The chair became the first piece of furniture in Victoria's mansion that visitors were allowed to sit in without an employee quietly adjusting the cushions afterward. She placed it in the sitting room beside the window overlooking the garden, where her mother might once have watched the afternoon light cross the floor. The first time Ethan saw it, he remarked that it seemed out of place among the new designs. Victoria considered the comment, then said she thought the room had been waiting for something out of place.
At work, the consequences of Linda's departure were more complicated. Procurement meetings moved more slowly without the deputy's sharp objections, and several department heads admitted they had relied on her to say what nobody else wanted to say. Victoria did not pretend the company could simply celebrate losing a difficult executive. She arranged for an interim director, reviewed the authority Linda had accumulated over the years, and asked Ethan to identify decisions that had been made without adequate oversight.
The process was tedious and, at times, embarrassing. Victoria discovered that employees had often submitted proposals through Linda because they were frightened of approaching the chief executive directly. She had believed her office door remained open to anyone with an important problem. In practice, the elevator, the assistant's calendar, the layers of middle management, and her own impatient manner had made the distance almost impossible to cross.
One afternoon she called Priya Shah into her office to discuss the unfinished chair line. Priya brought prototypes and a folder of customer feedback, but Victoria asked her a different question. "If you knew a design was uncomfortable or a production method was poor," she said, "would you tell me before the board learned about it?"
Priya hesitated. "I would tell my manager."
"And if your manager disagreed?"
"I'd probably make sure I had enough evidence to avoid looking difficult."
Victoria felt the answer settle. She had spent years celebrating excellence while making disagreement costly. She told Priya she wanted designers, factory staff, and customer-service employees brought together for a quarterly review where anyone could challenge a design without being punished for raising a problem. Priya looked doubtful but agreed to help. Victoria knew that writing a policy would be easy; persuading people to believe it would be the real work.
The first meeting took place in a room that normally hosted high-level sales presentations. A machinist from the northern production plant described how a cabinet hinge loosened under repeated daily use. A customer-service representative reported that buyers often struggled with drawer handles that looked elegant but were difficult for people with arthritis to grip. Priya presented test results indicating that several of the company's best-selling products could be improved without changing their appearance much at all.