Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (11 page)

“Mr. Connaught told you I was tough. Were you trying to find out how tough?” The question was rhetorical so I didn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t let my size fool you Mr. Holliday.”

Now he was red. The flush started in his perfect size sixteen neck and went right to the top of his bald pate. I was sorry now that I’d admired his physique and wardrobe. When I’d stared at him the look on my face was probably an admiring one, and the idiot thought I was interested. Now
my
face was red.

I sat back down, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in his direction.

“What was it you wanted to see me about?”

Steve Holliday could barely look at me when we all sat around the table for an executive team meeting later that day. He sat at the far end of the table and busied himself with messages on his Blackberry. I stood and shook each Vice President’s hand as they arrived in the room. I had met Russell Freeson, the chief financial officer, at the board meeting on Thursday night but had not met the others. Cleve had reminded me that Russell had been with Tommy since the beginning of Phoenix and I vaguely remembered him. Russell was very young looking for someone who was the chief financial officer of a public company. He was very tall and lanky with jet black hair and a shy smile. Sandra Melnick, the Vice President of Operations looked to be about the same age as Russell. She was a bit taller than me, so she was pretty short, but she looked strong. Her neck muscles were visible and her handshake was firm. She had shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair, cut in a style that probably looked fabulous when it was blow-dried by a professional, but looked ragged and uneven now. She was naturally attractive and wore very little make up.

Mark Hall, the Vice President of Sales, looked run off his feet when he arrived, without his suit jacket on and his sleeves rolled up.

“Kate,” he said as he held out his hand, “is it okay to call you Kate?” He hurried on. “I’m sorry I’m late, customers have been keeping me on the phone. Damage control, you know.” Mark was on the chubby side, with a very boyish face and a really full head of hair. His hair was so thick it looked like a wig.

“Yes, it’s okay to call me Kate,” I told him and the others in the room. “And you’re not late. We’re still waiting for Nat Scott.” My watch said we were already five minutes late starting and I was a stickler for being on time, so I sat down in the chair at the head of the table.

“Well folks, as you know, I’m your new Chair and CEO. I’m Kathleen Monahan, uhm, but most everyone calls me Kate.” I was nervous and sounded like a fisherman from Newfoundland.

A woman younger than me entered the room and stopped inside the door. She looked like a recent high school grad. Her hair was long, done in corkscrew curls and her nose was covered in freckles.

“I’m Natalie Scott. Most everyone calls me Nat,” she said, imitating me. Nat Scott was listed in the company’s roster as the Vice President of Research and Development. I had assumed Nat was male. And older.

“Pleased to meet you, Nat,” I said, wondering if she was going to apologize for being late. She ignored me as she took her seat, placed a writing folder in front of her, and stared at Russell Freeson across the table.

There was a perceptible chill in the room and I knew I was the cause of it. I was making everyone uncomfortable, myself included. I had no idea how to chair a meeting of an executive team.

“Well,” I started, “how about each of you bring me up to date on where you are with your area of responsibility.” I looked at each of them around the table. A few heads nodded and Mark Hall was the only one who spoke up.

“I’ll start,” he offered.

The meeting went fairly well and lasted several hours. The Vice Presidents did a thorough job of explaining their department’s responsibilities to me and I tried to take it all in. As the meeting progressed my level of internal panic rose. There was so much to learn and so much to take in. I sacrilegiously cursed Tommy several times.

Sales were on target but Mark was concerned. Customers had been calling him. They wanted to know what was going to happen to the company. Although Mark had been trying to reassure them, he needed more support from the executive team. I took a stab at being a chief executive officer and asked the team to work with Mark and start talking to the customers. We agreed that we should be telling them that it was business as usual, despite the loss of the company’s leader and visionary.

Nat Scott snorted at this. This one was definitely rubbing me the wrong way. “Natalie?” I prompted her. Nothing. “You’ve got something to say?”

The silence was deafening. She was acting like a petulant twelve year old.

“Okay then,” I said, trying not to look more like an idiot than Nat.

Russell Freeson gave a good financial overview and told me that the company was in sound financial shape. I warned him that I wasn’t very good at reading financial statements (yet), and that I needed to know the basics. We had cash in the bank (a good thing), invested solidly, no outstanding accounts payable, and no serious accounts receivable problems. We were halfway through our financial year and our operating expenses were on budget. The analysts were happy with the company and its potential, and until Tommy’s death, the shares had been trading at a steady level. Russell promised to set up some tutorial sessions with me on how to read and interpret the financial statements.

My next meeting with the research and development team and their leader Nat Scott reminded me of a bad trip to the dentist.

The sounds of chatter emanating from the room had immediately ceased when I arrived and the icy atmosphere chilled me to the bone. I was tempted to take everyone’s pulse, they were so withdrawn and quiet. And to top it off, there was an undercurrent of hostility. The group obviously expected me to run the meeting and although I wasn’t prepared I threw myself into it.

“Well,” I started off, stupidly, “I’m glad you could all make it.” Six pairs of eyes stared back at me. “As you probably know, I’m Kathleen Monahan, and I’ll be…” I paused. “I’m the, uhm, new Chairman and CEO.” The eyes continued to stare at me, blankly.

Someone at the other end of the table wrote something on their pad of paper. Another person coughed lightly. The woman sitting next to me lifted her coffee cup to her lips and peered at me over the rim. The silence was deafening.

“Perhaps we could go around the table and introduce ourselves. Help me put faces to names.”
Help
me
, I silently prayed. Ever had a dream where you’re naked in front a crowd? That’s exactly how I felt. Nervous and naked. I gave myself a mental shake and listened to the introductions.

I looked at the person next to me. This one was your textbook research and development type. He was small and bookish looking. His eyes were huge behind his thick glasses and he was nervously picking at a hangnail on his thumb. He was wearing a short-sleeved, white dress shirt, buttoned at the neck with no tie. The shirt pocket held a plastic pocket protector with three pens carefully and precisely clipped to it. I’m not kidding. And to top it off, he looked younger than Natalie.

“Rick Williams,” he said softly, without looking at me. I looked down at the list Carrie had given me of the attendees and quickly found his name. He was listed as the team leader for the Gila River project.

Sitting next to him was an older man. Older than Rick and Nat but probably about my age.

“Derek. Derek Hutton. I’m the project team leader for the Papago project.”

Across the table from Derek was another woman, who looked like Rick William’s sister. The only difference to me was the obviously missing pocket protector. She was mousy looking and her blond hair needed a wash. Her resemblance to Rick ended when she opened her mouth. Rick had sounded timid and shy. This one was far from it.

“Belinda Moffat,” she barked. Her voice was deep for a woman and very loud, and when she spoke, the sound vibrated around the room. I jumped slightly in my seat. My list told me she was team leader for the Fort Apache project.

Seated on Belinda’s left was Dan Thornton who actually stood up from his chair and reached across the table to shake my hand.

“Dan Thornton,” he said. When he stood I could tell that he was short. His body language exuded energy although he was working hard like the rest of them trying to make my life miserable. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his tie was loosened and he looked like a man with a mission.

“I’m heading up the Navajo project,” he told me. “Glad to have you aboard.” For his friendliness, I gave him a smile.

The last person was sitting directly across from me and introduced himself as Ben Tucker. Ben was so handsome, it almost took your breath away. He had curly, thick, blond hair and a square face. Ben’s face was made more perfect by his straight nose, full lips and intense eyes. Individually, facial features are pretty much the same, but the way Ben’s collection was put together, it was magical. He had the face of Michaelangelo’s David, and Casey Kasem’s voice. Deep and resonant, but without Casey’s singsong way of speaking. I detected a slight, southern drawl, especially when he called me ma’am.

“Ben Tucker, ma’am,” he introduced himself and held his hand out in front of him. “I’d get up,” he explained, with a shrug, “but…” Ben was in a wheelchair.

I quickly stood and reached across the table. His warm hand engulfed mine and his handshake was firm.

“San Carlos,” he said, nodding his head at the list in front of me. There it was. San Carlos project team leader. The project names all sounded familiar and I turned to Nat on my left.

“Are the project names code names?” I asked her.

“Yes. They’re all names of Indian reservations in Arizona. Your ex-husband had an affinity for anything related to Arizona,” she said knowingly.

It was news to me, but made sense. Tommy had lived in Phoenix all his life.

“Oh,” I said uselessly. Once again the room was silent and the air had become thick with tension as soon as Nat made reference to Tommy. Time to take control.

“So.” I lined up the papers in front of me. “The purpose of these meetings would be what? Are we here specifically to update the CEO? Or is it an exchange of information type of meeting?”

Incredibly, all six of them stared blankly at me. There wasn’t one helpful face in the pack.

“Then I can assume all projects are on target?”

Silence.

Now I was pissed off.

I glared at them around the table. The look I gave them was reminiscent of my stare-down with Steve Holliday.

“In that case, consider this meeting over.” I stood up and gathered my things and headed for the door. Someone snickered behind me. Actually snickered. You remember the noise that would come out of someone’s nose when the teacher’s back was turned to the class and he had a “kick me” sign on his back. That kind of noise. I whipped back around at them and took a deep breath.

“If this is the type of co-operation I can expect from the team members around here, I’m disgusted,” I told them through clenched teeth. “I expect a certain level of professionalism from the officers of this company, Ms. Scott. And I haven’t seen it exhibited here. This meeting will start again in thirty minutes. And all project team leaders will provide me with a briefing on their respective projects.”

That caught their attention and now all eyes were on me.

“Thirty minutes,” I repeated. “Your report will include the status of the project, costs incurred to date, expected costs for the next month, a headcount report on all staff reporting to you, including their resumes, and anything else relevant that the CEO should know. Those of you not choosing to participate in the meeting will have their resignations on my desk in twenty-five minutes.”

Now the silence was golden.

chapter fifteen

Not surprisingly, all five project team leaders and their Vice President were present at the meeting thirty minutes later. And every one of them was beautifully prepared. Dan Thornton, who I’d pegged as a keener, even had PowerPoint slides. The tension in the room was still unbearable, but I did my best to ignore it.

Nat Scott’s presentation was last and was basically a wrap-up of the ongoing projects. She was abrupt in her presentation. There was no eye contact between the two of us and the chill factor made the room feel like we were in the Yukon on a January day. We were obviously not going to become best friends and share beauty secrets. I thanked everyone and asked her to stay at the end of the meeting.

We were sitting across the table from each other and I waited a few moments before speaking. Tension mounted and I didn’t care.

“Care to explain what happened here earlier?” I asked her.

She shook her head sharply and her long curls surrounded her face.

“Then can you explain to me how it is that you became a Vice President in this organization? Your behaviour is appalling. Tommy was a team player. I’m sure he encouraged that here at Phoenix Technologies. Did you act like that when he was around?”

“How I acted when Tommy was around is none of your business,” she snarled at me. Perfectly round, red spots appeared on her cheeks, highlighting her freckles.

Unbelievable. Maybe she had a career death wish.

“Fine. But your attitude here today has me concerned. You have until the end of the day to decide if Phoenix Technologies is the place you want to be. In the meantime, I’ll speak to some of the other Vice Presidents and see if they can convince me to keep you on.”

“You do that,
”
she told me. “But don’t forget that research and development is a large part of this company. And the shareholders of this company are counting on research and development.”

“Be that as it may, Ms. Scott, if you and I can’t work together…” I left the rest of the thought to her imagination.

“I
can work with anyone.” She lowered her voice and the rest came out in a hissing whisper. “But I’ll be damned if I have to take orders from a
secretary.
”