You never have much time as you need

CHAPTER FOUR

“Sit,” Justine said, without even looking at Clara and Marcus. “What do you have?”

Clara went through the presentation in ten minutes. Justine pulled the laptop out of Clara’s hands to have a closer look at the customer and competitive slides. “Have you brought this to Monica and Arun?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at Clara and Marcus before she took a sip of her La Colombe cold brew.

“Not yet,” said Marcus. “We wanted to build consensus and get feedback on the proposal before going to our co-CEOs.”

“Ah,” said Justine, as cold, non-committal and Gallic as ever. She chugged the last of her coffee. “I have a code review.”

“Thanks for your time,” Clara and Marcus said in unison as they grabbed their stuff and pretty much bolted out of her office.

After they sat down in the cafe and exhaled, Marcus said to Clara, “Well, she didn’t say we were idiots and throw us out of her office.”

“So we go ahead,” said Clara.

“Exactly,” said Marcus.

That evening and the next day, Justine slacked a dozen questions to Clara and Marcus, reminding them that fundamental engineering principles must never be compromised. She still didn’t say yes, but she didn’t veto their idea either.

The next morning Hector asked Clara to present her proposal to his sales team. “We’re not ready for this,” she said to Marcus. “Things are moving too fast.”

Right after those words came out of Clara’s mouth, Emily walked in. “Arun said something about generative AI at some conference in the Maldives. It got reported. I’m getting pings from the media and analysts.”

“Oh sh*t,” said Clara, knowing they were in danger of being overtaken by events. “We are running out of time. We have to get to Monica right now.”

Emily slacked Monica with a 911 and the three of them were in Monica’s office 30 minutes later.

“Arun was apparently trying to de-position a potential competitor,” said Emily, as April rushed in, never wanting to be left out of any drama.

“So strategy by the seat of his pants again?” said Monica. “OK. Emily, work out a benign statement to buy us time.”

“We have been working on a strategy, Monica,” said Marcus. “I’m not sure what we’d want to say externally, but Clara’s got a way to deliver something to the market quickly while we’re in the process of rebuilding our foundation to accommodate the future. I talked to Hector...”

“You met with Hector?” Monica was not happy. “Who else?”

“We talked to Justine too,” said Clara, “because we didn’t want to bring something to you without consensus.”

“Have any of you ever heard of the chain of command?!?” Monica stood up and pounded her desk. “Arun is out there making up strategy and you two are planning something new without even letting me know?”

“We didn’t want...” Clara started to respond but Monica wasn’t having it.

“No justifications, no excuses. You two are presenting at the senior staff meeting in three days and you’ll have the deck to me for review in two. Clear?”

“Yes Monica, we’re sorry that we overstepped,” said Marcus.

“Initiative is great, but stealth is not,” said Monica.

Clara and Marcus knew better than to disagree with Monica. They resolved to go forward with patience, grace, and good humor, as an effective leader/communicator must.

[Need to catch up? Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three. You can also find extra tidbits of WidgetCo backstory on poseycorp’s blog.]