Bill Shine, the White House communications director, has been on the job for almost two months. But he has yet to set up a voicemail greeting on his government-issued phone, still jokes that he doesn’t know his way to the nearest bathroom in the West Wing, often has to step out of meetings when classified information is being discussed for lack of proper security clearances, and claims he doesn’t even have a permanent office.

When a reporter spotted him behind his desk and, pointing to his nameplate on the door, commented on the fact that he had finally procured an office, Shine replied: “It’s not an office, it’s just a sign.”

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The “I just got here” schtick is markedly different from the way other newcomers have behaved when joining the Trump administration carrying high expectations of turning things around.

Shine’s method appears to be to elongate his grace period, in part because he hates attention. In a world where President Donald Trump makes everyone in his orbit famous – and where many aides actively seek out that reflected glow – Shine is staying in the shadows, drawing out his newcomer status, according to more than half a dozen White House officials and people close to the administration.

One person close to the White House noted that two months since Shine stepped into the vacuum left by the departure last winter of Hope Hicks, not much seems to have changed at the White House. “I forget he’s even there,” this person said.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, however, disputed that characterization. “The fact he doesn’t know where the bathroom is, or doesn’t have a permanent office, does not mean he’s starting slow,” Gidley said. “He’s had an immediate impact in this building.”

As for any grace period, Gidley laughed at the suggestion. “Your grace period lasts as long as it takes to get you through the door,” he said. “Then you’re expected to perform at a high level, and Bill Shine has done that from Day One.”

Shine, who helped the late Roger Ailes build a conservative media empire at Fox News, is used to hanging back and flattering big egos. He managed to stay in Ailes’ good graces for decades despite the Fox founder’s deep paranoia and longstanding practice of pushing out suspected rivals. The same dynamic appears to be at play inside the West Wing. While keeping a low public profile, Shine’s “really hit it off” with Trump in private, said one person familiar with the relationship.

His invisible hand is perhaps most noticeable in optics. White House officials said he is often working behind the scenes with advance staff to stage events in the White House.

But he’s maintained his mostly back-seat approach during an incredibly difficult stretch for Trump — last week, for instance, within the course of one tumultuous hour, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts, while his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and even pointed the finger at the president.

Shine’s biggest involvement that day, according to a White House aide, was to help prep the president for an interview with Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt, which included working with the president to choose the breezy, sunlit location in the Rose Garden.

Shine has not been involved in overseeing any of the messaging around Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which are being overseen by deputy press secretary Raj Shah, according to a person involved. He was reportedly just as blindsided as White House counsel Don McGahn was when Trump tweeted out his departure this week, a blast that created some confusion about whether McGahn had been pushed out, or was leaving on his own terms.

Shine doesn’t always sit in on the president’s interviews with reporters, as Hicks did. For instance, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and digital aide Dan Scavino were the only White House officials in the Oval Office on Thursday, when Trump granted an hourlong interview to Bloomberg News – off-the-record portions of which were subsequently leaked to the Toronto Star.

One of the White House officials, however, compared Shine’s out-of-the-limelight and off-the-record approach to how Hicks conducted herself when she occupied the communications job.

Still, a year and a half into Trump’s tenure, nobody has shown the ability to manage the White House communications shop. Not Sean Spicer, who held the title both of communications director and press secretary at the outset of the Trump administration, nor his successor Mike Dubke, who lasted just three months. Scaramucci lasted 11 days. While Hicks stepped into the role after Scaramucci’s departure, she never tried to corral the larger press shop and played a significant role internally, mostly in helping to manage the president.

Despite his disinterest in the spotlight, Shine does have lofty goals of eventually reshaping the president’s communications team, according to another White House aide. He wants to transform it from one with a tight-lipped, do-no-harm ethos into an engine that drives a more aggressive message. He has quietly begun interviewing aides from the Republican National Committee and GOP offices on Capitol Hill to replenish the White House communications team and soliciting advice from associates about who he should bring into the White House, according to two people familiar with his plans.

Shine will have a helping hand from his old boss, Rupert Murdoch, who has been doing his share of recruiting from in and outside the ranks of News Corporation — though it is not clear whether the two are coordinating with each other. “You want to go down there and fix things there like you did here?” the media mogul has asked at least one Fox News executive, referring to the White House, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

Though Murdoch forced Shine out of Fox News last year for his role in handling sexual harassment scandals that roiled the network, they are now back in touch, according to two people familiar with their relationship. Murdoch also speaks frequently to both the president and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the president asked for Murdoch’s input before offering Shine the job last month. Murdoch said he had no problem with the hire, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Shine’s addition to the White House helped to formalize the pre-existing bonds between the president and his favorite television network. He and the president share a mutual friend in Sean Hannity, Fox News’ Trump-loving prime time host. Shine was Hannity’s first executive producer, and Hannity helped ease the relationship between the president by bringing Shine to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, where the three gabbed, among other things, about what they view as the anti-Trump bias of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith.

As the president has used Fox News to broadcast his message across the country, Murdoch, who spoke with Trump virtually every day during the first year of his presidency, has, at the president’s request, submitted favored candidates to sit on the boards of the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

“Rupert extracts, he doesn’t insert,” said one Fox News executive, adding that the media mogul presses the president and his family for information and has even gotten Trump to sit for interview with his publications — but has offered the president little in return.

It was Murdoch, for instance, who was responsible for Trump sitting down with The Sun during his most recent trip abroad, an interview that left Trump’s traveling press team cleaning up the fallout after he accused British prime minister Theresa May of “wrecking” Brexit by ignoring his advice, and said that a soft Brexit “will probably kill the deal.”

While major personnel changes are unlikely before the November’s midterm elections, several Trump allies in and outside the White House said they expect them soon afterwards. Shah, who has decamped from the West Wing to manage press Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation from the Old Executive Office Building, has told colleagues he plans to depart after the confirmation hearings in September.

And White House aides say Shine is eyeing a replacement for White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who has long been rumored to be interested in leaving the administration by the end of the year.

“They want someone playing offense,” said another person close to the White House. “He wants someone setting the agenda.” Shine is said to be eyeing State Department spokeswoman — and former Fox News anchor — Heather Nauert, although she has repeatedly said she has no interest in taking the job, and the two have never discussed it.

Shine himself has already succeeded, exceeding the benchmark he set for himself in brief on-the-record comments he made just five days after starting his new job. “I need to get to at least 12 so I can beat The Mooch,” he told Piers Morgan, who was interviewing the president for the Daily Mail in July.

For Trump, however, the jury is always still out – even with aides who don’t steal his spotlight and who he likes personally. The president has already begun soliciting feedback on Shine’s performance from friends and associates, with his signature line: “So, what do you think of Bill?”