In one of the Scenes

I decided to write "Scenes from the Valley” after meeting with the “Denver Business Journal” business editor when I was pitching a story for one of my startup clients. He asked about my Silicon Valley experience, and I told him a story. It ended up being one of the most crucial scenes in the book.

“It was crunch time for the Notorious VP’s product launch, and we still didn’t have an ad. I told the agency to work with him to get something we could use. There wouldn’t be any positioning of the new product. All there could be was the creative that the Notorious VP wanted. There were many sessions of creative presentations. It kept getting worse, with more of the goofy sophomoric stuff that appealed to the Notorious VP and, thus, he thought, would appeal to his target audience.

 He caught me in the hall one day coming back from a meeting with my former product group. He stopped me and stared at me for what seemed a long time, then he slowly reached up and put his hands around my neck. As he began pressing, he asked me if I would have his ad done in time. Obviously, it wasn’t really a question. It was a threat.

 I told him yes if we could get some decent creative done. He told me that I was not to miss the deadline. I repeated what I said before. There were executives who knew me standing around us with their eyes wide open. Once he removed his hands, he turned and walked away.”

This is a true story. The woman I was writing about didn’t sue. She later learned that the legal department was waiting for her to do just that. So why didn’t she? For the simple reason that her career in the Valley would be over. #MeToo didn’t exist in 1994, and no one would back up a charge against an executive. If you were a woman, you took whatever was dished out to make it to the C-suite.

If you’d like to read more scenes such as this and learn how to navigate moving up the ladder of success, buy my book “Scenes from the Valley” at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.