It's getting real

CHAPTER FIVE

[Of course this story is fictional. Nothing like this would ever happen at a real tech company. . . ]

Two days after their first conversation with Monica, Clara and Marcus sat as still as statues in her office, watching her scroll through their AI strategy deck. Clara feared another all-nighter, but Monica could be a pretty chill CEO. She only wanted two changes - a tighter competitive landscape slide and to cut the slide on pricing. “Let’s just make one decision tomorrow, OK?”

Clara nodded.

“And you’ll present?” Monica asked, locking onto Clara’s eyes to assess both her belief in the proposal and her commitment as a now key employee.

“If that’s what you’d like,” Clara whispered. Monica nodded and sent them on their way.

Clara wobbled out of Monica’s office, taking shallow breaths. “Emily will help,” said Marcus. “Let’s Slack her now.”

Twenty minutes later Emily from PR walked into the break room where Clara was still trying to slow her heart beat. “What are we, the Three Musketeers now?”

“Well, you need a clear story to tell externally and we need help getting that story sold internally, so I think we have a pretty great alignment,” said Marcus. “Coffee?”

“Red Bull,” said Emily. “Lemme see the deck. And breathe Clara. We can get you through this.”

Emily told Clara to deliver a simple soundbite for each slide. That night Clara memorized them and then spent the rest of the night on the Q&A she and Emily outlined. The next afternoon, Clara stood and delivered. She did a tight five minute TL;DR on the industry landscape and her recommendation. Her decision request was urgent and clear.

“This plan dovetails beautifully with what our customers want,” said Hector, WidgetCo’s always affable Chief Revenue Officer. “And it has the added advantage of being differentiated from our competitors. I want to start training the sales team now.”

“While I can’t speak to platform issues, I do very much want us to make the right move. We don’t have to ship first, we have to ship the best,” said April, the fierce CMO.

“I can’t believe this!” said Jones, the product marketing VP and Marcus’s boss. “This plan is too complex, it will take too long, it’s more than our customers would understand, more than they know to ask for. We have to just bolt on a simple LLM model right now!” He slammed his hands on the table and glared at Monica and Hector across the table.

“Spoken like the sloppy child that you are, Jones,” said Justine, the Engineering VP whose veins were filled with ice water. “We don’t just throw things over the wall to look cool to our friends at other companies. We make considered decisions.”

“Speed is never tidy, Justine,” said Jones, clenching his fist. “But what would you know about producing anything fast? Like ever? Besides,” he said, scanning the room to look for an ally, “Why are we even entertaining a proposal from Clara? Isn’t she the most junior person on the product team?”

Gary, the thoroughly grown up CFO/COO, sat impassively next to Monica, who was also inscrutable. Justine wasn’t having it with Jones’s objections. “Have you looked at your own resume, Jones? You were doing demand gen three years ago. You’ve never written a line of code in your life and you think we should listen to you? Do you still think YOU should be our Chief Product Officer?”

“Well at least I have a bold idea. We’ll lose if we don’t jump into the market right now.”

“You just want to smack our customers in the face with something so they don’t notice that what you hit them with is crap,” said Justine. “Clara’s plan is an elegant evolution. I am on board.”

Jones was about to retort but Justine stood to walk out of the room. “I have no more time for this. Monica, you’re the CEO. This is up to you.”

“Whatever we do, we need a consistent message,” said April. “He may be our co-founder, but Arun’s comments last week were awkward. He can’t just make up product strategy over cocktails, can he?”

“Why does messaging matter, April?” said Jones, who seemed to think that offense was the best defense. “You’re probably already using ChatGPT to write all of your content.”

It was at that moment that April decided she’d do literally anything to see Jones fail. Clara, who was still standing, clutched the edges of the conference room table. She had no idea that this was what went down at e-team meetings.

Jones kept sputtering, “Besides, this meeting is a waste of time. Nothing can get decided without Arun here. He’s really running the company.”

“And that is quite enough from you, Jones,” said Gary, calmly, but with menace.

Monica, who was boiling with rage, managed her emotions before she spoke. “Jones, your objections are noted. The rest of us are aligned. We are going forward with Clara’s plan. I’ll speak to Arun. Clara, please coordinate with Justine on a schedule ASAP. Marcus can work with April and Emily on messaging. Hector, we will have something for your team ASAP. Thanks everyone for your time.”

Monica and Gary left first. Hector clapped Clara on the shoulder before he walked out. April stood and folded her arms across her chest, staring at Jones until he left the room.

“Well done, my girl,” said April to a visibly shell–shocked Clara.

“Emily really helped a lot,” said Clara. “I’m so grateful.”

Clara debriefed Marcus and Emily in the break room after the meeting. “It was insane. Jones is a menace. But everyone else is on board.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Marcus. “But I am glad we know where we are going.”

“Great,” said Emily. “Now let’s get to work!”

How did WidgetCo get a good decision made at their meeting? Clara did the hard work to prepare her oral presentation, not just her deck. Monica managed her emotions and was clear as she communicated her decision. Jones, on the other hand, lost control of his emotions and undermined his cause.

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