So now, with full confidence and unquestioned trust from Manager the 4th, the Lionbum, Little Johnny Dolittle had risen to become the Head of OFSE™ (The Office of Future Strategic Excellence™) the vision-making arm of SHOTE — Sustainable Humanitarian Outreach and Technical Expertise.

He was thus steadily easing into his new role and was warming up to correct the past and shape the future of SHOTE.

The Master of Narrative Control

Johnny was a man of progress, which meant that everything before him was wrong. Not just wrong—catastrophically misguided, an embarrassment to logic itself. The old system? Flawed beyond comprehension. The previous strategy? A monument to failure. The ideas of those who came before him? Laughable, if one could even call them ideas at all.

Johnny did not see this as manipulation. He truly believed it. In his mind, the past had been a dark age of incompetence, and he was the enlightened leader tasked with setting everything right. To him, history was not being erased—it was being corrected.

“What were they even thinking?” he asked, shaking his head in genuine disbelief. “How did we even survive under such chaos? We need a new vision, a fresh start. Luckily, I just so happen to have one.”

The Manager the 4th, the Lionbum, nodded approvingly. Of course, he did. The past actions of TIPE™ were an utter pair of twin-bollocks, and Little Johnny was clearly the man to fix it. Not that the Manager the 4th believed any of it — he knew very well it was all just a spectacular exercise in futility. But it served him well. If Johnny was convinced he was forging a new era, all the better. That meant the he, the Manager the 4th, could sit back, entertain high-ranking decision-makers, participate in prestigious international conferences, and, most importantly, scout for the next milking cow to secure his own future, all without the inconvenience of dealing with capable workforce of citizens and their little problems. Let Little Johnny have his illusions — what could go wrong?

The plan, as Johnny saw it, was clear and noble: refine, clarify, put in place and let the new system roll – all in the service of greater efficiency, greater transparency and new bold future, of course. If something good had happened before Johnny, it was clearly due to groundwork that only he could have truly understood and brought to fruition. If something bad had happened before Johnny, it only proved how desperately the system had needed his vision. The past was not to be erased, but elevated and corrected through his leadership — finally given the meaning it lacked before.

Behind Closed Doors: Where Visions Are Born and Confusion Follows

Johnny set to work with enthusiasm. For nine months, he remained behind closed doors, meeting after meeting, each one with a different ‘working group,’ each one filled with fervent discussion and grand plans. He was rarely seen outside his office, although he would often meet with the Manager the 4th, the Lionbum, but little was known about what was discussed, and if something was discussed at all. Meanwhile, the Manager the 4th maintained his charming presence in touch with the citizen workforce through weekly town-hall meetings. This format of meeting became the new craze, in an effort to maintain transparency and accountability. Reports would occasionally leak — drip by drip — each snippet contradicting the previous one, each more grandiose and urgent than the last.

And yet, during this time, the machinery of SHOTE continued to turn.

The competent workforce of SHOTE carried on with their tasks as they always had: quietly, competently, doing their best, ignoring the noise coming from above, and solving small problems with quiet persistence. The projects started during the Manager 3rd’s “visionary reform”, or even before, needed attention, and the capable citizens handled that work in their usual steady way.

As a reminder, it was the polite, well-meaning citizens — fair-minded and practical, yet also spirited, empathetic, bold, and open-hearted — who carried on the real work. They kept the entire absurd, vision-creating high-ranking machinery afloat through sheer dedication and resilience. They steered projects with vehemence and perseverance, without paying attention to Little Johnny’s background noise.

Meantime, inside the rooms of SHOTE headquarters, Johnny saw himself crafting the future.

Meantime, outside the rooms of TIPE™, the Manager the 4th, the Lionbum, was busy crafting his own future — entertaining dignitaries with vodka-martinis and charm.

Outside, life went on.