Operator’s Manual
Conflict Avoided Is Always Conflict Postponed
A first-time CEO ignored an email challenging a key decision, only to see the call blow up in her face
She flashed the bat signal, looking for help in her usual way: via text. The late-night text was brief but heartbreaking: “Worst day yet. Big fight today.” That text was quickly followed by another: “I’m only reaching out because you made me promise to flash the bat signal if I was ever in trouble.”
“You did right,” I wrote back quickly, “Call me in five.”
“So we had this meeting, right?” She started hesitantly, waiting for my “uh-huh,” letting her know I was hearing her, with her. “We’d all started working when Patrick walked into the meeting, pulled out his notebook, and looked up as if to say, ‘I’m here. Let’s get started.’”
“Wait, Patrick was in the meeting? I thought you demoted him?”
The week before, she—my client, a first-time CEO—and I had worked through a careful restructuring and reordering of her team. The company faced that nearly inevitable time when the founding core was starting to be “layered” by newer folks, folks with more experience, coming in at hierarchically higher positions. Patrick, who’d been with the company since…
