Always in the moments of restructuration, Ald falls into darker musings. This time is no exception. The process drags on — the longest restructuration in the history of the Organisation — and Ald’s moods deepen in proportion to the idiocracy he is forced to digest.

So he returns, as he always does, to Bar La Vision — the dim refuge of weary coordinators where whisky comes in shades of brown, browner, and questionable, and where Ald, faithful to his habits, orders rhum of the questionable kind. A chipped glass before him, he jots half-legible notes on a napkin, sketching not figures or tables, but memories. One by one, the faces of previous Shepherds shuffle past: Manager the 1st, then the 2nd, the elusive 2½th, even the fleeting 2¾th — nicknamed l’Éphémère by his colleagues for his French flair and short-lived tenure.

Then comes the 3rd — the man whose record of disasters stood unchallenged for years, until the present Shepherd began his reign. Ald and his colleagues used to call him The Strategos, sometimes Pericles of PowerPoint — titles that dripped with borrowed grandeur, masking a legacy of collapsed dashboards and heroic failures dressed as lessons learned.

Gradually, Ald’s draft takes shape. Not a history. Not a eulogy. Simply a portrait — the portrait of the Ever-Typical Shepherd of a humanitarian organisation.

---

There he stands — upright, confident, sleeves ever so slightly rolled, tie loosened just enough to signal approachability. A man of vision. A man of change. A man who uses the word disruption at least once before breakfast.

His image is carefully curated. Dressed in elegantly casual fashion, he cultivates the look of someone with no real interest in clothing — though the garments are in fact expensive and meticulously chosen. No tie, no glossy suits; after all, in the NGO world both are taboo. But the casual shirt, the polished shoes, the muted designer jumper: all whisper that image is everything.

He begins his reign in the usual way: charming, sleeves rolled, appearing to listen with grave attention. His first true act is not to build but to dismantle — to declare, never directly but always implied, that the previous strategy was flawed beyond repair. “Nothing measurable, nothing usable, everything a mess,” he sighs with studied conviction.

And so the restructuration begins. Not just a denial of the past, but a slow condemnation of all who had laboured to make grandiose speeches and PowerPoints into something vaguely workable. The cruelest cut is not the dismissal of one Leader’s empty vision — it is the way the entire team who bent over backwards to translate that vision into sense now finds themselves accused of failure too.

When in doubt, restructure! The Shepherd never fails to apply this timeless maxim, as reliable as sunrise and as uninspiring as yet another workshop invitation.

He enters the room with purpose. He listens. Or at least, he appears to listen — brow furrowed just enough, fingers steepled in deep synthetic thought. He nods. Occasionally, he repeats what someone just said, but louder, and with a sense of authorship.

He believes in frameworks. In action plans. In vision documents that stretch to 2045. He believes these things must exist, even if their purpose remains delightfully undefined.

And he talks. At length. Endlessly. Nothing delights him more than the sound of his own voice, weighted with importance. He describes his ambition and vision to anyone unlucky enough to sit next to him at an official dinner, or to the unfortunate public at a Townhall. Townhalls are his natural stage, where he can perform and talk, talk, talk — while never quite saying anything.

He is not afraid to ask difficult questions. Mostly about font size, branding, and whether a dashboard can be made more dynamic.

He inspires. He empowers. He launches initiatives. Many initiatives. So many, in fact, that they require their own coordination mechanism. Few are completed, but all are celebrated.

He does not micromanage. He strategically guides. He does not delay. He recalibrates timelines for maximum impact.

When accountability is mentioned, he agrees with great conviction. Accountability, he says, is a cornerstone. Though he rarely specifies whose.

People admire him. Or rather, they appear to — in meetings, in emails, in official photos. Their admiration is captured in bullet points and circulated upwards.

His calendar is full. His inbox is filtered. His legacy is pending.

And as he exits, the room breathes. Quietly, and briefly.

---

Lionbum, the prize exhibit among the specimens of the Ever-Typical Shepherd, perfected this art. Particularly bland, with a charming smile but no guts whatsoever, he unleashed Johnny, like a handler releasing his dog, to do his work while he himself indulged in his favourite managerial pastime: postponing every decision.

His nickname — oh so fitting, whispered with amusement — referred to a training exercise gone awry, a lion meant to symbolise courage and leadership was paired, disastrously, with the wrong half of anatomy. The name stuck, as did the joke: a Leader with the mane but not the roar.

---

Ald drained the last of his questionable rhum; drunk to just the right measure to quench his gloom, tucked Baltazar into his pocket, and let Hedwig settle on his shoulder. Muttering a final jot — ‘when in doubt, restructure‘ — he stepped out of Bar La Vision into the night, leaving the portrait behind him like a scribble on a napkin, true enough for anyone who dared to read it.