“Miranda,” Tobias answered while Lucien and Beau muttered.
“So she gave you a PA that failed to do a thing about this project other than create some Pinterest mood boards, and the HR manager didn’t step in when a relationship developed between an assistant and her boss, not until you told her to do something about it, right?”
The others looked guiltily at a very pale-looking Max, but they all nodded.
“She gave you a very beautiful, very poised PA who zeroed in on one brother, wanting to split up the pack and get the mansion she felt she deserves. I’m actually good at my job. I’ve studied project management and business admin. Miranda didn’t even look at my résumé, just wanted to know what I weighed. She was replacing the beautiful distraction with an ugly one, in her mind.”
“Sage—” Lucien started to say, but I cut him off.
“While I’ve never tackled a project this size, the principles remain the same. Projects fail all the damn time. The bigger the budget, the more of a likelihood you’ll fail. Project management is time consuming, right when you don’t have any to spare. It’s tedious and means following procedures, not your gut. It’ll mean changing the way you do things. We’ll only be as strong as our weakest link, but your brother…” I looked across at Max. “Your brilliant brother looked at all of the other software out there and created his own to best suit your company, and you three won’t use it.”
“We’ve always—” Beau started to say, but I held up my hand.
“Just put a pin in that for a moment. I need you to hear me, to see what I’m saying. I need you to just listen before you tell me how the way you’ve always done things has worked best in the past. Just listen to me and listen to Max.”
I nodded to him, and he clicked on the laptop, bringing up the bare bones of the project we’d created together.
“This is our guesstimate of the scope of this symposium and trade fair.” He scrolled down, showing all of the many, many tasks. “It’s limited, because we are only two people and this represents just our perspectives, but it’s a start.”
That was when I saw their wolves push forward, seeing their quarry before them, even if it weren’t a rabbit or a mate this time. They stared at the screen, seeming to take everything in, before I handed things over to Max to explain further.
He transformed before my eyes. It would’ve been easy for Crystal to line him up and see him as the one most likely to give her what she wanted. His manner was so self-effacing, it could be easy to interpret that as weakness, but when he spoke on a topic he felt confident in, he changed. His back was straighter, his tone stronger, his hand gestures more definite. He extolled the virtues of his software, something I was sure he’d done before, but this time, his brothers listened. They did until I stepped back to join them, and Lucien shot me a sidelong look, the vibe of it somehow surprising to me. He smiled, just a slow, sly thing, like this was where he’d wanted us all along, which had me frowning until Max shifted the view on the screen and drew our attention back to what he was showing us.
“This will take a lot of work,”Tobias said with a frown. He was sitting back in his chair, ankle resting on his knee, exposing his very pretty turquoise blue socks as he considered the screen. “That’s always been the problem with this way of working.”
“Well, you could—” I started to say, anticipating this kind of response, but so had Max. He put up a hand and then answered for the both of us.
“You need to put more on your department heads,” he replied. “You pay them executive salaries but are too scared to relinquish control sufficiently to do the high-level stuff we are supposed to be doing. We’re not boys in Mum and Dad’s garage anymore, creating our own kelp fertiliser by hand. To be blunt, the innovations that come from Dacian going forward shouldn’t really be originating with us anymore.”
“Max…” Lucien rumbled.
“I know that’s all you’ve really cared about, Luc, but fuck, this is how corporations work—you hire the talent and let them do their damn thing, while you make sure the company is running functionally, running well, and all of those creative, interesting people are delivering on what they say they will. If keeping your hand in is that important to you, schedule that kind of meeting in on a weekly basis, but someone actually has to run this damn company, and right now, Miranda’s father and the other board members are looking at us and working out how they can replace us with them.”
Max let out a long sigh, making me wonder just how long he’d been holding all of that in. He blinked, looking so pale and empty, I found my feet moving of their own accord, something they had no business doing. I put a hand on his arm. For a few long heartbeats, there was only him and only me, those sharp, ice chip eyes sliding my way.
And so did Joey’s.
She blinked, then blinked again, as if somehow via semaphore, she could ask the question writ plain across her face.
WTF, Sage?
I jerked my hand back, then stepped away while she came forward, clearing her throat, then looking at the others as she went through a quick explanation of how teams could work with us through the system, including those we hired from outside. She showed them the reports they could pull, giving them a bird’s eye view of the different projects and, most importantly, demonstrating how their team down in IT had used this system to log and record all of the different tasks they worked on, getting an idea of how many hours were being devoted to different area’s IT needs. She was actually amazing as she uncovered just how much data could be gleaned from the reports—productivity, costs, trends over time… And that was why I was a project management nerd.
When my previous employer sent me to do short courses on project management, the vast majority of my fellow students had hated every minute of the process. It took away the instinctual, ‘just go with your gut’ thing and made things much more logical and measured, but that was what I loved about it. Working in a company could be like this crazy mashing together of people’s personalities, needs, wants, and skills, and achieving a goal sometimes felt like it happened by accident, not design. Some people were punished for their competence, being loaded up with more work, while others skated by, looking busy on the floor while really doing nothing. Project management exposed a lot of that. It wasn’t a perfect tool, but it was the only one I had in my toolbox.
“Thank you, Joey,” Tobias said in a calm, measured tone. “That was very illuminating. Does anyone have any questions?”
She stood there, drawing herself up, ready to tackle anything they threw at her, and there were a few questions but not many. All of her answers were well informed and delivered clearly, and then she was dismissed. She nodded to the room and then went to leave, but before she did, she shot me one long look. I’d be on the receiving end of questions myself before the day was done, I was sure.
“So what’s the proposition here?” Beau asked, leaning back in his chair, his hands going behind his head. Coincidentally, this revealed the very large muscles in his arms and across his chest as the cotton stretched tight. He smiled lazily, noticing me watching him before I dragged my eyes away. “I can’t expect every single influencer and contact to log their progress.”
“Nope, but those that are being paid will,” I replied. “Otherwise, they won’t be. They submit invoices to be paid via the portal and upload the evidence to support their costs. Anything else, freebies, the fruit of your no doubt extensive network of contacts, you can log.”
A rude snort echoed through the room at that.
“Me?” Beau leaned forward, staring up at me. “I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. You might have to teach me.”
“We’ll all need that,” Tobias said with a small smile. “You’ve made a very convincing case, but there will be an obvious period of adjustment as we move to a very different style of working. I don’t know if Miranda anticipated just what kind of asset she was bringing onto the team, but I’m always one to seize an opportunity when it presents itself.”