Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

Chapter 9. Kate

I had met Kate just once. She’d been the final of my eight interviewers. I liked her instantly, as I’d since found out was common to nearly everyone in the company. Her story was in some ways the story of Zagrum, and like Zagrum’s story, Kate’s was freely passed along to new employees. She had joined the company fresh out of college—Williams College, I believe—some twenty-five years earlier, with a degree in history. One of the first twenty employees at Zagrum, she started as an order fulfillment clerk. In those days, it seemed that Zagrum’s future was in perpetual doubt. After five years, by then Zagrum’s director of sales, Kate left the company for a better opportunity, only to have her mind changed by a last-ditch personal appeal ...