The things we told ourselves

"After your session finishes we're all going out for dinner nearby as a team and the Director would love it if you'd both join us."

My business partner and I agreed enthusiastically and so set in train one of the longest, hardest most miserable nights of work I have ever done.

We started the training consultancy in Australia in the mid-90's, working solely with the pharmaceutical industry and, as pharma is as incestuous as any other sector, the choice to specialise paid off immediately.  Our reputation quickly, happily spread and we were starting to get used to those long-haul Business class flights to work with English-speaking clients in South Asia, Canada and the UK.  The US lay just out of reach at this stage but we'd managed to overcome the cultural cringe that comes from growing up on the far side of the planet.  This is a vital step for any antipodean looking to work globally.  If you'd asked us we would've airily told you that we weren't at all surprised that our ideas were so well received in far flung places but we would've been lying; we couldn't believe our luck.

Aye, there's the rub: we still saw it as luck.  Without ever discussing it openly, we'd decide to ride that luck as far as we could.

We said yes to every job that would pay, no matter how tight the timings or how ridiculous the travel schedule.  We also insisted on flying business class from Australia even though that priced us out of who knows how many projects and we co-facilitated every programme thus doubling those already substantial travel costs.  We told the clients (and ourselves) we were a high-impact double-act, a masterful combination of disparate talents and insights that combined delivered a truly unique and valuable training experience.  The honest truth was that if one of us was going to be sitting near the pointy end of QF001 then sure as hell the other one was going to be there too.

Which is how we found ourselves sitting exhausted in the function room of a country house hotel in the English Midlands in February at the close of Day Two of a three-day programme for a new UK client.  We'd arrived from Australia less than 36 hours before the training started and had yet to design Day Three.  We usually only ran two-day programmes but the client hadn't been able to justify the travel costs for two people for just two days so we blithely added on the third to get the gig.  Like I said, we rode that luck as far as we could.

We told ourselves we'd go through the existing programme and build in the new stuff on the plane over; after all it's effectively 24 hours travel time from Sydney to Heathrow.  But we'd just come off an equally arduous project in Australia and New Zealand, my partner was missing his wife and kids just as I was missing my girlfriend and we were both a bit miserable, the inflight service was great and there was host of new movies that just demanded watching.  And by then we didn't like each other all that much.

We told ourselves that we'd review the complete programme and make all the changes needed before we got to Bangkok so we could relax and sleep on the night leg into London.  We changed that to an agreement that we'd make the jet lag work to our advantage by waking up three or four hours before we landed at Heathrow to break out the laptops and get the work done once we were good and rested.  Then we were going to get to the London hotel we used upon arrival and power through the work in a single day before leaving for the Midlands the following morning.

We left Australia with only two days of a three-day programme written and we arrived at the country house hotel in exactly the same state.

Day One went brilliantly.  The team was motivated, the client was delighted but afterwards we were too exhausted to do anything except crawl into bed and get ready for tomorrow.  We told ourselves that we were almost over the jet lag and that the design of Day Three would magically present itself once Day Two was done.  The second day went as well as the first.  Even at the end of that long day the room was abuzz with everyone was wondering what fantastic stuff we'd have them doing on the final day.  Us included.

Then the Director invited us to join the team for dinner nearby.  We eagerly accepted.  We told ourselves that this was a fantastic networking opportunity to further our relationship at the upper echelons of a major multinational.  And we both had to go to the dinner because the only thing we hated more than doing more work than the other guy was having that other guy assess our work afterwards.  In a perfect iteration of Game Theory either we worked together or we worked not at all.

'Dinner' was a misnomer.  So was 'nearby'.  We were bundled onto a coach with the rest of the group and bussed across two counties to a cavernous and therefore freezing indoor Go-Kart track.  The Director reckoned that this sort of thing was good for team morale.  It took well over two hours to get there, although in fairness the driver did get lost a couple of times as he'd never been to Wales before.

Once at the track we were divided into teams to compete in a mini-version of Le Mans; each team-member taking it in turn to drive until the we'd been on the track for 90 minutes.  The winning team would be the one whose kart had done the most laps.  Competition, the Director thought, was also good for team morale.  My partner and I were put on the Director's team and he hated losing as much as he liked drinking.  We told ourselves it was a fantastic networking opportunity.

Neither of us turned out to be especially good kart drivers.  After one shift each we graciously gave up further turns at the wheel and sat shivering in the stand slowing sipping strong English beer and quietly weeping with exhaustion as the Director did his best to make up the gap we'd put between our kart and the front-runners.  At the end of the hour and half he'd put in an Ayrton Senna-esque performance to grab us a podium finish.  No thanks to you two, he said.

It was after midnight when we got back to the country house hotel.  The management didn't run to all-night room service so we begged as much instant coffee as we could get from the front desk, showered and met in my room to start work just before 1am.

In 21 hours we'd be on the plane home so the required effort was twofold; we had to force ourselves to do the work but also to care if that work was any good.  I have never loathed anyone as much as I loathed my partner that freezing night in February in that country house hotel in the Midlands.  The feeling was mutual and for hours neither of us ventured forth an idea that the other deemed even remotely worthwhile.  Slowly, bitterly finally we ground out a draft agenda and got the new PowerPoint deck finished around dawn.  We ate breakfast in the room, drinking silver potful after silver potful of weak English coffee until we were jittery and awake enough to face the day.

Somehow we nailed it.   Somehow we performed our way through until the 330pm finish and the team left feeling great about the entire three-day programme.  The Director thanked us heartily and intimated that there'd be plenty more work for us in the future.  He was as good as his word remains a valued client and friend to this day.

Once the limo arrived to take us back to Heathrow my partner and I didn't exchange another word until we congratulated each other through gritted teeth at the taxi stand in Sydney.  It wasn't the last job we did as a double-act but never again did we make the double-act a deal-breaker.  We haven't looked back since.