“Looks like my assistant’s gone missing for a moment. No problem.”
“Well, don’t go letting your staff take advantage of you, got it? Anyway, I wanted to be the very first person to call you on your very first day in the CEO’s chair. How’s it going so far?”
Des thought for a second, wondering what Chuck would want to hear. Realizing that he needed to impress his boss, even though he hadn’t even touched his feet to the ground, he lied: “Great! I’m already kicking ass and taking names.”
“Outstanding,” replied Chuck, expansively. “That’s the ticket.”
Des inwardly sighed with relief. Chuck had made it crystal clear that COR-Med was in trouble, in need of a serious intervention. This was partly the result of the incompetence of the previous CEO Chuck had installed right after Arellus bought out COR-Med’s founders two years ago. According to Chuck, Des’s predecessor wasn’t tough enough on the employees, didn’t cut expenses deeply enough, or ramp up development or production fast enough and, in general, was missing a spine.
Chuck continued without pausing for breath: “I don’t think I need to tell you again how important it is that you turn that place around as fast as you can.”
“No, sir, you don’t. I’m on it.” Des suddenly noticed that his office seemed very warm and that he’d starting sweating.
“Good to hear. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I will anyway. I’m giving you six months, maybe eight, to show real progress, especially on raising revenues and cutting costs, understood?”
Des swallowed silently but hard, and his upbeat mood burst like a soap bubble. That’s not a lot of time, he thought. Still, he was pretty confident in himself: “I can do it, boss.”
“OK, good, because if you don’t, you’ll be gone as fast as the guy you just replaced, got it? Sorry to be so blunt, but this is business.”
Des took a deep breath and replied in his most serious, mature, and deepest CEO voice: “Absolutely. I understand.”
“Good! Well then, have fun!” Chuck hung up without saying goodbye. Des exhaled very slowly through his lips, like a horse, greatly relieved to be done with that particular call.
Rita popped her head in the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Hogan..”
“Rita, where’ve you been?” he snapped a bit too harshly, venting his frustration with Chuck on her. “I had to answer my own frickin’ phone.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Hogan,” she said, looking genuinely crestfallen, “I was in the restroom and when I came back you were on the phone with Mr. Morton. So I went to tell everyone in the conference room that you’d be there as soon as you were done.”
“Right!” Des said, jumping up and acting as if he hadn’t been completely distracted by Chuck’s call. “OK, good.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Hogan,” she said, her mood brightening.
Des grabbed his cell phone and notes for his meeting with his leadership team and headed out of his office. On his way into the hall, he stopped. “Um, Rita, why do you keep calling me Mr. Hogan?”
“Well,” she stammered, “I just thought, out of respect, that I should.”
“OK, that’s great. But from now on, just call me Des. OK?”
“Yes, Mr… um.. Des.”
“Great.” Des charged energetically out of the reception area and turned left in the hallway heading away from the lobby. Glancing at the walls and ceiling as he walked, he flashed back to his first impressions of the building when he visited a few weeks before. It was old and tired, with furnishings that looked like they were bought during the Reagan Administration. Disappointed, he’d immediately asked Rita to order a new executive chair and made a mental note to consider selling the place and relocating down to where the real action was, near the University of California at San Diego, surrounded by a rash of biotech and medical device companies.
Then he heard Rita’s voice calling down the hallway, “Excuse me, um.. Des?”
“What’s up?” he called back over his shoulder without stopping.
“Actually, the main conference room is back this way, to the right and toward the front entrance.”
“Oops!” Des did a quick 180 and headed back the other way. But he hadn’t even gone five steps when he heard loud, angry shouting coming from the conference room.
What the heck?
2 Meeting the Team
Des stopped just outside the conference room door and peered in, hoping to get a sense of what all the yelling was about before he made his entrance. He was completely startled by the amount of anger he felt radiating from the people in the room.
A Filipino-American woman with short, straight, brown hair – Janet Bantay, COR-Med’s chief talent officer – was standing with both hands flat on the table in front of her, her head jutting up and directly toward a tall, balding, thin man in his mid-40s, wearing rimless, round glasses over a long, sharp nose. This was Peter Durso, the head of R&D, known to everyone as “Spec,” which was short for “specifications.” Spec was mirroring Janet’s posture right back at her, even down to the jutting head, like bulls staring each other down. It was obvious that each was furious with the other.
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