The Unease Before the Call

It began quietly.

The strategy had been announced. The organigrams had been drawn, redrawn, and sanctified. New job titles were printed. Workshops were completed. PowerPoint decks danced.

And yet—

Questions began to form.

In the corridors, in private messages, in hushed corners of meetings that were “off-camera” — a low murmur spread among the citizens of SHOTE:

“What does this strategy actually mean?”

“What are we supposed to do differently?”

“Is this affecting my job?”

The Design Authority™, busy debating arrow curvature, had no answers.

The Manager the 4th, Lionbum himself, was seen less frequently, orbiting higher-level dignitaries and speaking only in allusions.

Which left Johnny.

In a rare act of visible responsiveness, he acted.

The Invitation

It began, as such things always do, with a calendar invite no one understood.

Subject: “Strategic Reconnection Session: Co-Creating Our Future™” Time: 90 minutes Location: Grand Conference Room A, or Online via Strategic Vision Link™ Required Materials: Pen, optimism, and your best strategic self.

The memo came signed not by Johnny himself, but by The Office of Future Strategic Excellence™, with a gentle note of mandatory encouragement:

“Your participation is not just welcome — it is vital for the strategic renewal of our collective identity.”

Ald read it twice. Then he sighed, gulped an encouraging amount of something suspiciously herbal from his mug, sharpened a pencil, and packed an extra biscuit for Balthazar.

The Opening

The room was half full, half dazed. Several citizens joined from screens, their cameras mysteriously off. The air buzzed with the cautious hum of well-trained apathy.

Johnny Dolittle took the stage, radiant with conviction. Behind him, a gleaming PowerPoint deck bore the title:

“Becoming the Organisation We Already Are™“

He began with a tone reserved for TED Talks and hostage negotiations:

“Friends, we are not here to create values, but to surface them… to rediscover who we are… together.”

There were nods. They were not enthusiastic, but they were visible.

The Exercise

Johnny drew four columns on a whiteboard, dramatically labelled:

• Who We Are
• What We Aspire To Be
• How We Behave
• What We’re Known For

He stepped back like Michelangelo before the Sistine ceiling.

“Let’s co-create our organisational identity. One word at a time.”

There was a long pause. Then someone mumbled, “Committed?”

Johnny beamed. “Excellent! Yes, let’s build from that.”

A second voice tried, “Adaptive?”

A third added, after considerable hesitation, “Busy.”

Silence returned. Pens were twirled. One person appeared to freeze mid-yawn. Ald, in his corner, jotted:

“Co-creation exercise. Input rate: glacial. Engagement level: herbal.”

After twenty minutes, the board displayed seven words.

And all the while, uneasiness rippled quietly through the room. It wasn’t just the silence or the lack of participation. It was the growing sense that something wasn’t quite right. People shifted in their chairs, exchanged glances, sipped their coffee too often. They weren’t just uninspired — they were beginning to suspect that this entire exercise was a performance. That the answers had already been written. That participation was just a scene in a not-so-well-rehearsed play.

Ald felt it too. The tension behind the stillness. The question no one dared ask aloud kept resurging in Ald’s mind: What happens if we don’t play along?

Johnny, undeterred, clapped his hands. “Wonderful. Now…”

The Reveal

He clicked to the next slide.

“Full Identity Table — Pre-Endorsed by Leadership”

A dense, immaculate grid appeared: 80 to 100 buzzwords in corporate pastels. Every imaginable virtue was there: Integrity, Boldness, Humility, Curiosity, Excellence, Empathy, Synergy, Resilience, Forwardness, Courageous Listening, Tactical Agility, Purpose Fluency…

“This,” Johnny declared, “is what we had already developed in consultation with the senior management team.”

Ald blinked. From the security of Ald’s oversized pocket, Balthazar growled softly.

“Today was not about creating new content,” Johnny continued, “but about demonstrating the participatory approach we envision.”

There was a silence only broken by the whir of the air conditioning and the quiet death of morale.

“Now that you’ve seen it, can we all agree this reflects who we are becoming?”

A few heads nodded. Most did not move.

One brave soul asked, “Will this be used for something specific?”

“Absolutely,” said Johnny. “We will align all future behaviour, appraisals, team objectives and communications to these principles.”

Ald wrote:

“Values presented as fate.

Participation retrofitted.

Ownership implied, consent presumed.”

The Aftermath

The workshop ended not with a bang but with breakout rooms.

Nobody broke out.

In the days that followed, the values table was circulated as “the outcome of a collaborative session.”

Team leads were asked to reflect these virtues in quarterly reports.

Someone made mugs.

Ald pinned a printed copy next to his desk and scrawled across the top:

“WORDS WITHOUT WITNESS”

Below it, he added:

“The ship is turning, but no one is steering.”

Epilogue

Outside, citizens returned to work, even more uneasy than before. What had begun as confusion had settled into something heavier: suspicion, fatigue, and the unmistakable sense that they had been shown the performance, not the plan. The workshop, meant to involve people and clarify, had blurred things further. The air now held the weight of quiet disillusionment.

Inside, Johnny prepared for Phase 2: Behavioural Anchoring Workshops™.

Ald sharpened another pencil.

The silence had changed.

Something was beginning to stir.