Eras of Assistance, Part I
Eras of Assistance
[Part I]
One day a Bova arrived.
She appeared through the doorway of the-CEO-is-important, glass-walled, centrally located office. In the morning there sat an empty desk, in the afternoon a crop of black hair cut into bangs, encroaching atop spacious transparent glasses. The rest a mystery obstructed by the back of a computer laptop. This was Bova. Marie, to be exact. Marie Bova.
But, let's drop the pretense. Bova it is.
Bova was my first assistant and was an assignment, having never met me before and neither I her, and so we swirled in a first dance of work to be done without so much as a meet and greet or an interview.
You need this, said my COO, patting me on the shoulder. I took care of it for you.
To be honest, I wouldn't have wished a me upon a Bova. I was the whippersnapper-aged CEO of a fast growing startup. I wore my ego like a badge. I needed things to be done and needed them now and couldn't be bothered to bother with anything that bothered everyone else. Bova was here to help, but some days I was pretty sure I went out of my way to prove that she wasn't.
After one particularly testy internal meeting, after everyone else had left the room, the same COO pulled me aside and offered me a stern and simple, "you realize we're on the same team, right?"
Bova taught me what it meant to have a right hand to simplify the day to day: Organize calls, plan a calendar, be a dignitary to external senior executives and a blocker to internal distractions. Bova mostly succeeded at these things, and worked incredibly hard to match my pace and determination.
Once a peer noted (rather formally I might add): "She occupies a stressful position but composes herself - at least with her colleagues - with humor and levity."
I gave Bova a review once - an early version of a green/yellow/red - and in it, after a few greens (Incredibly dedicated; always available; protective of me and my office; very professional with external contacts), I entered the murky waters of the red section by pointing out that she had a blind spot with details - matched by a refusal to admit defeat.
For example, once Bova accidentally booked me for 30 nights straight at a Holiday Inn in a sleepy town in New Jersey.
A clerical error of both timing and distance, given it was a forty minute drive from my closest meeting in NYC. The booking was non-refundable, of course (and still available I'm sure, just in case any of you requires a room) and grumpily she offered a stern, "just deal with it."
In another case I was traveling in the UK and very late for a client meeting. From 3,000 miles away, she fed the address into my blackberry calendar. The Cabbie seemed puzzled and asked a dozen different ways if this was indeed the right spot and - with my persistence and Bova's conviction - as the evening darkness descended, he left me on the side of the M5 highway in tempestuous downpour. The meeting was missed as I jogged 2 miles down an off-ramp, soaked to the bone and frazzled, electric and panicked like a wet cat.
And so I aimed to be direct in my feedback: "Lapses in attention to detail, and slightly more than the rare mistake."
Bova wasn't impressed. She refused to talk to me for no less than three weeks after, which made scheduling things, let's say, extra challenging.
But the real complexity with Bova was simple: we had limited natural chemistry.
We were a work couple put together in an arranged marriage. She stood by my side as BzzAgent nearly fell from grace (2008-2009) during which I became an angrier version of the worst version of myself. She rode shotgun as we persevered, rebuilt the business and successfully sold the company. She supported as I joined a new leadership team, and donned a new set of executive challenges. She witnessed my marriage fall apart. She survived the beginnings of new companies. And while we learned and grew together - to the best of our abilities as a forced couple might - we found ourselves growing in different directions.
Six years in and we required different things. Sarah, my now-wife, arrived, and once after she waved to me in my office, Bova muttered under her breath, "my how we've fallen from grace."
She was resentful of my transformation and I of her unwillingness to grow with me. The mirage fell away. Neither of us were happy. In a moment of weakness, someone else was given the unpleasant assignment of having to let her go. I hid in my office, telling myself I was too busy to take on the task.
I knew it happened because there was a commotion near the back of the office. Papers were flying. The air was dangerous. The wind shifted. A Bova was on the loose, running from desk to desk, accosting people heads down in cubicles, shouting, "Did you know? Did you know?" before the muscle arrived and hustled her out a side door.