Beautiful videos.
Applause.
But pain was not tuition anyone should romanticize.
The company should have treated her properly.
Period.
Everything learned afterward was responsibility.
Not justification.
At forty-seven, Wendy stepped down as CEO.
The board asked her to become chair.
She declined.
“Why?”
“I want people to discover whether the systems work without me.”
That frightened them.
Exactly why she wanted it.
Her successor was Luis Mendoza.
The same Luis who had once worked reception under Derek Patterson.
Not directly because of that.
His career took its own path.
Reception.
Operations training.
Warehouse planning.
Regional logistics.
Chief supply officer.
COO.
Then CEO.
During the announcement, journalists loved the symmetry.
Wendy hated it.
“From receptionist to CEO!”
Headlines everywhere.
Luis joked:
“I wish I had known. I would have started in the mailroom for better press.”
Wendy laughed.
On his first morning as CEO, Luis entered through the lobby alone.
Nobody poured anything.
Disappointingly normal.
Wendy watched from the mezzanine.
A receptionist greeted him before recognizing him.
Good.
Later Luis asked:
“You were testing them?”
“Maybe.”
“You're retired.”
“Not yet.”
He groaned.
At Wendy’s final company town hall, an employee asked the inevitable question.
“What moment are you proudest of?”
Everyone expected something large.
International acquisition.
Record profits.
Employee ownership program.
Climate transition.
Wendy thought.
Then:
“There was a morning about six years after I started when I entered headquarters behind a delivery driver.”
“The receptionist greeted him first because he reached the desk first.”
People waited.
“That’s it?”
Wendy smiled.
“Yes.”
Laughter.
She continued:
“No one rushed to me because I was CEO.”
“No one ignored him because he wore a uniform.”
“The person at the desk handled whoever arrived first.”
“It was completely ordinary.”
“That was the point.”
Applause came.
Wendy let it.
After leaving JR, she spent more time in Chicago than expected.
Consulting occasionally.
Board work selectively.
Teaching one university seminar each spring.
Her course:
Power, Institutions, and Organizational Behavior.
Students always found the cola story online before the first class.
One year a student raised his hand.
“Professor Anderson?”
“I am not a professor.”
“Ms. Anderson.”
“Better.”
“Did you know Derek would do something like that when you went undercover?”
“No.”
“Were you baiting the front desk?”
Wendy stared.
“Explain baiting.”
“You deliberately didn't reveal your title.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe they would have treated you differently if you had.”
“That was the question.”
The student nodded.
“So it was a test.”
“No.”
“A test has a desired answer.”
“I was observing.”
He considered.
“Would you still go undercover knowing what happened?”
Wendy paused.
“No.”
The class looked surprised.
“Why?”
“Because I no longer believe leaders should need secret identity experiments to discover culture.”
She wrote on the board:
If truth only appears when leadership disguises itself, reporting systems have already failed.
Students took photos.