The Inmates Have Truly Siezed The Asylum!

I’m really beginning to have a concern for our George Shaw, or “G.B. Shaw” as he now likes to style himself. It seems that while I was traveling about, the scoundrel has contacted my prospective new Brigade Commanders, and some of their named staff members, and requested brief biographies, along with family histories, a curriculum vitae, and answers to a set of questions that George sent along. He has received these back already and closeted himself with this mountain of paper and two fellows that he recruited from somewhere that he refers to as “headhunters”. Well, upon hearing of this when I returned to New Gaellia, I immediately stormed into the room, with both my saber and pistol drawn, fully-prepared to either rescue poor George or find his nether parts hung up to dry! Much to my amazement, I discovered two “bookish-looking” chaps dressed very somberly in gray suits, but with an odd vertical striped effect to them, white blouses and the most bizarre appearing striped cravates. Certainly not the aboriginal natives or Red Indians of the America’s that I expected.

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It seems that these two odd ducks have developed a methodology that our young George is quite taken with. I now know that it was these two fellows that had devised the questionnaire for George, asking the most foolishly outlandish questions that I have ever heard! I do swear, they asked such things as, “If you had to be a tree, which type of tree would you be?”, and, “Describe a time when you had to impose your authority on a subordinate, and your subordinate’s reaction to this.” Bloody hell! If I had to answer these myself, especially after my recent adventure with the tax collector, I would have said, “I laid my sword along his backside and I don’t give a tinker’s damn how he reacted!” I gather, from what George has informed me, these two “cold fish” would have rated me very poorly in “Leadership Skills” and suggested that I “Choose a mentor whose personal style I might better emulate.” Double bloody hell! Fortunately, George says that I’m “not required” to complete one of their bizarre packets. “Not Required” indeed! I reminded George which of us was the Duke, and which of us could better afford to waste his precious time consorting with two such obvious wankers. Why, upon meeting these “gentlemen” for the first time, they actually had the audacity to extend their pasty white hands to me as if we had all been “Hale fellows, well met”, and grasping one of them before I could catch myself, I do swear that the impression left was of grabbing a cold, dead mackerel directly from a fishmonger’s market stand! It seems that these two represent a concern that has been performing a similar function for various business concerns across the Continent, as well as some of the more “progressive” monarchies. Apparently, once these two complete what they refer to as their “quantitative analysis” of the accumulated material, they then prepare the most magnificent illustrations, all beautifully illuminated in vibrant coloring I’m assured, that will identify, even for the untrained observer, items that they themselves refer to individually as “Key Performance Indicators”, “Evaluation of Leadership Dynamics”, “Critical Path Analysis in Problem Solving” and “Matrix of Available Skillsets”. They insist that these will revolutionize the art of decision-making and staff selection at some point in the future, if indeed it has not already done so, and that my use of these analyses shall place me upon what they both refer to as “The Cutting Edge” of new thinkers. I’d like to show them both a “cutting edge” that I’m already quite familiar with, but I will continue to humor young George. They are supposed to have their presentation prepared for me within a matter of days, although it is quite beyond me how they can obtain the required number of trained monks to perform the illuminations in that short a period of time. Rest assured however, that I will present their findings to you for your entertainment and review Dear Reader, as I do expect them to be quite unique; especially since they indicated that we shall be “Doing Lunch” at the time!

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Respectfully yours, Sir William