a job that I took seriously and gave my full commitment to with the intention of making a genuine difference. The word acting though always caught in my throat, like a dry biscuit crumb that had welded itself to my windpipe. I wasn’t acting, of course, in the Hollywood movie sense, nor was I acting in the undercover cop sense. In fact it felt very real in every way to me, but I was nevertheless not, at that point, substantiated in the position. Close, but no cigar, as the saying goes. People would inquire often about what would happen next in the process of filling the position for the leadership, for example whether it would be through advertisement in the newspapers or whether the Board had someone in mind. When speaking to me they would ask about arrangements for filling “your” position and then, recognizing the possible suggestion implied by the word “your,” they would catch themselves mid flow and attempt to “repair” the sentence. The question would usually therefore be accompanied by a kind of stutter and I would witness the quick but all-too-obvious switch of the “your” word to the non possessive “the” word before asking about the position.