The 25-year team building course
A story of trust, support, and long-term loyalty
In 1993, I was promoted to Chief of Security at the company’s flagship hotel in Norway. The role included overseeing safety and security for the entire hotel chain. It was a growing group and, with my limited background in both security and hotels, it was a task beyond my capabilities. It felt like I was following Richard Branson’s advice about being given an opportunity you’re unsure of: “Say yes, and figure it out later.”
I knew I needed to lean on others to succeed. My first pillar of support was a Swedish colleague. He had started as a bouncer in the nightclub of a hotel in Gothenburg and grown into a role as the hotel security manager. When I was promoted, he was one of the first to reach out. He was my de facto deputy on the corporate side, a title that was never granted to him formally but that he held for 25 years.
In 1989 and 1990, we opened hotels in Brussels and Amsterdam. They opened as five-star hotels with restaurants, bars, 24-hour room service, and fully-staffed security departments. Within a few years, the security departments were less than fully-staffed. The fully-competent security managers remained. Later on, they too became de facto deputies.
Latin wasn’t a subject I studied at school, but I think perhaps “de facto” has something to do with unpaid…
My deputies received no financial compensation for their support and no one did their job at the hotel when they were sent to a foreign land to support one of our hotels. That was their compensation. A free trip to somewhere, although when they got there, they were rewarded with longer days of work than they probably had at home, and when they returned home, they’d have to tackle the extra work that piled up in their absence.
Throughout the 1990s, the de facto deputy from Sweden and I met once in a while, but when mobile phones became less expensive (and when the company started allowing us to use them) we talked often. His children were of a similar age to my stepdaughter and our almost daily chats covered everything from updating manuals to how to raise our kids. His family, children included, attended my wedding.
In our work, we were each other’s lifeline of support, outside of work we were friends even though we hardly ever saw each other. Both as friends and colleagues we found comfort in knowing we were always as close as a phone call.
When Sweden hosted the EU summit in 2001 he called me six months in advance with two messages: one – the police weren’t going to have enough resources and two – he had been told there was a good chance the US president would attend part of the summit. “We’ll be on our own.”, he said.
His military background had taught him well. Make a plan. Test the plan. Revise the plan. Test the plan again. Execute. Adapt. Review and get ready for next time.
We had had a major event plan since 1990. It had been reviewed, adapted and executed many times after 1991, and especially after 1997 when large, international political summits always seemed to be accompanied by violent protests and disruptive behaviour.
We did the planning and preparation. He trained the teams. He convinced the General Manager of the hotel right on the main street to agree to install some simple shutters in front of the windows that could quickly be dropped down to protect the glass if bricks and cobblestones started flying through the air. He offered other hotels in the city help to make their own plans, but none took him up on the offer.
We monitored what was available online in those pre-twitter and pre-facebook days. Sites like Indymedia were showing signs of people inviting other people to come to Sweden to protest. The Swedish government had decided that rather than deploy large amounts of visible law enforcement, they would use the “Swedish model”. People and families were encouraged to join the demonstrations and express their support for an open, peaceful and democratic society.
It was a beautiful, early summer evening when the first demonstration passed by the hotel. As the smiling waving people in the procession walked along, we were standing outside the hotel with a corporate chef who was in town to make sure the prominent people staying in the hotel were well-fed. From somewhere in the middle of the parade a bottle was thrown toward us. We didn’t see it coming, but we heard it smash at our feet. A sign of things to come.
After the parade had passed more or less peacefully, my de facto deputy and I went for a walk. Along the main street and in the adjacent parks we saw the signs. Cobblestones piled up under benches, in bushes and behind trees. Tomorrow would be a difficult day for the police, for the city, and for the EU.
We reported what we’d seen to the hotel General Manager and received approval to activate an escalation of the plan. The outdoor restaurant patio was closed. Anything that could be lifted by hand within a certain distance of the hotel was removed and stored securely. The shutters were dropped. Some people, including city administrators, complained that the hotel was being turned into a fortress. The General Manager accepted their criticism, and allowed us to continue the escalation of the hotel’s preparedness.
The next morning all hell broke loose. Cobblestones were thrown, bonfires were lit in the street and police cars were destroyed in the violence. It started right outside the hotel. We had a rooftop observation post and a bird’s eye view of the senseless violence. As it moved down the street, we could hear restaurant, hotel, and storefront windows being smashed by flying bricks and cobblestones. One can only imagine what guests and staff in those businesses were feeling as the rampaging mobs moved toward them. It took hours before police regained full control and were able to isolate the city centre area by dropping shipping containers at crossroads and park entrances.
Even before calm was fully restored, our hotel reopened its outdoor patio. Most places along the main thoroughfare remained closed. Their windows were broken and their furniture had been used to fuel the bonfires.
When President Bush did a photo op for key members of the hotel staff at our second hotel in the city, where he stayed, de facto deputy was an obvious choice and they got a great picture together. While he was there, I manned the rooftop post at the other hotel to keep an eye on things. It was raining. I have never let him forget that while he was rubbing shoulders and shaking hands with presidents, I was lying in the rain on a rooftop. But it was as it should be. He was the leader of our two-man team on this occasion. It was his specialty. He was always the one we sent to the most important, highest-profile, events.
Some people wondered why I didn’t pull rank and go to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings, the Olympic Games, or other high-profile events with distinguished delegates. The answer was simple. We were a team and he was our playmaker at those kinds of events. Always select the best person for a job, regardless of their place on the corporate organization chart.
When the Olympics were to be held in Russia, he was of course the person we chose to support our hotels. Over the course of a year or more, he visited the city on several occasions to help the hotels plan and prepare for the big event. He was due to be there for the opening and we had a “play it by ear” plan for the sixteen-day event. In our minds, our plan was that as long as things were running smoothly, he would come home after the opening ceremony and a decision would be made if he needed to go back for the closing ceremony. We did not share this part of the plan with our superiors, but they were aware he would have very flexible flight options in case something happened elsewhere in the company that might need his attention.
Reality, as you may be aware, doesn’t follow a pre-written plan.
On the day, I was to give my annual update to the Company Board, which was always a well-rehearsed, go-through-the-motions presentation that the board had been given an advance copy of, something happened. A bomb had gone off on a bus in Russia. Not in Sochi, where the Olympics would soon take place, but the sensation-seeking talking heads on the news channels were all yapping about the Olympic Games and the perceived risk of attack in Sochi. All the Board wanted to know was what our position was in Sochi and if our hotels would be safe. The CEO asked me to promise that the de facto deputy would be there from start to finish. I said we would stick to our plan, without informing him that “our plan” was to get the man home so he could celebrate both Valentine’s Day and his birthday with his family, provided of course that the situation in Sochi was favourable. I also told the Board that one of my most difficult daily challenges was trying to figure out how to prevent them from thinking CNN and BBC were good places to get security intelligence reports.
When I told him how the Board meeting went, the de facto deputy said two words. “I’ll stay.” He also said he was a bit concerned about what might happen if the CEO heard I let him come home. He wasn’t concerned for himself, he was concerned for me.
I told him I wasn’t worried. As fate would have it the CEO, an avid mountaineer, would be on vacation and out of normal communications range during most of the Olympics. “You’ll be back in Sochi before he gets a signal on his cellphone.”, I said.
Everything went off without a hitch. A mountain was conquered by the CEO and the de facto deputy celebrated his birthday and Valentine’s Day with his loved ones.
My team of de facto deputies often cringed when they saw that some departments had all-expense-paid trips to Beirut, Dubai, Nice, or London for team-building events and retreats, while the best they could hope for was a day and a half in Brussels where they would, inevitably, have to endure my home cooking and cheap wine. At one point, I even had to downsize the unpaid team from 3 to 2, resulting in the fact that the security manager in Amsterdam was let go from his extracurricular support role. He remained loyal and said if he could ever help, he would.
When the company finally became large enough to allow for two of the de facto deputies to be paid for their services, first in 50% corporate roles while maintaining their local roles, and later as full-time managers and, later still, director-level employees, the two security people that I had known the longest were finally promoted into roles they deserved.
One of my favourite legacies is the fact that no one that ever directly reported to me (de facto or otherwise) at the corporate level ever resigned from the company. For years, these overworked, underpaid people had full-time jobs in addition to the corporate support roles they filled.
We were a team, not built or bonded by fancy, company-paid, weekends away, or theoretical how-to-be-a-better-team courses. We were a team built upon years of mutual trust, communication, support, and loyalty. It’s the best team-building course I ever took and every day of the 25+ years it lasted was worth it.
Stay safe, Always Care
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