Chapter 16 - My mistake at Cole Meridian
I made a larger mistake.
When I discovered my father had used Cole Meridian security personnel and expense accounts to monitor Grace, I called the chief operating officer.
“Freeze every legacy security vendor.”
“All?”
“All.”
There were twelve.
One monitored warehouses.
One handled executive travel.
One provided alarm response.
Only two had any known connection to Grace.
The COO said:
“That will disrupt operations.”
“Do it.”
Miriam called twenty minutes later.
“What have you done?”
“Stopped every vendor Warren used.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know who participated.”
“So you punished everyone before investigation.”
I went silent.
The similarity was obvious.
My father saw uncertainty and controlled everything around it.
I had done the same thing.
“Reverse it?”
“Immediately. Preserve contracts. Suspend only vendors with evidence or a defined risk.”
I reversed the blanket order.
Two vendors were suspended.
One terminated after investigation showed its investigator had surveilled Grace without a legitimate corporate purpose and billed Cole Meridian under:
executive risk monitoring.
The rest stayed.
At the next board meeting, I admitted:
“I issued an overbroad directive based on anger. It was corrected the same day.”
No applause.
Good.
May you like
A board should not applaud the CEO for reversing his own bad order.
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