Stabilize supplier payments.
Protect key production capabilities.
Review executive compensation.
Improve inventory planning.
Rebuild trust with employees.
Identify profitable product categories.
Strengthen internal reporting.
Evaluate leadership.
Evan studied the final point.
For weeks, his team had debated Darla's future.
She was undeniably talented in certain areas.
Her instincts for visual presentation were excellent.
She understood celebrity partnerships.
She knew how to attract media attention.
Several successful campaigns had benefited from her personal involvement.
But reports from the company's employees raised concerns.
Senior managers described her as impulsive.
Junior staff complained that she humiliated people during meetings.
Several former employees alleged that she favored people with prestigious backgrounds over equally qualified colleagues.
Others said she approved expensive events while refusing modest investments in factory equipment.
The board had never addressed these issues consistently.
Darla's family name made confrontation uncomfortable.
Her social influence made it easier to overlook bad behavior.
And the company's declining performance was repeatedly explained away as a temporary market problem.
Evan had not yet decided whether she should remain president.
He believed in evaluating leaders fairly.
He wanted to hear her perspective before making a recommendation.
He had even asked his team to schedule a private conversation with her during his first week.
That meeting was supposed to happen after the board approved the initial restructuring plan.
Now the conversation had begun in an airplane aisle.
And Darla had revealed more about her leadership style in five minutes than any executive interview might have uncovered.
Evan closed the presentation.
He opened a blank note.
At the top, he wrote:
Flight incident — document facts, witnesses, and crew observations. Do not predetermine employment outcome.
He paused.
Then added:
Assess impact on employees, company values, and public trust.
He read the notes carefully.
He wasn't going to pretend what happened was acceptable.
But he also wasn't going to treat corporate control as permission to retaliate impulsively.
That would make him little better than the people who believed power entitled them to mistreat others.
The distinction mattered.
Especially now.
Three rows behind Evan, Darla was having a very different conversation.
She'd taken off her sunglasses and was holding her phone beneath the tray table.
Before departure, she'd sent a message to her personal adviser.
Emergency. Call me as soon as I land. Evan Cole is on my flight.
The reply had arrived just before the aircraft left the gate.