Marcus is staring at his laptop. Teams is open. The meeting starts in three minutes. One day after emailing the questionnaire.
He's getting doubts.
Two days ago, at midnight, after too much whisky he read twenty-eight pages of white paper.
The next morning, he submitted the questionnaire. Now he's about to have a video call with a consultant who charges £50,000 for thirty days of work and calls his company "No Tie Generation."
He'd seen the branding on the website. The scissors. The cut tie. The "Be The Revolution" tagline. It had seemed quirky at midnight. Now, in daylight, he wonders if he's about to speak to someone who takes himself too seriously or not seriously enough.
Marcus adjusts his collar. He's wearing a tie. Of course he is. He's a COO.
The email confirming this call said to bring someone who "deals with the scenario every day." So he invited Sarah. She's dialling in from a meeting room down the hall.
The video connects. A face appears. Middle-aged. Glasses. Dutch accent, maybe? No tie. Of course.
"Morning. Marcus?"
"That's me. Sarah's joining from another room."
A second window pops up. Sarah. She's already got her ‘polite but sceptical’ face on. Marcus knows that face well. It's the one she wears in steering committees when someone suggests ‘streamlining the warehouse workflow.’
"Right," says Isard. "Let's get started. I’ve read your questionnaire. You hint at dual warehouse planning automation four times across four different questions. That's either the problem, or you're trying to tell me something."
Marcus blinks. No small talk. No "tell me about your company" warm-up. Straight to it.
"It's the problem," Marcus says.
"Good. Tell me what the questionnaire didn't capture."
Marcus looks at Sarah's window. Her eyebrows have gone up slightly. She wasn't expecting this either.