This was the first time they ever put an agenda on the board. Considering this was their most important company meeting ever, it was probably prudent. The last two weeks had seen a blizzard of activity. Todd had been escorted out the door almost the second their plane’s wheels touched the ground. The next week Brent had arrived on campus and had started working his way through the engineering team. The word was not good, but at least they were starting to figure out where the bodies were being buried. At the end of that week they had trooped into Vincent’s offices for their board meeting.
Steve had watched with bemused detachment as Todd was quickly fed to the wolves. The company was given a second product line centered around a two dimensional interface, and Brent was introduced to the board and given a chance to lay out the engineering plans. All in all, it was a remarkably controlled performance. The investors were cut off at every pass before they even had a chance to lodge a complaint. Peter felt it was better for Stivo to make the presentation, and he was working the crowd like a Hollywood opening. Steve had to admit he was very impressed by the performance.
Not that it was without controversy. The board was very concerned about the events that had led up to the AOL debacle. How the development was going to be led was a topic, as was whether they were taking the right measure strategically. Stivo at this point was in full flight, and launched an impassioned defense of Hollywood Squares. After twenty minutes of parrying, the investors backed off.
Now it was time to bring the rest of the company up to speed. Steve noticed that Peter was once again leading the party. Peter turned to assembled throng. “As you have all probably noticed, our little company has been undergoing some changes over the last couple of weeks. This is pretty standard stuff for a fast moving startup, and we are certainly moving as fast as we possibly can. First of all, we have all noticed some management moves, and I wanted to speak to those. Todd has decided to leave the company. Although we all are going to miss him, and the work he put in to get us where we are today, he really felt that he was not the right person to lead the engineering team to the next level. In addition, he and his wife really wanted to move back to England, where he actually has some pretty interesting opportunities.
“This means that Brent Dorman has taken over for Todd. Brent worked with Todd and I when we were imprisoned in Castle Lazarus, and he is as happy to be here as we are to have him. Brent has been spending his time getting up to date on our technology, and he gave a great presentation to the board on Friday. However, in discussions I had with the board over the weekend, we agreed that we needed to do more to move the company in the right direction.”
Steve rocked forward on his heels. He had no idea what Peter was talking about. He thought at this point Peter was going to hand over the reins to Brent to introduce the new two dimensional product.
Peter wasn’t stopping. “The board, Lawrence, and myself came to the decision that Lawrence should leave the company. The board decided that he was too wedded to the new product line, and did not have the commitment to push the full vision of the company. Lawrence was brought in specifically to get content deals done for us, but his inability to get his hands around the technology led to some unfortunate decisions. And the AOL meeting proved that he was not able to do put these two worlds together effectively for us.”
Peter stopped for a moment, and did the big thought moment, “The thing about start ups is, they are really our version of a crusade. In the old days, if you wanted to prove yourself you went off on a crusade and conquered a country. In this day and age, if you want to prove yourself you start a company and conquer an industry. That means you have to treat this as religion. If you are not committed to the ultimate goal of the company, you will not lead it there. The feeling on the board was Stivo was looking for short terms deals with his friends more than driving the company to its ultimate goal. I think sadly we had another example of a Hollywood manager not understanding the importance of technology in a start-up.”
All of a sudden Steve knew why Peter had Stivo lead the board meeting. It was a set up from the beginning. By letting Stivo lead the charge at the meeting, he had let him hang himself in front of the board. And in one fell swoop Peter had his company back. Steve suddenly had a very unsettling feeling about his own future. Part of this was due to the extremely Machiavellian way Peter had exorcised Stivo. Peter never had any intention of doing Hollywood Squares. Stivo had pitched Hollywood Squares, thinking it was the right way to deploy the technology. Peter had then gone behind his back, and blown up Hollywood Squares. No Squares, no Stivo. Peter had led him down the road after he had mined the whole damn thing. Steve could see the steps with perfect clarity now.
Scanning the faces in the room did not give him a better feeling. People didn’t seem to be very concerned about this latest swerve in the road. The ability to sniff out when people were planning to leave a company was more art than science, but Steve knew all the signs to look for. Most of them revolved around a sudden change in a person’s character. The local slob was wearing a nice shirt. The rabble-rouser now sat quietly in the back of the room. Clean code got ugly. Early risers wandered in around noon. And people who should be worried weren’t any more.
There were too many people smiling in the room. But before Steve could think more about this, Brent was front and center, trying to get his new engineering team behind him and the new product. It was too late. He had already lost the room. Part of the problem is he was walking into a building that had already been bombed. The other problem was that Brent had the personality of a turnip. In all of Peter’s talk about religion, he had put a country chaplain in charge of a pack of zealots. Engineers wanted someone who would lead the charge up the hill in face of withering gunfire. Brent was not that man. People like Brent presided over bingo contests. He did not lead revolutions.
Brent launched into a mind-numbing set of PowerPoint slides. Steve all of a sudden realized what the problem was. Middle managers like Brent survived in big companies not because they made the right decisions, but because they made sure they didn’t make the wrong decisions. Defensive management at its best. But good entrepreneurial managers constantly needed to push the envelope, which meant they could not fear a wrong decision. If they were going to fail, fail fast and then get a move on. And with perfect clarity, Steve knew who was already being set up to take the next bullet.
Poor Brent. If he managed to get the engineering back on track, Peter would get all the credit. And if they failed again, he would get the bullet in his back. He stood at the front of the room, clicked through his carefully crafted presentation, and meticulously laid out his schedule for the next three months. Steve had to work to keep himself from laughing out loud. The schedule would last for about three days instead, and then the predictable chaos would set in. Nothing in Brent’s big company resume would prepare him for it. None of his big company support would be available to him. Steve actually was starting to feel sorry for him.
Brent careened to a halt ten minutes later. Peter gave one more half-hearted attempt to rally the troops, and then they were all turned loose. At this point, Steve was not even remotely surprised by the engineers trooping down to Paul’s office. He also knew that Paul would come to him after the meeting, so he dutifully went back to his office and waited. He was thus very surprised when the visitor turned out to be Brent. “Can I speak with you Steve?’
Steve motioned him in and Brent plopped down in the only other chair and scrunched up his face. “You’ve been here longer than I have, so I was hoping you could tell me how you thought the meeting went?”
There was no way that Steve could answer this one truthfully. “Well, to be honest, most of it went over my head. I am probably the least technically proficient person in the office. It seems like we are getting the engineering effort squared away.” Steve intentionally softballed this back to Brent to see what he would do.
“Well, I think we have some consensus on the interface issue, so that is good. The question I really have for you is neither about engineering or business. It’s about the spirit of the company. I noticed that you have done a couple of start-ups, and this one is one year down the track. I just was wondering how it stacked up to the other companies you have worked with. I mean, are we ahead or behind where we should be? And do the engineers feel like things are going well?”
Steve thought this was a very odd line of questioning. He would have thought that these questions would have been answered during his interview. For him to raise them now meant one of two things. Either Brent did not do interviews that well, and was hogwashed by his old workmate Peter, or he didn’t have a choice but to take the first job that was offered to him. Steve was hoping it wasn’t the latter. “Well, I think there was a lot of doubt about the direction of the company, and people were splitting into either the Stivo camp or the Peter camp. I think now that there is a cohesive direction to the company, everyone will be a lot happier. It certainly will make my life easier.”
This seemed to make Brent feel better. He got up and headed for the door. “Thanks for the feedback, Steve. And if you have any questions you want to ask me, please feel free to call on me.” He wandered off down the hallway just as Paul steamed in. He closed the door and sat down immediately.
“Well, I figured you would want a report from my end of the house.”
“Definitely. What is going on in engineer lane?”
“Not a bunch of happy campers. The general consensus is that Brent is being teed up to fail. This is worse than Todd. He has been defanged before he even started. The interface stuff still has not been dealt with, and when it blows up Peter can blame him. The guys feel totally disconnected from these decisions, and I suspect that at least five of them are looking for new jobs, if not more.” Paul took a deep breath. “I think we are in trouble here Steve.”
Steve sighed. “Well, none of this is overly surprising. What do you think it would take to pull the team together?”
“It’s funny you would ask that. We were talking about this in length. A lot of us believe that we are in the right hunt with the multipoint data delivery. I mean, this is a real problem that we have solved, and as far as I know no one else has figured it out. We are probably takeover bait on that alone. But Peter is determined to make his AOL on steroids vision come alive, and I don’t think he could ever resign himself to being ‘just’ a network plumbing company. And that means people are going to get bored, and bored engineers are engineers looking for their next gig.”
“So I still don’t hear a solution.”
“Two simple words would turn this ship around.”
Steve leaned forward. “I hope you are not planning to keep this a secret?”
Paul leaned forward. “It’s time for a revolution, and the two magic words are King Steve.”
Steve closed his eyes. “Not again.”