Mike was head of IT in a local authority. He was based in the Civic Offices – a large modern office block in the city centre. The authority had already outgrown this building by the time it was officially opened, and the overspill were housed in a hotchpotch of older buildings scattered around the city.

Mike was an affable fellow who very much enjoyed moving about. If a problem arose, his inclination was to jump in his car and go and see for himself. He hated days when he was cooped up in his office, talking on the phone and attending to emails. He also loathed formal meetings with an agenda and minutes and all the other paraphernalia. He maintained that far more could be accomplished by an informal chat and that many problems could be nipped in the bud if you went to deal with them in person before they had a chance to worsen.

Mike’s secretary was a long-suffering woman called Alice. Alice led a stressful existence because, although the IT function was supported by a helpline, she used to receive irate calls from frustrated users when they encountered problems of various kinds. Mike’s frequent, unscheduled disappearing acts were another cause of Alice’s suffering. Despite her remonstrations, he rarely troubled to tell her where he was going or for how long he might be away. Her office was immediately next to his, but he had a door that led directly onto the corridor. When she realised that nagging wasn’t working, she gave him a pager – but he used to forget to take it or, if he took it, he turned it off. Mike treated his mobile phone with the same disdain. If he had it with him, and if it rang or vibrated, he’d simply turn it off and carry on with whatever he was doing.

Alice was annoyed about his absences because they used to reflect on her. She resented being made to look inefficient through no fault of her own. During one of Mike’s escapes, people would demand to know where he was and when he would be back. Sometimes she would hazard a guess only to find that she had grossly underestimated the length of his absence. Sometimes she would confess that she had lost him and had no idea when he might return. Sometimes she would promise to locate him and telephone likely places until she tracked him down. But the process was time-consuming and made her appear disorganised. People would even tease her with taunts of ‘Lost him again then?’

One day, after a particularly trying spate of absences, Alice talked the situation over with a colleague – another senior secretary she often joined for lunch. They reviewed her options. Force Mike to make his escapes via her office by locking his outer door onto the corridor. Padlock him to his desk. Immobilise his car. Move into his office. Train a security camera on his door to monitor his movements. Fit a siren to the door so that whenever it opened it made a wailing noise.

Though some of the options were tempting, they seemed inappropriate or far-fetched. The two women fell to thinking about more feasible ways to solve the problem. As they struggled to think of ideas, Alice’s colleague began to wonder if they could adopt a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. Was there some way of making Mike’s life inconvenient when he disappeared without telling Alice where he was going? And, by contrast, was there a way to make his life more convenient when he did tell her?

Suddenly, Alice had an inspiration! She realised that whenever Mike vanished, she used to prepare a neat list of all his messages, with the names and numbers of the people he needed to call back, and brief him on his return. She also realised that if something urgent cropped up, she’d ring around doing her utmost to track him down. In other words, Alice, by being conscientious, was rewarding him when he returned from an unscheduled absence.

Together the two secretaries hatched a plan. If Mike told Alice where he was going, she would continue to provide the usual service. If he disappeared without telling her, she would busy herself with other tasks and not bother to take messages or compile a list. Nor would she try to track him down with any urgent messages. In this way, she’d reward Mike when he had the courtesy to inform her of his whereabouts and punish him when he didn’t.

Alice explained her plan to Mike and he chuckled, appreciating the ingenuity of the scheme. For a while he even remembered to put his head round Alice’s door and tell her where he was off to and how long he might be. But the day came when he rushed away to tackle some problem and forgot to inform Alice. So, fighting back her impulse to be super-efficient in his absence, she implemented the plan.

She only had to do it once and Mike, at long last, learnt his lesson.