Nay, Olivier (eng.)
Mar 22nd, 2011 by Charlotte Haug
Olivier (IIEP) writes:
One important principle with Gudmund is trust. Gudmund is a moral man. I do not say he is a good man (like every boss, he has some little defaults). I just say he has a clear appreciation of what is good and what is bad. There are two possible moral situations at work with Gudmund. He does trust you. Or he doesn’t. That’s all. There is no middle, no compromise, and no concession. IfGudmund doesn’t trust you, forget it! You are in a real bad situation. He likes to “play hardball”. He will do all his best to bring you in several pieces, with some cordiality. In such a situation, please run. Or start to practice martial arts.
When Gudmund trusts you, things are much different. He is a friendly boss. He is loosening up. He smiles. He is even ready to experiment things he shouldn’t do. All the following examples are real and I have no choice but to reveal them.
1. Gudmund can abandon his flight ticket and jump in an antique car without breaks – but with a crazy driver – to cross Cambodia from south to north in one day.
2. He can make much elaborated theories on urban architecture of the Khmer civilization, while simultaneously he sends sms to Charlotte (at least every five minutes) and eats spring rolls (without his salmon mayonnaise, thanks God!). One of Gudmund’s main ability is to do several things all at once (especially when elaborating theories).
3. He may even tell you, with serious arguments, that he will write the Norwegian version of the Da Vinci Code. Someday… when he retires (will he? Not sure).
4. He may eat a Chinese noddle soup with his fingers, just because he likes the soup and he also likes his fingers.
5. He can lie down on his office’s floor, in an early morning (I remember it was before coffee!) to exemplify a convincing line of arguments on exercising “as a way to prevent pain on your back”. He took a coffee afterwards (which was necessary for him to recover).
6. He may also help you to fold leaflets at midnight in the middle of Africa just because he feels sorry for you (meanwhile other ministers are smoking cigars and drinking whisky at the bar).
7. He may also give you a bunch of tasks you never thought they were existing, just because he doesn’t want to give them to ignorant people.
8. He may even ask a young colleague to take a picture of her leg in front of the Eiffel tower, to use it as a critical element for his PowerPoint presentation at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (this is real, don’t ask me why… ask him… the response will pop up immediately and will take approx. 45 min).
9. But the best is the best: when Gudmund trusts you, he makes jokes and he is cool at work. He makes sometimes the same joke several times, which is still cool. That’s why I could endure him every morning during my four years at UNESCO.
I will not forget that trust is an essential part of happiness at work and gives a sense to professional life.
Thank you for this, Gudmund!
One thing I can tell you: It is easy to trust Olivier. He was my right hand man as the Global Coordinator on HIV/AIDS at UNESCO. Not only was Olivier reliable: He had two talents: His own, and the capacity to recruit the capacity of others. So he found Caltoumi and Barbara and others. He inspired them by his own work and made them enjoy the strains he put on them (some of it, admittedly, indirectly from me).
In addition Oliver is a political theorist with a great pedagogical talent. His capacity for work is demonstrated by the fact that he wrote much of his Histoire des idées politiques on his Macbook while on the road, with a unique capacity to switch focus an fully concentrate on that task, only just after a meeting. I have read and greatly enjoyed several chapters in taht book and he introduced me to Ernest Renan’s classical speech « Qu’est-ce qu’une nation ? »
And Olivier is fabulous travel companion, whether it is to Zambia and the Victoria Falls or to Cambodia and Angkor – or wherever. He both discovers the out-of-the-way little known sights and has the practical grit to get you both there.
And then he introduced me to some excellent French wines.
If I were to start out as a young man at a 17th century French castle, I would choose him as my tutor in Enlightenment.
PS: I forget to tell that the reason why I needed the picture of Caltoumi’s leg in front of the Eiffel Tower was to illustrate that the pressure on the styletto heel of a woman’s shoe is greater than the per square cm pressure of the Tower! Voilá!