Gordon Mandry

Manchester 2003, Gordon Mandry,

Ah damn bastard…

If you are French, Japanese, English, American or Chinese, you are totally out of luck. The man hates you. Not simply ignoring you in a petty way, but he actively hates you by pointing out all the most humiliating stereotypes one can figure out about your home country and fellow citizens. Then if you make the mistake to shoot back some comment about the lame quality of the food you are being served, the weather that never stops to let you down preferably under 10 cm of chilling rain and long dark depressing skies, he will ask you why have you come to England, enjoying in advance the fight he is going to pick. You’ll then quietly answer “I came because of the quality of the teaching”.

Gordon Mandry is one of the most brilliant mind I came to learn from (besides a genius fraud who turned out to be one hell of a criminal!) And when this brilliant mind asks a question, you’d better know the answer, otherwise you’ll be reduced to dust and crumbles.

So yes, I was punched around a few times by the terror guy, but since the man inspires respect, I… fought back, sometimes. It is not always that easy.

So the most brilliant mind yells at my team on a marketing project he was overseeing. Since the guy is very clever, you have to ask yourself fast why he is unhappy, especially if you are killing yourself on the job. Then, you have to backtrack, rewind the course of the events and figure out what are the missing element of the puzzle. Then, if you still haven’t fainted, and managed to keep your cool, you infer that he wasn’t given an essential piece of information that you just managed to dig out.

Then the project goes on, and two weeks later, you are checked on the status and you can feel the growing ire of your director lying upon you: cold as steel. And then again, you have to ask yourself the right questions. You are convinced that you are going in the right direction and you try to understand why this very bright guy doesn’t see your point at the moment, and suddenly it becomes difficult to decide because you know you are being watched, you are going into the unknown and your director is not following you, at all. “I sincerely hope that you know what you are doing”.

So you have to think long and hard. If you back down, you know the project will be a total failure and you hate failure, on the other hand, it is not clear why such a brilliant person does not see the “light”. So you look for a reason and you figure out that Gordon has been extremely busy and highly solicited by many people and just never gets a chance to analyze all the elements of the problem and he won’t have time until the final submission of the project. So you think, because you have no other way… If you are right, you are right and you act in the best interest of your mission.

So it has been like “knocking on hell’s door” and I can hear the sound of my heartbeat growing bigger everyday. But I’ll fight for my results, they show a truth that is difficult to grasp at a glance and I believe in the analysis.

So comes the day of the final submission. And damn it, yes Gordon is a bright guy, and yes he spends time to read what I had to say. 

Gordon is not the type to admit he is wrong, and I didn’t expect it, but he is the type to recognize your work when it makes sense. That’s the mark of a very clever person and of a true gentleman. Believe me it is not easy to stand up to a genius, and you’d better be sure about what you have to say. Maybe, I grew up a bit more, maybe I was able to bring value instead of taking the easy way out, but for this small lesson in life, for what Gordon let me learn and prove to myself, I can absolve his (numerous) sins.

Thanks Gordon, you bloody welsh bastard...

Gilles Daquin at http://gillesdaquin.blogspot.com