• The origin of The Department can be traced to the detection of ‘the void’ somewhere around the mid-eighties. I remember the moment very clearly; I was holding court at a strategy meeting and took a dry marker to the whiteboard and wrote the word PRODUCTION in blue ink and the word COMMERCIAL in green. [Click up image of big mouth] Between these, I drew a slightly squiggly circle and drew jagged teeth at its top and bottom and wrote, in cartoon writing, ‘THE VOID’ although I suppose I really meant THE MAW. [There may be laughter. Indulge it] The Maw was where so much money, good intentions and golden opportunities somehow disappeared. • And then … alone, with little support from our then-management and very little in the way of proper stationery, we filled the void and fed the maw with what I call the first generation of The Department. We filled it with our industry, dedication and what is surely the last measure of genuine pioneer spirit in the ancillary service industries. The need for The Department, as expressed some seven financial years ago, was sorely pressing, and sorely pressed, our then-management agreed that I should be the one charged with its creation. I turned down the offer from Smith & Gelsons. I stayed with the company. I imagined The Department, I planned The Department, I staffed The Department, I loved The Department. This I did, and I dare you to deny that This Department is a FACT. That FACT must be acknowledged and that FACT is the index of our success – and where, I ask, is the then-management? One of them ‘retired’, another two came to an amicable rearrangement of their status with the succeeding thenmanagement which preceded our current-management while a fourth collapsed with his hand over his heart between the Euston and Islington stops on the London Underground. I am still head of The Department and filled with pride over our tenacity, our endurance. It is a success because it is a fact and a fact because of our – its success – and it is a success because it has endured, and business tests our endurance. • To recap – this longevity signals our enduring utility to the overall purpose of the company! I hope to see us all gathered here after another seven financial years to celebrate Our Department’s 14th anniversary! • But let me be absolutely clear in saying that the very existence of this department is the very source of my pride in this department and that my connection to this department is more than enough justification for my salary, generous company pension and what I hope will be a long and exceedingly dull retirement. • It is of course possible that the business of The Department may never be concluded. It is possible that there will always be a reason for the department. Furthermore, knowing whether or not This Department should exist is an implicit duty of the people who together form it. There is strength in numbers. We have it in hand. • Those who call The Department are comforted by its survival, knowing full well our existence depends on them and that they are, as a result, very important. They can depend on us. [End of slide] • There is something special about The Department, which has retained its identity though it has moved premises many times – once upstairs, then across the street, then back across the street to downstairs, then across the building to the south-facing corner, then open plan, then a move, from the window to the very centre of the floor, then removed upstairs again, then finally, here again by the window I first looked out from when it all began. That’s no less than 10 organisational restructures. But while the war rages, we were tranquil and unabashed. But I yearn for those days when I first created The Department, when everything was fresh, pregnant and pure, not layered with
the drouth
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