A Show of Hands

Priya had run the Monday meeting for two years, but this one felt different. The whole team crowded into the small glass room, coffee cooling on the table, waiting to hear whether they would take on the Hartwell account.

She started with a tentative plan, sketched in pencil the night before because she hadn't wanted to promise anything she couldn't keep. "It's rough," she admitted, tapping the whiteboard. "Tell me where it breaks."

The first question was the obvious one: was the six-week timeline even feasible? Hartwell wanted the product launched fast, and Sam, who handled the engineering, leaned back and did the math out loud. Tight, he said, but not impossible — as long as they didn't try to do everything at once.

That was the part Priya had been dreading. She liked to keep her hands on every piece, but she knew the only way through was to delegate. So she did, slowly, naming a person for each slice of the work and resisting the urge to add "and I'll double-check it." Design to Maya. Testing to Sam. Client calls to herself.

By the end they had something close to a consensus — not loud agreement, but the quiet kind, where nobody was looking for the exit. A few people had pushed back, and the plan was better for it.

What surprised her most was the morale in the room afterward. People lingered, joking, refilling cups they didn't need. For weeks the team had felt flat, just going through the motions. Now there was a project worth arguing about, and somehow that had lifted everyone.

Priya wiped the board clean and wrote the new timeline in firm, dark strokes. Not tentative anymore.