I was back at the Omni Hotel the following morning.
Sitting on one of the sofas in the tiered lobby, I nervously scanned the room for any sign of Rebecca. I had already placed five calls to her, but she never answered. The messages I left weren’t returned. I was approaching full-blown panic, not so much out of fear for Rebecca’s safety as out of fear of losing my job.
It began earlier that morning with my regular touch-base with Pat Faber. The 6 a.m. start was deliberate as my boss liked to put people off their mark and see what kind of “mettle” they had when they weren’t at their best. I often fantasized about becoming his boss and holding a 9 p.m. meeting to see how he operated two hours past his bedtime.
Surprisingly, Pat was already with someone when I got there. I heard a few insincere laughs from behind the door and knew the meeting was coming to a close. Paul Darbin, one of the managers on my team, emerged. He swung his ponytail around to wish Pat goodbye and then saw me standing there. We exchanged a few awkward pleasantries before Pat made it clear that his time was more valuable than ours.
“Mr. Restic,” he barked playfully and several decibels louder than needed for the empty office. “How was the weekend? Good?”
The second question saved me from having to answer the first. Pat wasn’t interested in chatter about the rain, anyway. These meetings had a singular purpose—to make me feel uncomfortable—and therefore weekend banter was not on the agenda. He put his arm around me in an unfatherly way and led me into his office.
I had spent the better part of the prior evening and the drive in that morning figuring out how to get Pat to agree to hit the PAUSE button on the Power of One program and cancel that afternoon’s presentation to the board. That fifteen-minute discussion would determine my future with the firm. And without the chance to rehearse with Julie, I felt woefully unprepared.
Getting Pat to agree to a postponement required a very delicate, very deliberate approach with carefully crafted language, which, after several minutes of buildup, would eventually reveal the reason for the delay: yesterday’s tragic developments in Palos Verdes. This was not something that could be rushed.
“So what’s with this murder at Julie St. Jean’s house?” he asked before I could even sit down.
Pat shot me an “I still got it” smile.
“You beat me to it, Pat.” I laughed, and matched the look of pride on his face. “Again!”
I filled him in on what little I knew but made sure he was aware that it was firsthand knowledge, i.e., that I had been working on a Sunday. I also purposely planted several set-up phrases like “lots of moving parts” and “searching for clarity” and “build the plane and fly it at the same time.” These would soften the beachhead when I inevitably worked back to the conclusion that we would need to postpone the presentation to the board.
“Chuck, it all makes sense,” he agreed.
“It’s an unusual series of events, to say the least,” I replied, pleased with how convincing I was.
“You’ve thought this through with great care, as usual,” he continued.
I acknowledged the compliment but was wary of the fact that he gave one.
“As tempting as it is to hit the PAUSE button on this,” he added, “let’s press forward and discuss it with the management committee this afternoon. It’s too critical.”
I almost threw up for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“Pat,” I choked, “that was going to be my recommendation.”
For the next three hours I placed frantic calls to every phone number associated with Power of One. I left several messages on the room phone at the Omni Hotel. I sent urgent emails and rat-a-tat texts featuring a growing proportion of capital letters until the last one simply read: CALL ME!
All I got back was silence. I had no choice but to go over to the Omni and camp out in the lobby, where I hoped to run into Rebecca.
Sitting on one of the sofas in the upper level facing Grand Avenue, I replayed the events of that morning and regretted having underestimated Pat. I had lulled myself into thinking he was just a doddering old exec, but he still had his corporate manipulation wits about him. I needed to remember that if you can’t see yourself being played, it’s already too late. I was so absorbed in rethinking how I could have done better with Pat that I almost missed Rebecca.
She crossed the lower section of the lobby that led onto Olive Street. I called out her name, but she either didn’t hear me over the din or she outright pretended not to hear me. The purposeful way she strode out the revolving doors and into the valet loop—almost too purposeful—made me think it was the latter.
I placed a call to her cell and watched as she grabbed her phone, checked the number, and pushed me straight to voicemail before jumping into an idling taxi.
I hustled down the stairs and ran out into the valet loop. I jumped into the back of the next taxi in line and instructed the driver to follow the car ahead of him.
“You serious?” he asked, making no move to heed my instructions.
I made up some lie about it being my wife and hinted that she might be doing something she shouldn’t. I must have nicked some once-spurned scar because the driver said nothing as he put the car in gear and pulled in behind Rebecca’s taxi.
Clearly, Power of One didn’t think too highly of the contract with my firm, because after ignoring my call, Rebecca did a series of errands in and around downtown, none of which had anything to do with the presentation. She led us off the hill to a shopping center near the Staples Center, then to an office building that overlooked the downtown skyline from its perch on the north side of the freeway. It looked like a delivery because she entered with a shopping bag and emerged ten minutes later without it. She made a few more stops before concluding her journey at a medical mega-complex of Soviet-style structures in Lincoln Heights. This time she released her taxi and entered the maze of buildings.
No-showing on the presentation with the board was unacceptable. That kind of behavior was something you’d expect from Julie, the eccentric thinker of the group, not from the team’s stalwart organizer. Power of One was always something of a nuisance to me but never a major concern. They were the equivalent of making my long glide into retirement a little more turbulent than necessary, but these latest developments threatened to take the plane down entirely.
I checked my watch and realized I needed to get back to the office for the presentation to the management committee. As I made the short return trip, I worked over in my head what I would say now that I had to give the speech without the benefit of Julie being there to defend her work.
Any hope of an easy time of it was dashed when I entered the boardroom. Everyone was in attendance and looked eager to hear what I had to say, none more so than Pat, who sat there smiling like a gambler on the right side of a rigged fight.
Pat started the meeting by quickly briefing the committee before launching into the attack before I could even get through my prepared remarks.
“Do you still believe in Power of One?” he asked, in a masterful stroke of manipulation. The inclusion of still assumed I believed in them in the first place.
“I believe in what they’re trying to accomplish,” I replied.
“But are they going to get us over the goal line?” asked one of the committee members, unaware that we phased out football-related jargon several years earlier, following the national uproar against concussions.
“We’re a unique firm, with unique needs,” I replied, playing into their misplaced view that our firm was somehow special in the industry.
“Are we seeing the results in the engagement scores?” Pat challenged.
None of the committee members wanted to accept the dismal scores coming in from the recent employee survey. They couldn’t figure out why no one shared the same level of satisfaction with the work they were doing (and more importantly, with the compensation that came with it). That disconnect led us to perpetually pursue solutions that didn’t exist.
Sometimes it manifested itself in concrete ideas, like the continuous rollout of new Power of One programs. Or the extreme example of hiring a chief engagement officer, who after six months of staring at a blank screen, as she tried to figure out what she was actually supposed to do, just walked out and never returned. But mostly it meant people like me having to persuade everyone that our folks actually found passion in their meaningless work.
“Remember what Julie has always preached: ‘Engagement is a journey, not an event.’”
I had thus far successfully avoided being pinned down, but it was only a matter of time before it happened. I could feel the frustration building. I flirted with losing the confidence of the committee members entirely.
Pat pounced.
“That brings up a good point,” he said. “Where is Julie?”
“Yes, why isn’t she here?” someone else piled on.
“Is this not important to her?” rang the chorus.
They served up the opening I needed to throw Julie and Power of One under the bus. But only a fool would have taken it. As much as I relished the opportunity to purge two decades’ worth of complaints about them, I knew better than to pursue that tactic because ultimately, it would be used against me.
“Julie couldn’t be here today,” I began, “because she is working on something revolutionary.”
Pat looked at me like I had lost my mind. But this time, he underestimated me.
I praised the new program for the lasting contributions it would make to the firm and to the individuals enrolled in it. I used all of the buzzwords of the truly disingenuous—powerful, transformative, indelible, and significant.
Pat looked disappointed. While he understood that ultimately I’d need to come back and prove these broad statements—something we both knew I couldn’t do—he had tasted blood and wasn’t ready to delay the finishing blow for another month until the next committee meeting.
“After all the failures they’ve had up to now,” he started, “what gives you confidence that they will be successful this time around?”
All eyes settled on me. I paused a good ten seconds before responding.
“Let me tell you about someone,” I began. “A guy early in his career driven only by the paycheck and the promise of promotion. His success was defined by personal advancement and although he accomplished that in spades, he wasn’t a success in the truest sense of the word. But then he started working with Julie St. Jean. And he learned to harness the power of mindful collaboration. Only then did he realize what real success looked like—making others better.”
I paused before delivering the obvious punch line.
“That someone was Chuck Restic.”
Pat may have stared at me with an icy glare, but I got five heads nodding around him. He knew enough to not press it further.
“We look forward to reviewing their new revolutionary program,” he said flatly.
Poor Pat would never get the chance to see it. I was going to get Power of One to resign long before that ever happened.