Head of the documentation unit

See also the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

The head of the documentation unit is an accursed person in an investment bank, although he is usually the last one to recognise this. This poor sod is responsible for the performance of the sainted men and women who make contractual flesh the fantastical aspirations of the credit department. One earns this Sisyphean task only to atone for a sin committed in a former life or as an act of spite, vengeance or perverse cruelty from someone else further up the organisation. Keep your friends close and — when it comes promotion time — your enemies closer. This is a stretch assignment you do not want.

Running the doc unit is thankless not because of the negotiators — by and large a perfectly pleasant, capable and long-suffering bunch — but, because of its cost, heft, and inevitably negative impact on the franchise. The doc unit is therefore an irresistible “cost centre” for change managers, management consultants,and chief operating officers to fiddle with. Offshoring, outsourcing, operations-aligning, automating — all of kind of easily spoken ideas will flood his feverish mind. It will not be his job to do them.

This ideas will override any the poor head of the documentation unit should have of her own to fix things. Any such ideas, however wise, will fail. but not before being co-opted, amalgamated, misinterpreted, forced through a sieve of business administration dogma and systematically brutalised until they are unrecognizable, unworkable, inexcusable, and yet still inextricably associated with the head of the documentation unit. He — or she — is generally regarded as a dead man walking.

Readers who sense that the author has experienced these sensations from close range would be absolutely right.

Seen through the different prisms of the self-perpetuating autocracy, this is what the documentation unit means:

Sales: WHERE'S MY GODDAMN ISDA?
Chief Operating Officer: Why does this department cost so much? Where are the economies of scale? Who the hell are these people?
General counsel: It pains me that these people are what the management committee has in mind when it thinks of the legal department.
Change manager: Here is an opportunity to right-shore and gain credit for delayering the organization!

In an investment bank, being a place of universal grasping fixation on advancement, it isn't hard to find a stooge to take the role: all you have to do is present it as a stretch assignment; an opportunity for advancement: managing three hundred people, in six centres across seven time zones, with a chance to overhaul and rock the house on a franchise-critical operational function. Who would not leap at that?

A person with a cautious or reflective nature. That’s who. When they come for you, ask yourself this:

Why are they asking me to do this and not someone already in or with some understanding of the documentation unit? These people know something you don’t. Do not fall for their lionisation of your people management skills. IT ISN'T ABOUT PEOPLE MANAGEMENT.
Is my present role really that bad?