Fly, Butterfly

by Annicken R. Day

  I was pulled back in time, to a different place, sitting by a bonfire with the two men I adored, feeling enveloped in their love, their joy, their laughter. The sound of the burning wood and soothing waves; the smell of the Pacific Ocean, so fresh, so invigorating, so …

  “Sweet Home Alabama,” the team sang cheerfully. I shook off the memories and sang along.

  The next day, after breakfast, we sat outside on the deck and had the open and honest conversations we had agreed were the most important reason for the trip. We talked about how things were at TechnoGuard and went over what worked and what didn’t work, and how we envisioned the road ahead.

  There were many things I hadn’t understood, one of them being how extremely unhappy and offended they still were about having lost their executive offices. The office situation was what had started the whole campaign against me, John admitted. He said it wasn’t only the decision itself, but the way I had just bulldozed over them, leaving no room for discussion. They said they would have accepted smaller offices, but having no office at all made their jobs more difficult.

  I thought about Lucy’s story and realized I had fallen into the trap of acting in a way I thought a CEO should act back then. I had been more focused on being decisive, getting things done, and demonstrating power than on taking a moment to reflect on what would have been the wisest thing to do. Had I done that, I would probably have involved them along the way instead of just running them over with my decisions.

  We agreed that reinstalling the old offices was not an option. In fact, the executives admitted that they had come to really like what we had done to the thirty-seventh floor. Over a plate of crawfish for lunch, we agreed to build a number of smaller offices on the thirty-sixth floor. “But no indicator lights, right?” I joked. I was happy to see we were already able to laugh about those. I promised to communicate and involve them more with my ideas and plans moving forward, and they, in turn, promised to tell me when there were things they didn’t understand or like.

  Over a couple of beers after a game of beach volleyball, we decided to rename the executive team the leadership team and agreed that everyone would work on communicating more frequently with their own teams to improve relations throughout the company. We agreed to strive to maintain a company that was open and transparent so we could build trust not just within the company but also with our clients and shareholders—and that this would be everyone’s responsibility.

  The leadership team would later come to define TechoGuard’s history as before and after the Hamptons retreat. That is how much things changed between us after those two days together on the beach. It was a simple yet effective approach to mending fences. By spending time together in a relaxed and informal setting, and taking time to listen to each other and try to understand each other’s perspectives, we had established a level of respect and trust that I never thought we would have been able to achieve.

  Back at the office, I started delegating more of my responsibilities to the members of my team, which freed up a lot of my time and allowed me to spend more time with customers and business partners and even attend networking events and conferences, something I hadn’t prioritized in my first years as a CEO.

  As our new dynamic unfolded, a sentence kept popping up in my head. It was something Mr. Hatchett had said to me after last year’s board meeting: “Real leadership is about building strong teams and an organization that can live on without you.”

  In a strange way, that sentence kept resonating with me on a deep level.

  …

  One day, I was just back at the office after having attended a three-day cybersecurity conference in Orlando; I sat down at my desk to catch up on three days of unread emails. I was the only one from the leadership team who was still sitting in the open landscape, simply because I liked being there, and the employees seemed to appreciate having me around.

  I was halfway through my unread emails when I heard a strange sound coming from the kitchen. Was someone singing? Suddenly people from every department came marching down the hallway carrying flags and balloons, clapping their hands, and cheering. Was it someone’s birthday? I looked around to see what the fuss was about and found that everyone was looking at me, grinning.

  Ruth was walking in front, carrying a big, rectangular cake. When she approached me, she carefully put it down on my desk. The cake was beautifully decorated, and someone had written Forbes all over it.

  “What’s going on?” I was confused.

  “Congratulations! You have been nominated for the Business Woman of the Year award by Forbes magazine!” Ruth beamed, looking as proud as if she’d been my mom.

  “I what?”

  “They called while you were at the conference. We’ve been dying to tell you, but we wanted to do it properly.”

  “We?” I laughed and looked at the people standing around me. “You all knew?”

  Apparently, Ruth had yelled her excitement when they phoned her, since they hadn’t been able to get a hold of me.

  I laughed and stood up from my seat. When I looked at all the people surrounding me, I was deeply moved by their proud faces.

  “Whatever made them choose me for this, it’s really a testament to the awesome job you guys are doing. This nomination is for all of us.”

  I noticed Ruth drying a tear.

  “Well, what are you all standing around for? Let’s eat!”

  After we had finished the cake and people started heading back to their work spaces, I sat back down at my desk and continued to comb through my emails.

  I noticed I had received an email from the Young Professional Women’s Network again, whose invitation to speak I had turned down a few years earlier.

  They wanted me to do a keynote and attend a panel debate on how to succeed in the male-dominated corporate world. This time I decided to accept.

  I had a lot to say.

  …

  A few months later, on the day of the conference, I walked into the large convention center downtown. It was crowded with women and men dressed in corporate attire, wearing colorful conference badges around their necks.

  I was wearing a long-sleeved, knee-length blue silk dress and a pair of ankle boots, making an effort to look presentable for the stage while not being too corporate.

  Outside the conference room, there was a banner with a big picture of me.

  “Maya Williams, Business Woman of the Year” it said. It still felt unreal. Only a month after I learned about the nomination, I’d received a call from Forbes’s editor-in-chief, letting me know that I’d won.

  He said they wanted to run a piece on me, but instead of interviewing me, they wanted to interview the people working with me, and asked if I was OK with that. I thought it was a fun angle and said yes, and over a period of two weeks, a journalist hung out at the office and talked to a variety of people.

  “You know you won’t be able to control what the journalist ends up writing about you, right?” Ruth said suspiciously one day.

  “I know.” I smiled at her.

  I was tired of all those glossy profiles, people talking about themselves, making themselves sound so perfect, when we all knew that the reality usually was anything but. I used to live my life trying to live up to other people’s expectations and definition of what perfect looked like, but now that I’d stopped, I’d never felt better about myself, my life, or my achievements.

  If I could be an example for others—showing that you can challenge the predesigned “boxes” and simply be yourself and do your own thing, and that happiness and success will follow from that—nothing would make me happier.

  If a disgruntled employee or someone else who hated my guts finally got the opportunity to complain about me to the world, well, that was something that came with the territory of being open and transparent. I was willing to take that risk.

  When the magazine came out, I must, however, admit that I was relieved to see the article had turned out well.

  On the front
page, there was a picture of me, sitting in the chill area of the thirty-seventh floor, chatting with some of my TechnoGuard colleagues, wearing my green dress and matching sandals. The heading read: “Maya Williams, Business Woman of the Year, Doing It Her Own Way.”

  In the article, the journalist had written a piece about the company, our culture, and the changes we’d made over the last three years, especially the ones that had to do with employee well-being and happiness and how that had a direct effect on sales results and the bottom line of the company.

  Then, the rest of the article focused on my role in it all. With a little bit of digging, the journalist had been able to collect testimonials from people who’d been working with me years ago, someone who’d been at the conference in Kaua’i, and from a number of my current colleagues at TechnoGuard.

  Some of the testimonials the journalist had dug up from the “old days” were:

  “She was a bit like a machine.”

  “I was terrified of her.”

  “She didn’t seem like a happy person.”

  People who’d attended the conference in Kaua’i said things like:

  “I’d never been so shocked by a corporate presentation.”

  “I was convinced that what she had done was career suicide.”

  “If it hadn’t been for her, our lives might not be as good as they are today.” That last statement came from a senior citizen who’d attended the conference.

  The rest of the interviews were with employees who had experienced the transformation that happened after I returned as the company CEO.

  “She returned to TechnoGuard like a different person.”

  “She’s a kick-butt businesswoman with a CEO’s perspective and a warm and caring heart.”

  “She doesn’t take no for an answer. It’s a bit exhausting sometimes.”

  “She’s all in. Her passion is contagious.”

  “For the first time in my entire career, I actually look forward to coming to work in the morning.”

  “She dresses, acts, laughs, and speaks like no executive I’ve ever met.”

  “She really cares about people. I’ve never felt so valued for the work I do.”

  “She can be a bit too much. I sometimes warn my clients before bringing them into the office to meet with her. But, somehow, they all end up loving her.”

  “She has made us better by unleashing the energy and potential of our team. We’d go through fire for her.”

  I think the last comment was the one that moved me the most. I had no idea John Cooper felt like that now.

  Finally, they had interviewed Lucy Dellaware and Mr. Hatchett.

  “She’s changing the corporate world and what it means to be in it,”

  Lucy had said.

  Mr. Hatchett’s testimonial made me smile. “There’s no one like Maya Williams. She has ‘IT,’ in the double sense of the word. CEOs around the world, listen and learn—and you just might find yourself on a way more successful path.”

  The Forbes Business Woman of the Year issue was now out on the newsstands, and for the first time in my life, I was being stopped on the street and asked whether I was the Maya Williams. It was a surreal feeling.

  It was also weird seeing my own picture blown up on a banner in the lobby of the convention center, so I turned my gaze to the pictures of the other panelists instead—and froze.

  Seeing his self-satisfied smirk again made me sick to my stomach. Had I known he would be there, I would never have come.

  Suddenly, I was thrown back in time, overwhelmed by memories I had tried so hard to push away. I was lying on the bathroom floor, crying, feeling dirty, humiliated, scared, and ashamed. I had crawled into the shower, desperately trying to wash away the feeling of his filthy hands all over my body, but I couldn’t. Ten years later I could still feel the wet, disgusting tongue in my ear, the brutal hand that forced itself between my legs while the other hand covered my mouth when I tried to scream.

  “I will destroy you,” he had yelled after me when I managed to kick my knee between his legs and escape.

  He almost had.

  And now we would be speaking on the same stage.

  I felt close to panic and desperately scanned my brain for an excuse to leave.

  And then I saw him, my former boss and assailant, Robert Henderson, senior partner at Bernstein & Company, one of New York’s leading management consultancies.

  He was on his way into the conference hall, dressed in a shiny gray suit. His dark hair, turning gray, was slicked back with half a tube of gel, making him look just as sleazy as I knew he was. He was throwing long looks after one of the young girls walking in front of him, like a shark looking for his next victim.

  Suddenly something new kicked in—ten years of overdue rage combined with a motherly instinct to protect these young women from having to go through what I had.

  I walked quickly toward the conference hall. It was packed with people, mostly women. Robert Henderson was now standing at the front, near the stage, talking to a young blonde. I walked quickly and decisively up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” I nodded apologetically to the young woman, “but I have to borrow Mr. Henderson for a minute.”

  “Well, if it isn’t the woman of the year,” Robert said with a smug grin.

  I squeezed his arm hard and led him toward a corner of the room where everyone could observe us without overhearing a word of our conversation.

  “Listen, you little piece of shit,” I said through clenched teeth, while forcing a smile in case others were watching. “You and I are going to be on that stage together, and when we are there you have one job and one job only, and that is to make sure that none of the women in this room ever has to experience anything like what you did to me.”

  He tried to laugh and shake off my hand, but I kept a firm grip on his arm.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” he said.

  “Don’t play dumb with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And unless you want everyone else to know, including your colleagues at Bernstein & Co.—and the police—this is what you’re going to do.”

  Sweat was running down his forehead now.

  “C’mon, Maya. That was just a joke. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Tell that to the cops,” I said, my voice filled with contempt.

  His eyes widened when he realized that my threats were serious.

  “What do you want me to do?” His gaze was flickering, like he hoped someone would come to his rescue.

  I continued smiling while speaking in a low and controlled voice. “Later, when we are having a discussion onstage, you are going to tell these girls that they need to stand up for themselves and never fall for dirty tricks, like being asked by their boss to come and look at documents in a hotel room after midnight.” I nearly spat out that last sentence, concentrating hard to keep the smile on my face.

  Robert pulled back, alarmed.

  “I can’t say that,” he said.

  “Yes, you can, and you will,” I shot back at him with clenched teeth, still smiling, and squeezing his arm even harder. “Then, you will tell them that if they are ever assaulted or threatened by scumbags—like yourself—they should immediately report it to the police. God knows I wish I had,” I growled.

  Robert Henderson was nearly paralyzed now. He desperately tried to avoid my gaze. Streams of sweat were pouring down his forehead.

  I flashed a false smile and said, “Then, from stage, you will tell Cynthia Jones, the founder of the Young Professional Women’s Network, that you will donate 500,000 dollars from your own pocket to their Female Empowerment Initiative, which supports women who have been victims of sexual assault in the workplace.”

  Robert’s face was covered in sweat despite his attempt to maintain composure.

  “But …,” he said.

  “No buts. Do it or I’ll see you in court.”

  I stared into his eyes one last time, leaving no
room for interpretation. Then I let go of his arm, turned my back to him, and walked over to the technician who was waiting for me in front of the stage with a microphone in his hands.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see how Robert nervously dried the sweat off his face with a white handkerchief and hesitantly walked over to his designated seat. He looked small and insignificant, his face as gray as his suit.

  When my name was announced over the speaker, I confidently walked up onstage and into the spotlight.

  “Hello, ladies,” I said. “I am Maya Williams, and I’m here to tell you a secret or two about being a woman in the male-dominated corporate world.”

  I paused and looked over the crowd.

  “The biggest secret being this: the dominance won’t last for much longer.”

  And as five hundred women jumped on their feet and clapped their hands and cheered, a familiar voice inside my head whispered softly: “Go fly, butterfly girl.”

  I smiled, nodded, and continued to speak.

  SURRENDER

  We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

  JOSEPH CAMPBELL

  CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK

  It was almost Christmas, one of my favorite seasons to be in New York. I was walking down Fifth Avenue. The streets were packed with people admiring the lights and decorations that transformed the city into a colorful, magical world. A Salvation Army officer was ringing a bell, a big man dressed like Santa Claus was on a street corner shouting, “Ho-ho-ho!” every five seconds, and by Rockefeller Center the giant Christmas tree covered in colorful lights was shining on all the people skating on the ice rink to classic Christmas songs.

  I was on my way to meet Mr. Hatchett at the Waldorf Astoria for an early dinner, to celebrate that TechnoGuard was in better shape than ever and that our share price was at an all-time high.