The wonderful world of Tilleba

Chapter 1: A New Life

After many years in China, Alicia is quite happy to start a new chapter of her life living and working in Singapore.

She is in her late 40’s and has been living in Asia for many years. Her kids are now grown-up and living abroad. Her cat – the only man in her life – usually follows her wherever she goes but was almost the reason for not exploring Singapore as a place to live. He was quite complicated to import. She even had to find a new home for her other two cats as she was only allowed one pet: one passport/one pet is the unbreakable rule over there.

In a few minutes she will go through the door of her new office at Tilleba company.

She has high expectations for this job change, she is happy to discover a new industry – from fashion to bathrooms. At first, she was not that excited at the thought of joining a company that basically sells toilets, but the name is prestigious. She is also looking forward to being in a more professional and structured organization than her previous one.

It gives her exposure in the entire region. She is no longer limited to China. Furthermore, the Germans are supposed to be the leading country in Europe, they should be doing something right. Last, but not least, the reputation of Singapore is good; it’s supposed to be an efficient and business friendly hub.

She will not be disappointed. She will learn a lot, just not exactly what she originally expected.

At 9 am sharp, she arrives at the door of the office and is greeted by Shasha, the very efficient personal assistant of Jessica, the managing director.

Her first surprise is to be seated in the middle of an area with about 15 other people. As the Chief Financial Officer for the region, she would have expected to have her own private office.

Her second surprise is to discover how cold the office is, probably no more than 18 degrees while it’s well over 29 degrees outside with no less than 80% humidity, the usual standard in this country. The air conditioning is blowing cold air just above her head. She has no choice but to drink as much hot green tea as possible to maintain a reasonable body temperature and to hope that her immune system will be strong enough to protect her from a headache, the flu or anything else.

Jessica quickly comes to her, which is not very difficult considering that Alicia’s desk is the closest to her office. Alicia will soon discover that nobody wanted to sit so close to Jessica and they are quite glad to dedicate this cursed desk to her.

“Welcome Alicia, I’m so happy to finally have you around. I badly need the help of a competent C.F.O.”, says Jessica.

Alicia wonders why she speaks so loudly. She will quickly learn that this is her normal way of talking. It feels like the entire world must hear her. She is not very tall, but nothing unusual for a Singaporean lady. Jessica has a pretty and very round face, she is dressed elegantly in a white pant suit with a blue blouse, although she could have done without the blond hair color. She is rather slim, even though she has a slight belly. Alicia thinks she could be around 40-45 years old, which will be confirmed later by Shasha, her assistant.

Jessica takes her to a meeting room and starts talking almost non-stop for the next 6 hours. Luckily, a few bathroom breaks could be negotiated but she couldn’t escape the lunch, delivered by the dutiful Shasha, in the freezing cold meeting room. Jessica shares some interesting information about the company and its current stage of development, as well as the challenges it faces, but most of the time she simply complains about how miserable her life is with the Germans who want to control everything and take ages to make any decisions.

“You would think that being incapable of making decisions, they would delegate to me, but not at all, so as a result every project is stuck,” complains Jessica.

Alicia wonders if anyone has ever found a polite way to shut her up. There is one thing she knows already: she won’t be able to cope with that non-stop talking for very long.

By the “Germans”, Jessica is referring to the 3 Board members: Mr. Herman Kaiser, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Tobias Konig, Head of Sales and Operations, boss of Jessica; and Dr Klaus Lange, Chief Financial Officer, boss of Alicia.

Alicia heard a different story during her recruitment interviews. Dr Lange mentioned reckless behavior from Jessica, (even though he did not enlighten her with any explanations or examples) who needs to be controlled. He strongly expects Alicia to be able to perform this task. She can’t help but wonder why this is not a task performed by Tobias who is her boss after all. She will discover later that the non-stop talking / not listening attitude of Jessica drives him nuts, but he seems completely incapable of controlling her.

“By the way, you should call Klaus and ask him why you are not reporting to me. This is unacceptable considering that I’m the Managing Director for the region”, drops Jessica.

Alicia is quite surprised by this and she agrees that having two reporting lines is common for this type of role: one to the Managing Director and one to the group CFO. On the other hand, she wonders why it has not been discussed and agreed with the Board and Jessica, prior to her on-boarding. It’s a very awkward situation but she does as she is told and calls Klaus.

“Good morning Klaus, this is Alicia.”

“Good afternoon to you, first day in the job, is that right?” asks Klaus.

“Yes indeed.”

“Perfect. Anything I can do for you?” She skips the part where she would have expected to have at least a short meeting of introduction from him as it doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

“As a matter of fact, there is. Jessica is quite surprised that I do not report to her and so am I, considering that she is the MD.”

“That’s because you don’t know Jessica,” says Klaus with something that sounds like a laugh.

Alicia stays silent on the phone wondering what it could possibly mean.

“If you want to be able to control her, it’s best if you don’t report to her at all but only to me. It will allow you more freedom. Anything more?”

“I get it, but could you talk to her and clarify it with her directly?” asks Alicia

“Oh no!” says Klaus as if scared by the mere idea of having to talk to Jessica. “I mean, you sit next to her, just tell her that you report to me and only me and that’s it. I have to run to a Board meeting, chat soon.”

And by that, he ends the discussion leaving Alicia no closer to an explanation that she could diplomatically convey to Jessica.

Alicia briefly explains to Shasha what just happened, hoping she can shed some light on how the dynamics work.

“Don’t expect any of the Germans to talk to Jessica unless they are absolutely forced to” is the only response she gets.

At the end of her first day at Tilleba, Alicia starts to doubt that she made the right call in joining this company…

In the next few days, she will notice that at least her colleagues are all very experienced and know the industry inside and out, which is important, as it’s new to her. Apparently, it’s also new to Jessica. The few interactions she has witnessed make it clear that she should rely heavily on her team but unfortunately, she is not willing to listen to what they have to say. She needs to show them that she knows better, which is unfortunately not the case, even though she has been with the company for the last 4 years. Most of the time, they end up falling into a complete silence and simply waiting for her to let them go back to their job.

Alicia feels that it will be easy to work with them as they are always readily available for questions and give her the feeling that they are very efficient, a quality she values a lot among her co-workers. As it turns out, they will appreciate to have someone listening to them and valuing their expertise for a change.

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