Page 196 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

‘Look, Jonathan, it’s a Friday. No one should get sacked on a
Friday. Let’s leave it to Monday. Set up a meeting with her at
9 a.m. and we’ll give her the news together.’
At about 8.50 on the Monday morning I walked into the coffee
shop opposite the office and ordered a cappuccino.
‘Jonathan? Hi, it’s James. Listen, I’m stuck in traffic. You’re OK
to take that meeting on your own, aren’t you?’
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be the bad guy; it was just that I
wanted the staff to know that Jonathan had that kind of authority
and that level of trust from me. If I had told Jonathan on the
Friday that I thought he should have handled the meeting on his
own, he would have spent the weekend dreading it, and tried to
persuade me to be there.
Jonathan became quite effective quite quickly. For the first
couple of months people would still come to me with queries, and
I would tell them to take their issue to Jonathan. Of course, pretty
soon they just went straight to Jonathan. It was really weird: it was
like having your child pay more attention to their uncle than their
dad, and I was like: Oi! Stop it! I’d spent six months wanting him
to be seen as the chief executive, but as soon as he was I couldn’t
help feeling a bit left out.

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