If you can't make it, break it

CHAPTER SIX

[Of course this story is totally fictional. There aren’t any dudes like Jones at real tech companies. . . 🤣 ]

Jones left the e-team sputtering profanities under his breath. He stomped back to his office, grabbed his keys and ran down the stairs and out to the parking lot, where he hopped into his silver BMW M8. He was going to the city to drink expensive whiskey. While accelerating to 95 mph on 280 North he formed a plan.

“Whassup dude,” Jones yelled into his phone over the wind, because of course he had his top down. “How are things at Great Oak Capital?”

“Awesome as ever dude,” said the VC who had insisted that WidgetCo hire Jones as product marketing VP when his firm made the investment. “What’s going on? Testing the aerodynamics of your sweet ride?”

“We need to strategize. Things are going off the rails at WidgetCo. Come meet me in the city. We are drinking and planning.”

“See you at the Battery in an hour.”

After he tossed his car keys to the Battery’s long-suffering valet (who recognized both Jones’s arch smirk and the totally extra car), Jones found a quiet corner and started drawing up a list of customers who’d back him. ‘Hector is out of touch, he doesn’t know what our customers really want,’ he muttered. ‘If no one else can face this competitive threat and this huge opportunity we’re on the verge of missing, I will!’

That evening, Jones and his VC buddy formulated a plan and drank five rounds to Jones’s genius.

Two weeks later, on a seemingly placid Tuesday afternoon, Emily, who ran PR at WidgetCo, got a text from a reporter. “Your guy Jones just presented your new LLM product at AI Next. He’s got you competing directly with Zilthru. He says you’ll ship in weeks. What other details can you give me? The deck was pretty light.”

At the same time, Hector, the CRO, got a call from a very big customer. “Hector, we were thinking of doing a beta with Zilthru but I just saw Jones at AI Next. Why haven’t you shared these plans with my team? Who is getting access to your new build before we do? You don’t want to relegate me to second tier do you?”

Hector dissembled with the customer while typing the world’s fastest Slack message to Monica, the CEO. Fifteen minutes later Hector, April, and Emily were on GVC with Monica.

“Does anyone know what happened?” asked Monica, as calmly as she could.

“I got the link to Jones’s presentation. It just went up,” said Emily. “There are also several Tweet threads. Zilthru is now dissing us because Jones dissed them. Analysts are asking questions.
A couple of blogs have already been written. It’s a definite situation.”

Hector reported on his customer conversations. “So far, I’ve been able to mollify them without making commitments, Monica. But I have to ask. Did you know about this? Did any of us?”

“No, Jones has gone off the reservation. We are in crisis mode now.”

“And he’s given airtime to a competitor no one had ever heard of: Zilthru. WTF,” said brand-conscious CMO April, rolling her eyes. “Emily and I will put together a press statement. You can then share it with a note to customers, Hector.”

“We can’t publicly throw Jones under the bus,” said Monica.

“I know,” said April. “We can’t look like we don’t have a plan. We are on it.”

After Emily and April left, Hector and Monica started reaching out to customers together. Meanwhile, Arun, WidgetCo’s perpetually absent CTO and co-founder, texted them to say he was getting on a plane from Ibiza. “I’ll help sort things with customers. I have some deep relationships - you two can deploy me however you need.”

Monica and Hector looked at each other after reading his text, their eyes mirroring worry. They were both glad to have the extra help, but they also knew that Arun was as capable of freelance strategizing as Jones. Would Arun help or hurt them?

Monica and Hector sent Jones a cease-and-desist email, cc’ing Arun, but not the board. Monica tasked our product management and marketing heroes Clara and Marcus with building a strategy deck that would gracefully evolve from Jones’s bulls**t to the correct strategy that the company had already agreed. Clara gulped. “On it,” she typed.

When the press statement was ready thirty minutes later, Emily hopped onto a GVC with Hector’s sales team. “Look guys, answering angry customer questions is pretty similar to answering nasty questions from reporters. Just acknowledge that you heard them and then pivot to what you want to say. Acknowledge - pivot - message. Got it? OK, let’s practice.”

After she finished with the sales team, Emily walked into April’s office. “I wish our company were big enough to have a sales-enablement team, but I think the guys have what they need. I’ll go check on Clara and Marcus. They can help me come up with a Tweet to put a damper on Zilthru.”

“And have them take care of Cthulhu while you’re at it!” April said, feeling very clever.

“Ha. On it!” said Emily as she hustled out of April’s office, opening her third Red Bull of the day.

Monica, Hector and Emily all had to be WidgetCo’s Co-Chief Repeating Officers to get the whole company through this crisis. They mastered their channels - reaching customers, press, and analysts via whatever means necessary. Jones, meanwhile, was pretty much doing everything an effective leader/communicator should never do. But are we surprised?

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