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Graham, I have since realized, gets very emotional but keeps it hidden away much of the time. You don’t see it in him unless you look very hard. The generous look that he gave me was because he had seen an opportunity in the IT Strategy to deal with a wider strategic problem. It was an issue that had been bugging him and Juliette for ages, but they hadn’t yet found a vehicle for solving it. He was genuinely grateful to me, as fate’s agent, for bringing him this opportunity and to Juliette for spotting it. He was also excited about the prospect of what lay ahead.
Far from playing games, he told me directly what the problem was that he and Juliette were trying to solve. He also told me that if I wanted to work in the ‘inner circle’ with them I had to stop behaving like a quasi-supplier. Suppliers do not get a say in the kind of strategy that they wanted the IT strategy...