To say Mark’s knees were knocking would have been a lie
because he was sitting down. But he
could feel a cold sweat pooling in his armpits and trickling over his ribs as
he waited outside the second floor boardroom at Corporate HQ.
Arlene Whitworth, queen bee of the executive assistants,
glanced over from her workstation every so often, her gaze a combination of
pity and irritation as Mark fidgeted, lips moving as he tried to rehearse his
pitch. He’d been here before, but he did
not expect to return after today. Today
was going to be different.
The boardroom door opened eventually, to a buzz of
conversation from within, and Arlene went to alert status. A gust of stale air and boardroom funk
accompanied Terry Hartley, the Corporate Controller, normally the roly-poly
class clown, who came out looking shell-shocked and red in the face.
Arlene looked over the top of her half-moon glasses at Mark. “Mr. Williams, you’re up,” she said and made
a head-motion towards the Boardroom where the Executive Council of Eastern
Telecom was holding its monthly meeting.
“Good luck.”
Mark stood. Clutching
his laptop and briefcase in sweaty hands, he straightened his back, took a deep
breath and entered the lions’ den.
Fuck’em all he thought. Today
they’ll get something they don’t expect.
So why am I still nervous?
Because I’m a loser. Tell me
something new.
Derek Short, Chief Information Officer and Mark’s boss,
caught his eye and nodded as Mark moved to the podium. It wasn’t an attaboy look. Mark and Derek had long respected each other
from afar as rivals. The CIO job with
its perks, stock options and prestige, could have gone to either one but the
winner was Derek and Mark still wanted to clench his fist every time he thought
about it, which was at least once an hour.
Prior to Derek’s promotion they had been peers. Derek had climbed the ladder to head up the ‘Business
Solutions’ wing of the IT function, schmoozing with division heads, Executive
VPs of Marketing, Finance and such. Mark
on the other hand came to own the ‘wires and boxes’ side of the operation: the
data centers and the corporate network. The
role was largely invisible to the business, the nerds toiling in the basement,
as in “That’s Mark Williams the Chief
Nerd,” snigger, snigger. Well paid and
all, but no recognition, no respect.
Mark knew his career had gone as far as it was going and he
had no desire to start over and prove himself elsewhere, but the chip on his
shoulder had grown ever harder to bear as the months went by.
His PowerPoint slides were cued up on his laptop ready to
project and his title slide, thank Christ, popped right up when he plugged into
the projection system. One opportunity
to fuck things up had passed without drama.
Good he thought, this is not the moment.
Derek went to stand and do an intro, but the Chief Executive
Officer, Charlie Carson, sociopath, bully and general-purpose A-hole, waved him
down. Charlie’s jowls, pop-eyes behind thick rimless spectacles, and
broad fleshy mouth turned down at the corners, gave him the look of an upset
toad.
Heads around the table turned towards Charlie.
"Let's just get going on this one, can we? No dancing and giving us the big picture will
be required Derek, thank you. The October outage cost this company forty
million in revenue. We want to know what
happened.”
And crucify a victim, Mark thought, because the lost revenue
had contributed to the small matter of a second consecutive quarterly earnings miss,
not great news for a CEO whose big claim to fame was cost cutting but not much
else. The Board was rumoured to be
getting restless.
"You, Mr. Williams, I assume, are here to explain what
happened, why it took so long to fix the problem, and how you, Sir, are going
to make sure we never have such a disgraceful situation facing us again.
You may assume that your future with this company is at stake today.”
In that moment a Zen-like sense of serenity came over Mark. The nerves had gone away. He put one hand on the podium, another in his
pocket. Taking his time he surveyed the
room, making eye contact, his face impassive.
As if I were the sergeant-major eyeballing a bunch of green recruits, he
thought. And it felt so damn good. Keep them waiting, and wondering, because
presenters at the Executive Council rarely displayed this kind of self-assured demeanour,
bordering on disdainful. They were
supposed to be diffident, grovel even.
Derek his boss was giving him a WTF look. Up
yours, Derek.
Here we go. “Mr.
Carson, I sense you are looking for a concise response from me. Not a problem. Gentlemen, I can sum this up really quickly
in three slides. First of all what
happened, then why it happened, and last of all what I am going to do about it.
So, what happened?
It’s simple:
Slide 1: WE. ALL.
FUCKED. UP.
Indrawn breaths around the room. Charlie Carson expressionless, his most dangerous aspect. Something very bad is about to happen to this
guy, the audience’s look said, but let’s give him some more rope. Take our lead from Charlie. Say nothing, wait. This could be entertaining.
Quietly, almost reflectively, Mark spoke. “Gentlemen, by now I’m sure you’ve all heard
the essentials. A server went down
during a system-wide upgrade. That
resulted in the loss of one month’s worth of order data because, as we found
when we attempted to recover, the previous night’s backup had corrupted the
database. There was no human error at
the working level.”
Walter Stevenson, Executive VP of Human Resources, creep
that he was, couldn’t stay quiet. “Your slide says we all fucked up. So what do you mean?”
“Indulge me, Mr. Stevenson, I’ll get there very soon.” Several
people opened their mouths to protest but Mark raised his hand and his sense of
command somehow worked. The Executive
Council all shut up.
“I have a fully developed plan for a new backup protocol
that will prevent any recurrence of this sort of black swan event. My staff has taken the opportunity to run it
past the infrastructure arm of Adventure Consulting. It’s sound, but of course it will cost. However the cost is minor. I’d suggest five million is nothing compared
to the lost revenue we just experienced.”
Nobody reacted. Five
million dollars was pocket change compared to, say, the cost of rolling out a
new plant in Mexico.
“So let’s talk about the bigger ‘why’, the ‘root cause’ in
consultant-speak. And that’s boringly
predictable these days actually.” Mark
was on a roll now. He could tell that he
had his audience fascinated. He felt a
sense of power over them and it was like a drug and he was high on it. They’d probably never seen anybody act this
way. A few of them had quiet grins on
their faces and maybe they appreciated a bit of chutzpah. At least he wasn’t boring them. Next slide:
Slide 2: IT. WASN’T.
IN. THE. BUDGET.
“We had a top-down-imposed budget cut of 8 percent last
year. We made the case for extra backup
servers and it was rejected.”
Charlie Carson raised his hand. “By whom?”
Okay you SOB, you
asked for it.
“Ultimately by you Sir.”
“Mr Williams, how long have you been with Eastern?”
“Eighteen years.”
“Then you surely understand how budgeting is done, and you
know perfectly well that I do not personally scrutinize everybody’s annual
budget for paper clips”.
“Sir, I promised you root causes. The budget cuts last year have tied many
people’s hands, including mine, from making sensible, responsible investments
in our operating infrastructure.
Repeatedly have many of us petitioned you, directly or through your
staff, on these matters. But here we
are.”
Derek Short couldn’t sit still any longer. His face had become a mask of rage. For Mark, the whole business was worth it
just to see him this way, his voice cracking with emotion.
“Charlie, gentlemen, I need to curtail the charade we’re
being subjected to here. It’s totally
and completely unacceptable. I hate to
say it, but the truth is that I have for some time had serious doubts about the
stewardship of our computing and network infrastructure. There have been a number of slipups and what
happened last October is just the latest in a series. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Well Derek,” said Charlie quietly, “You might consider
saying ‘I’m sorry’. And let me ask you, did you review the budget
submitted by Mr. Williams? And did you
approve it in its final form, after the cuts?”
Uh-oh, eyes swivelling in the room. Had Derek Short just dug his own grave? Derek appeared to realize he had. He started babbling.
“I accepted the 8 percent cut last year, yes, well of
course. I believed IT should be a good
corporate citizen and do its bit, I mean why should we be exempt? So when the order came down I told all my
department heads to step up. I mean
that’s what we all did, right? Right?”
Nobody met his eyes.
Charlie then asked the killer question.
“So you didn’t actually evaluate where to cut? You just left it to your subordinates?” This of course was exactly how Charlie
himself had handled the matter with his own direct reports, but nobody was
going to mention that right then, or ever.
Charlie waited for an answer. He appeared prepared wait a while but Mark
was not. This was the moment.
“May I? I promised a
three-slide presentation and my last slide is about where we go from here.” He took a deep breath. His finger moved ready to tap the track pad
on his laptop but Charlie Carson had seen enough theatrics and just wanted to wrap
this up.
“Hold on Mr. Williams.
Derek, it’s quite regrettable that we have a CIO who can only act as a
messenger boy, gives his staff no guidance on a matter like this, and then
tries to evade the blame. Mr Williams,
please implement your plan.”
“Oliver,” he looked across at the Chief Financial Officer, “have
Terry Hartley work with Mr. Williams on the funding. Be so kind as to get back to me when you’ve
done that.”
“Mr. Williams, that was one of the more succinct pitches
we’ve seen here. Cheeky, but it had a
certain style. Now get out of here. See Arlene on your way out and make an
appointment to meet with me right away.”
“Gentlemen, let’s take a break. Derek, there’s no need for you to participate
further today.”
In an a few moments Mark’s world had been transformed. His
old rival disgraced. His future, who
knew, but nothing bad he was sure. He
felt about ten feet tall, scooping up his laptop, briefcase, papers and whatnot
before leaving the boardroom on a cloud.
A surprised Arlene set up Mark’s appointment with the CEO,
raising her eyebrows when told nobody else would be attending. Then Mark floated down
the stairs and out the door.
Mark descended the HQ building’s front steps, and as he
crossed the parking lot he gave a celebratory little hop and a skip and dropped
the laptop, left powered-up in the excitement.
It unhelpfully brought up Slide 3.
Bluetooth functioned perfectly and the ten kilos of plastic explosive in
Mark’s briefcase detonated like an email from God.
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