Page 88 of The Austen Escape
He held up his hand. “I contend Mary knows this business almost as well as I do, and I’d like her opinion. We started as a group of engineers. That’s what made us great, and if two are walking out my door, I want to know how to prevent number three.”
I felt my lips part. Benson was at my desk. It had to be Rodriguez. I glanced to Karen. The skin under her eyes sagged against her glasses. Her mouth was pursed tight.
“Umm... I’d be careful not to put too many layers in place. Procedures, while necessary, can curb creativity, especially for your engineers and the physicists.” I peeked at Karen. Her face was rigid, but she didn’t interrupt.
Craig nodded.
“We’re introverts—at least the ones you’ve got on board now. We need our quiet time to think, but we also need the freedom of uncensored and unmonitored interaction. We work alone, then play off each other to get the best out of our ideas. Until Golightly, I worked that way too. This project, it took over in a way I can’t explain.” I shook my head. “But back to your question, too many layers and rules make us feel watched and stifled. We know most ideas won’t fly, 90 percent, but we need that ninety without feelingthe pressure that each one has to justify its existence. Those ninety failures give birth to the ten that make WATT so great.”
“To some degree, those 90 percent do need to justify their existence. Every idea pulls resources. We need to keep the lights on here.” Karen’s voice reminded me of Isabel’s when she’d spoken so sharply to Clara.
“Obviously.” I spoke to Craig. “But don’t make teamwork and all the buzzwords thrown around here a mandate. Let people come together to collaborate on their own. We already do.”
I thought about Benson, who always came for help in the afternoons around three o’clock when his energy lagged and, when he relaxed, expanded his conversation topics from science to scienceandStar Trek. I thought about Moira, who handled the financials and teased the engineers and physicists when we began to run a project anywhere close to “red.” Her chiding put us on track because we wanted to do things right, not because she rapped our knuckles. She also sang gospel songs under her breath as she worked and made everyone feel better. I thought about Lucas, how he stayed late every Friday, sometimes into the wee hours of Saturday, until his week’s programming work was done and he could tap hisYou Will Never Have This Day Again So Make It Countposter on his way out the door.
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 ourworkweek 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?”
