No.16
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Your door is always open, but does anyone walk through?
Is that because your employees don’t want to talk to you?
So far as they’re concerned, your door is almost always shut.
You take full credit for ideas that other minds dreamed up.
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You demand opinions (to ward what critics may impugn)
When privately you think yourself the smartest in the room.
How well you maintain this belief against prevailing facts!
This self-deceit, dissembling fraud, a key part of your act
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Gold-medal micro-manager, were it Olympic sport.
Our competence in doubt? You say it’s nothing of the sort.
But facts don’t matter much if you’re the one up on the throne;
Our reality is dismissed in favour of your own.
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So you’d do well to watch your back and wonder where to turn;
Yes you, the architect of this chaotic slash-and-burn.
Red-team all you like, but be aware you’re isolated.
Did you wake at dawn and plan by dusk to be this hated?
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Maybe I overplayed it, no-one’s out to claim your scalp.
You’ve been left to swim or sink without hindrance or help.
Dull-eyed now, do you have what it takes to make us eager?
Little pressure-test to sort the loser from the leader.
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No.16
Erik Kaisson, 2017