oom. Everyone was already there.
It's going to take a while before they quit expecting to be fired over every little thing, I thought, knowing that they were probably all here early because they were afraid that if they showed up after me, I'd fire them on the spot. That wasn't the plan for today, though.
“Good morning, everyone,” I greeted them, sitting at the head of the table. “Let's get started. Now, I know that many of you are wondering why we've gathered here today. Don't worry; we're not here to discuss the mid-quarter numbers, although they are looking very impressive. I can see that you are all thinking about those internal goals and about everything that we talked about in our last meeting.”
There was a murmur of assent around the table.
“As some of you may have noticed, I've been working from home a lot more lately,” I continued. “I've decided to begin changing my management strategy.” I could see looks of surprise around the table. “It's come to my attention that I've micromanaged this company for far too long. And although that has obviously yielded results, I think it's time for me to begin to take a step back from things.”
One of the men seated to my left frowned at me. His name was Tom, and he'd been with the company since my father had started it, way back when. He asked the question that I knew they were all thinking. “Are you retiring?”
I laughed. “I'm too young to retire,” I told him. “What would I do with myself? That would be a lot of time to kill. Besides, I don't have someone to take my place at the moment. Although I appreciate all that each of you does for the company, you all work in your own departments more often than not. The person who will eventually replace me will be someone who has experience bringing together the work of all those different departments.”
There were some nods around the table, and even though I knew most, if not all, of my employees feared me, there were a number of them who looked relieved. They were probably worried that if I left the company, there would be layoffs and other big changes to the company structure, more than anything else.
“The thing is, the more I micromanage you, the less you have the opportunity to show me that this company could, in fact, exist without me,” I said, folding my hands in front of me. “The reason why you've all been working in your own specific departments is because that's the way that I've forced you to work. You're all very talented, but I haven't given you the opportunities to prove yourselves.”
“You make it sound like you're going to pit us head-to-head with one another and award the company to the last man standing,” someone quipped.
I smiled as there were a few nervous chuckles around the table. “That's not the plan,” I promised. “However, I am planning to start scaling back my hours, effective immediately. I will continue to work from home some days, but there will also be days when I don't work at all.” I paused. “I don't plan to drastically cut back on how much I'm working, but I will be giving you all a lot more independence, and I'll need everyone to step up to the plate.”
There was silence around the table. Everyone looked like they were processing this news.
“And if we don't step up to the plate, we get fired?” Jack asked.
I remembered that he was the man who had almost gotten himself fired in the previous meeting, and I barely managed to suppress a smile.
“That's not what I'm saying,” I told him, looking around the table and meeting everyone's eyes so that they'd see how sincere I was. I shrugged. “We'll try this out for a little while, maybe just one quarter or maybe for a few quarters. We'll see how it affects our numbers, if at all. If things don't seem to be working, I'll step back in. But we'll discuss that, as a team, when we get to the point.”
The emphasis on “as a team” shocked them.
“So essentially, you are planning to retire soon?” Bob asked. “You just want to make sure the company will be all right without you when you do?”
“That's not it,” I said firmly.
“Then why?” someone asked, sounding absolutely baffled.
I shrugged. “As I said, I feel as though I haven't given you the chance to show me what you can really do, to achieve your full potential,” I told them. “That's all there is to it.”
That wasn't all there was to it, of course. Not by a long shot. What it really boiled down to was that I wanted to spend more time with Lexi and Emma. That was why I'd begun working from home more and more. The more I worked from home, and the more I spent my lunches with them, the less motivated I felt to go back to work for the afternoon.
And it would be nice to leave the office early once in a while so that I could go home and have dinner with the two of them, or take Lexi on dates in the evenings without making Janice stay over too late.
But of course, I wasn't about to tell that to my executive board. They would think that I was getting soft, or that I was putting my personal life ahead of my work. I couldn't have them thinking that.
Even though the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that really was the truth of it. For the first time in my life, there was something that I cared about more than my work or making more money. I wanted Orinoco to continue to thrive, but I also wanted my relationship with Lexi and Emma to thrive.
I stood up before they could ask any more questions. “I trust that you'll all let me know if you have any troubles with the new arrangement,” I told them, even though I had a hard time believing that they actually would. I had never strived to be an approachable boss, and that could come back to bite me in the ass now.
So let it, I thought. If things went bad, we'd reassess in a few quarters, just like I'd told them we would. We'd figure out where to go from there. But for now, it was time I did something for me.
I nodded at them and adjourned the meeting. I returned to my office just in time to receive a call from Katherine.
I smiled as I picked up the receiver. “Hey, sis.”
“Hey!” Katherine said, sounding surprised. “You sound happy.”
“So do you,” I countered.