Craig glanced from me to Karen. He bounced back in his chair. The entire thing lifted off the ground.
I pressed on, leaning toward him. “You’re an engineer, Craig, you must have noticed.” I paused with the realization that after five years of working with him, I had no clue what Craig did or did not notice. It had been a running joke for years that as long as he had a project, we could move the entire company back to his garage or to Timbuktu and he wouldn’t notice. “Nathan did. He noticed. He saw all this.”
“Nathan talked to you about changes here? Proposed changes?” Karen’s voice cut in.
I pulled back. “When he shadowed me in May, he asked a ton of questions. I realize now he didn’t want answers, he wanted to know how I thought about things, make me articulate it, and see it all a different way. He got that WATT was changing, and I think he was trying to help me, help us, be proactive and take ownership of it.”
“His reorg proposal makes more intuitive sense now.” Craig grinned. I recognized the flash in his eyes—lightbulb clarity had struck.
“Reorg proposal?” Karen’s focus shifted.
Craig kept his eyes on me. “I’ll miss you, Mary. I sincerely wish you weren’t leaving. Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
I shrugged, recognizing the ambiguity of the gesture but unable to offer anything more. The meeting was over; it was time to go. Karen’s elation felt palpable.
She dragged in a breath. “Mary’s point is valid, but as we move forward, it’s not feasible, even with Nathan’s suggestions. With the growth WATT is experiencing, it is impossible to simply give the physicists, the engineers, anyone, their own playgrounds and hope it all turns out well.”
She spoke to Craig as if I weren’t in the room at all. I stood and headed for the door.
I’d almost reached it when a “Mary?” stopped me.
Karen held her files tight to her chest. Her knuckles protruded bony and white with the strain. “It’s probably best you’re going, as it sounds like WATT isn’t the best fit for you any longer.”
You love this job. In my head Karen’s snarky tone was replaced by Moira’s.
“That’s not true. This company has always been the best fit for me.” I stepped toward her, enjoying my height. I didn’t slouch this time. “I love this place and I’ve worked hard here—42 percent of all deliverables kind of hard.”
Karen’s eyes bulged at the number. I glanced to Craig. A look of curious amusement rested on his face, but he didn’t comment. I was not about to tell where I’d gotten the number, so I rushed on before either of them could ask.
“You’ve got twenty-five years of experience, and I get that you’ve steered larger companies to even greater success, but we’re not children playing around ‘hoping it all turns out well.’ You haven’t been willing to see that or see how things really work here. Do you know why the physicists hand-deliver their reports rather than put them on file share? It’s because they need that moment. That moment when someone will face-to-face walk through their science—which is their heart song, by the way—and collaborate on its application. After all that alone time, they don’t want to send it into the cloud. They need to see it land in someone’s hands, watch their eyes light up, and dive into it with them. Then they go back to the computer—yes, and sometimes it’s with a cookie. It’s their moment of personal connection. It’s like oxygen. They’ve got to have it.”
I tilted my head and reconsidered that last point. “We’ve developed extraordinary trust and friendship here, and that’s what drives innovation. Craig was right about the money—I’m sure most of us aren’t paid enough, if you broke it down by hours. Benson has been here since four o’clock this morning. And do you know why it’s quiet every day around here until Friday? It’s not because people hate their work and trudge through the week. We don’t work nine to five. Days run together because we’re always thinking about this stuff and we don’t slow that momentum until Friday. Its makes our workweek longer than you can imagine, and you missed it—you haven’t recognized a tenth of the dedication out there.”
I stepped back. My flailing hands needed more room. “And, yes, I went sideways with Golightly, and I’m sorry about that.” I looked to Craig before facing Karen. “But Craig probably let me because he trusted me to pull through. And I did, by finally talking to Benson. It’s not a lesson I’ll need to learn twice, but I had to learn it. And an incredible product will come from it—but not if you lose two of WATT’s engineers.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips to slow myself down and to assess my courage to continue. No one spoke. Karen’s mouth was gaping and she was possibly two shades paler, but a crimson spot was beginning to migrate across her cheek. I didn’t have the courage to glance at Craig again.
I lowered my fingers and my voice. “You’re throwing it all away, the backbone of this company. It’s not the batteries and the products we build—that’s the output—it’s the deep well of creativity and trust that goes into making them. You put us on your org chart and assigned physicists to certain engineers and you quantified a qualitative entity—one of the only truly qualitative aspects here.”
Karen’s gaze flickered between Craig and me, then narrowed. “I fail to—”
“Karen?” Craig held up a hand. “Will you leave us for a moment?”
“Excuse—”
“Please. I’ll come see you later. I need a moment with Mary. Alone.”
She slammed the door behind her. She actually had to pull it to make the noise she needed.
I held my hands out without a clue as to what I was offering. “I am so sorry. I just . . . I kept talking.”
Craig wasn’t listening. He dropped his head onto his desk. It bounced off his laptop and lay there. “What have I done?”
I blinked.
He raised his head and stared at me. “The brain that starts a company, that has that first supernova idea, isn’t always the one who can run it. I thought I needed a COO, really a seasoned CEO. Investors wanted it and I, like you, love the creative work. It was the next step . . . Rodriguez gave his two-week notice this morning. At least he did it in person.”
“Oh . . .”
“Exactly. Two-thirds of our designers, the backbone of this place, as you call it. Nathan would have a field day with your fireworks display.”
“Nathan?”
“He’s been pushing me to fire Karen for six months. Two days after I hired her, almost a month before she stepped foot in the office. That’s not true, he fought the hire too. And every reorg discussion with him starts there. Cut our losses with her and move on. He said this morning that WATT is hemorrhaging people and resources . . .”